> What about the radio signals coming from Jupiter's magnetosphere?
> That has been measured. In fact, the signals are so strong that they
> are often picked up by car radio in certain bands. The radio
> telescopes tell us where the signals are coming from, and the car
> radio can't. But the signals from the Jupiter magnetosphere are
> STRONG.
Thanks much for that information, and looked up Jupiter.
Found this website explaining it:
--- quoting ---
http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Jupiter/JupiterRadio.html
Two trillion watts. As Io's orbital motion carries it through this
magnetized ring of ionized gas, a huge electrical current flows
between Io and Jupiter. Carrying about two trillion watts of power,
it's the biggest DC electrical circuit in the Solar System.
Unlike the ordinary kind of DC circuit we know using batteries and
wires, plasma physicists believe that current in the Io-Jupiter system
is carried by a type of magnetic plasma wave called Alfven waves.
However it works, this awesome current is the power source for plasma
waves that give rise to the laser radio signals that travel away from
Jupiter's magnetic poles in cone-shaped beams.
The beams rotate with the giant planet every 9 hours and 55 minutes
making Jupiter something like a slow-turning pulsar. When the beams
sweep past our planet Earth, listeners here can pick up the Jovian
radio bursts in the shortwave bands between 15 and 40 MHz.
--- end quoting ---
That is good news to me, but also, I must admit that I am a bit
downcast over this news
because I have been building the case that pulsars are advanced alien
life on planets with
magnetospheres, and here I am faced with a possibility that lifeless
planets out-compete
life-ridden planets as the better pulsar.
Sometimes good news is too good.
I did not see in that website where Jupiter's magnetosphere played any
role, and I read
those things too fast, but then I am
not sure that Jupiter has much of a magnetosphere. Apparently the
gravitional dragging of matter
from a satellite Io plays a role. And I hate to have to see that my
thesis of life causing pulsars
return to stars with gravitational dragging of something be the cause
of pulsars.
Anyway, this news of Jupiter makes things awfully more complicated and
complex.
Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
plutonium.archimedes@gmail.com - 26 Apr 2008 06:44 GMT
plutonium.archime...@gmail.com wrote:
(snip)
> I did not see in that website where Jupiter's magnetosphere played any
> role, and I read
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> return to stars with gravitational dragging of something be the cause
> of pulsars.
I had a look at Wikipedia's entry of Jupiter's Magnetosphere:
--- quoting Wikipedia ---
Jupiter has a very large and powerful magnetosphere. In fact, if one
could see Jupiter's magnetic field from Earth, it would appear five
times as large as the full moon in the sky despite being so much
farther away. The magnetic field is generated by eddy currents in
Jupiter's metallic hydrogen core. This magnetic field collects a large
flux of particle radiation in Jupiter's radiation belts, as well as
producing a dramatic gas torus and flux tube associated with Io (one
of Jupiter's moons). Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest planetary
structure in the solar system.
--- end quoting ---
I think I am going to have to revise this whole study on pulsars. And
instead of our galaxy containing
a mere 10^5 pulsars, our galaxy probably contains roughly as many
pulsars as it contains
stars, since every star system has at least one Jupiter sized planet
with a magnetosphere.
Since galaxies have about 10^11 stars, then there are probably about
10^10 pulsars in our
galