A post submitted by CGI member ScienceTruth.
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The Winnemucca Institute for Advanced Studies presents
Planetary Nebulae
[ what are they really ]
Abstract
This will be an indepth exploration of a grossly misunderstood subject by Mainstream Astrophysics, and as such will require several preliminary attendant subjects to be explored and explained more fully, and not glossed over quickly. Subjects being ; Ionized Plasma, The ElectroMagnetic Z-Pinch phenomena, the Electric Field's Electric Double Layer structure, Marklund Convection, a slight return to Birkeland Currents, how a Star actually operates and functions, what a so-called Stellar Nova actually is and how it happens, the Dynamical Forces in the Astrophysical Plasma Surrounding the Central Object in Planetary Nebulae, then we'll explore the beauty and structures in a Planetary Nebula, and take a tour of several different 'types' of PNE's, and finally observe several different 'series of developments' in PNE's as a 'case study' !!! (links to APOD photos will be included)
Plasma and its various 'states' of Ionization
In Physics and Chemistry the four Principal States of Matter are; Solid, Liquid, Gas, and Plasma. Plasma is an ionized Gas, but is now considered a distinct State of Matter unto itself, because of its unique properties. Ionized means one or more electrons have been 'driven' to leave the atom, and that electron is now free to move about in the Gas / Plasma, and it is not bound to an atom or molecule, this makes Plasma behave and have properties that are very different from regular gasses or neutral gasses.
These 'free' electrons make a plasma very electrically conductive, and it may now respond strongly to electromagnetic fields.
A regular gas can be turned into a plasma in the following ways : It is heated to a high thermal temperature. It is flooded with a discharge of high-energy electrons that induce 'bound' electrons to become so 'energized' they leave their atoms. It is flooded with high-energy photons, such as ultra-violet light, that again transfer their energy to the outermost electrons in an atom and cause the electron to become so 'energized' that it no longer can be 'held captive' by the atom.
Depending on the temperature and density, a certain number of neutral particles may also be present in a plasma, in which case this plasma is called "partially ionized". Neon signs and lightning are examples of partially ionized plasmas.
This State of Matter was first identified in a Crookes tube, and so described by Sir William Crookes in 1879 where he called it "radiant matter". The nature of the Crookes tube's "cathode ray" matter was subsequently described by British physicist Sir J.J. Thomson in 1897 in his evening lecture to the Royal Institution on Friday, April 30. 1897, and was later termed "plasma" by Irving Langmuir in 1928.
As a Side Note : There is a serious difference between "Thermal Temperature" and "Electron Temperature". Thermal Temperature is the 'general energy density state' of the total volume of matter in question. Whereas "Electron Temperature" is the 'energy density of an individual electron' and its "state of 'excitation' ", as termed in Physics. In a plasma the outer electron, or several outer electrons, can be so 'energized' in an Electron Temperature manner, that they leave the atom, but the atom itself is not in a Thermal Temperature manner any 'hotter' than before the electrons departed.
Irving Langmuir ; (January 31, 1881 – August 16, 1957) an American chemist, physicist, and metallurgical engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry. Langmuir coined the term "Plasma" for ionized atomic elements and molecules due to how the plasma behaved in a life-like manner.
Langmuir attended several schools and institutes in America and Paris from 1892 to 1895, before graduating high school from Chestnut Hill Academy in 1898. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in metallurgical engineering from the Columbia University School of Mines in 1903. He earned his PhD in 1906, his doctoral thesis was entitled "On the Partial Recombination of Dissolved Gases During Cooling". Langmuir then taught at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, until 1909, when he then began working at the General Electric research laboratory in Schenectady, New York.
His initial contributions to science came from his study of light bulbs, a continuation of his PhD work. His first major development was the improvement of the diffusion pump, which ultimately led to the invention of the high-vacuum rectifier and amplifier tubes. A year later, he and colleague Lewi Tonks discovered that the lifetime of a tungsten filament light bulb could be greatly lengthened by filling the bulb with an inert gas, such as argon, the critical factor being the need for extreme cleanliness in all stages of the manufacturing process. He also discovered that twisting the filament into a long tight coil improved the efficiency. These were important developments in the history of the incandescent light bulb. His work in surface chemistry began at this point, when he discovered that molecular hydrogen introduced into a tungsten-filament bulb dissociated into atomic hydrogen and formed a layer one atom thick on the inner surface of the bulb.
As he continued to study filaments in vacuum and different gas environments, he began to study the emission of charged particles from hot filaments, or thermionic emission. He was one of the first scientists to work with plasmas, and he was the first to call these ionized gases, 'plasma'; because they had a life-like behavior, and reminded him of blood plasma, in that the ionized plasma would often construct an electric double layer around itself, as a way of protection from the surrounding environment so as to 'stay alive', because often the electrified plasma would stop electrical conduction for some reason, and fail, or die, and the electric double layer would very much help to keep it 'alive'. Langmuir and Tonks also discovered electron density waves in plasmas, which are now termed "Langmuir waves".
In 1917, he published a Paper on the chemistry of oil films that later became the basis for the award of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Langmuir theorized that oils consisting of an aliphatic chain with a hydrophilic end group were oriented as a film one molecule thick upon the surface of water, with the hydrophilic group down in the water and the hydrophobic chains clumped together on the surface. The thickness of the film could be easily determined from the known volume and area of the oil, which allowed investigation of the molecular configuration, before spectroscopic techniques were available.
Following World War I Langmuir contributed to atomic theory and the understanding of atomic structure by defining the modern concept of valence shells and isotopes.
His most famous publication is the 1919 article "The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules" in which, building on Gilbert N. Lewis's cubical atom theory and Walther Kossel's chemical bonding theory, he outlined his "concentric theory of atomic structure". While at General Electric Langmuir invented the hydrogen plasma welding technique.
Langmuir was President of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1923.
Langmuir introduced the concept of Electron Temperature, and in 1924 invented the diagnostic method for measuring both temperature and density with an electrostatic probe, now called a "Langmuir probe", and is commonly used in plasma physics today. The current of a biased probe tip is measured as a function of bias voltage to determine the local plasma temperature and density.
While at General Electric Langmuir also used atomic hydrogen, which he put to use by inventing the atomic hydrogen plasma welding process, which was the first plasma weld ever made. Plasma welding has since been developed further and into gas tungsten arc welding.
Based on his work at General Electric, John B. Taylor developed a detector, now called the Langmuir-Taylor detector, which is an ionization detector used in mass spectrometry. This detector consists of a heated thin filament or ribbon of a metal with a high work function, typically tungsten or rhenium. Neutral atoms or molecules that strike the filament can boil off as positive ions in a process known as surface ionization, and these may be measured either as a current, or detected individually, using an electron multiplier and particle counting electronics. This detector is mostly used with alkali atoms, having a low ionization potential, with applications in mass spectrometry and atomic clocks.
Taylor, John (1930). "The Reflection of Beams of the Alkali Metals from Crystals".
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1930PhRv...35..375T
https://doi.org/10.1103%2FPhysRev.35.375
Langmuir, Irving (1925). "Thermionic Effects Caused by Vapours of Alkali Metals". Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
https://doi.org/10.1098%2Frspa.1925.0005
In 1927, Langmuir was one of the participants in the Fifth Solvay Conference on Physics that took place at the International Solvay Institute for Physics in Belgium. This was 'the big one' in which Albert Einstein and Erwin Schroedinger, debated against Heisenberg and Pauli and Bohr, over the Classical view versus the Quantum view. Albert and Erwin 'won' with the Classical view, but later 'everyone' got on board with the Quantum view.
After observing windrows of drifting seaweed in the Sargasso Sea, Langmuir discovered a wind-driven surface circulation in the Sea. It is now called the "Langmuir circulation".
Honors
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1918
Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences 1918
Member of the American Philosophical Society 1922
Perkin Medal 1928
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1932
Franklin Medal 1934
Faraday Medal 1944
John J. Carty Award of the National Academy of Sciences 1950
The Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research near Socorro, New Mexico, was named in his honor, as was the American Chemical Society journal for surface science now called "Langmuir".
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The ElectroMagnetic Z-Pinch
The Bennett Pinch, also known as a Z-Pinch, is where a large electric current is induced to flow in a confined plasma, which then causes a magnetic field to suddenly manifest. The power of the magnetic field will influence the ionized plasma to 'contract together' unto itself very rapidly and tightly. Thus the Pinch term. The Bennett Pinch is named after him, but it was later re-termed the Z-Pinch to describe a more accurate physical description of the action involved. The Z-pinch is an application of the Lorentz force, in which a current-carrying conductor in a magnetic field experiences a force. One example of the Lorentz force is that, if two parallel wires are carrying current in the same direction, the wires will be pulled toward each other. In a Z-pinch machine the wires are replaced by a plasma, which can be thought of as many current-carrying wires. When a strong electric current is run through the plasma, the particles in the plasma are pulled together by the Lorentz force, thus the plasma contracts. As plasma is electrically conductive, a magnetic field nearby may induce a current in it. This provides a way to run a current into the plasma without physical contact, which is important as a plasma can rapidly erode mechanical electrodes.
Willard Harrison Bennett
Willard Harrison Bennett (June 13, 1903 – September 28, 1987) an American scientist and inventor was born in Findlay, Ohio. Bennett conducted research into plasma physics, astrophysics, geophysics, surface physics, and physical chemistry.
Bennett attended Carnegie Institute of Technology from 1920 to 1922, also Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin for a Sc.M. (Master's Degree in Science subjects) in physical chemistry in 1926, and the University of Michigan for a Ph.D. in Physics in1928. Bennett was elected to a National Research Fellowship in Physics and in 1928 and 1929 studied at the California Institute of Technology. In 1930 he joined the Physics faculty at Ohio State. During the World War II era, he served as an officer in the United States Army and developed aircraft equipment. Following military service, Bennett worked at the National Bureau of Standards, the University of Arkansas, and the United States Naval Research Laboratory. In 1961, he was appointed Burlington Professor of Physics at North Carolina State University (Emeritus in 1976). Bennett held 67 Patents.
Bennett made scientific history in the 1930's pioneering studies in plasma physics, the study of gases ionized by high-voltage electricity. Bennett invented the radio frequency mass spectrometry concept in 1955. Bennett's radio-frequency mass spectrometer measured the masses of atoms, and was the first such experiment done in Space.. He researched gases ionized by high-voltage electricity. This research was used in later thermonuclear fusion research.
These studies and later research have been used throughout the world in controlled thermonuclear fusion research. In the 1950's, Bennett's experimental tube called the Stormertron predicted and modeled the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding the Earth six years before they were discovered by satellite. It also reproduced intricate impact patterns found on the Earth's surface which explained many features of the polar aurora. Sputnik 3 carried the first radio frequency mass spectrometer into space to measure the masses of atoms.
In atomic fusion power theory research, the Z-pinch is a type of plasma confinement system that uses an electric current in the plasma to generate a magnetic field that compresses it. These systems were originally referred to simply as a pinch, or a Bennett Pinch, but the introduction of the θ-pinch (theta pinch) concept led to the need for clearer, more precise terminology.
The Z-Pinch name refers to the direction of the current in the device, the Z-Axis on a Cartesian three-dimensional graph, as Bennett initially had his glass confinement tube for the plasma mounted in a vertical position, the Z-Axis. Any machine that causes a pinch effect due to current running in a plasma since then, is termed a Z-pinch, and this encompasses a wide variety of devices used for an equally wide variety of purposes. Early uses focused on fusion research in donut-shaped tubes with the Z-axis running along the inside-center-line of the tube, while modern devices are generally cylindrical and used to generate high-intensity x-ray sources for the study of nuclear weapons and other roles, the term Z-Pinch is ubiquitous to them all. This is one of the first approaches to fusion power devices, along with the stellarator and magnetic mirror.
The Z-pinch is an application of the Lorentz force, in which a current-carrying conductor in a magnetic field experiences a force. One example of the Lorentz force is that, if two parallel wires are carrying current in the same direction, the wires will be pulled toward each other. In a Z-pinch machine the wires are replaced by a plasma, which can be thought of as many current-carrying wires. When a strong electric current is run through the plasma, the particles in the plasma are pulled together by the Lorentz force, thus the plasma contracts. The contraction is then counteracted by the increasing gas pressure of the plasma atoms itself, and so a limit to the contraction is maintained, based on the amount of the current flow supplied.
As plasma is electrically conductive, a magnetic field nearby may induce a current in it. This provides a way to run a current into the plasma without physical contact, which is important as a plasma can rapidly erode mechanical electrodes. In practical devices this was normally arranged by placing the plasma vessel inside the core of a transformer, arranged so the plasma itself would be the 'secondary'. When current was sent into the 'primary' side of the transformer, the magnetic field induced a current into the plasma. As induction requires a changing magnetic field, and the induced current is supposed to run in a single direction in most reactor designs, the current in the transformer has to be increased over time to produce the varying magnetic field. This places a limit on the product of confinement time and magnetic field, for any given source of power.
In Z-pinch machines the current is generally provided from a large bank of capacitors and triggered by a spark gap, known as a Marx Bank or Marx generator. As the conductivity of plasma is fairly good, about that of copper, the energy stored in the power source is quickly depleted by running through the plasma. Z-pinch devices therefore are inherently pulsed in nature due to the huge demand for current flow, and the capacitor bank's lack of practical capacity for any sustained supply, thus the pulsed nature of the experiment.
NIHF Inductee Willard Bennett and Radio Frequency Spectrometer. www.invent.org
Bennett, Willard H. "Magnetically Self-Focusing Streams". Physical Review. 45 (12)
Willard Harrison Bennett National Inventors Hall of Fame materials, 1990-1991 NC State University Libraries Collection Guides
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Wikipedia provided the bulk of the above 'biographies', but I did take many liberties in editing and rearranging their text. Also a couple of other sites provided contributions of reference data and other items.
Information provided herein by the Winnemucca Institute for Advanced Studies is for educational purposes. Our ‘Man on the Street Series’ of informative Science Papers is designed to provide a semi-technical answer to everyday experiences.
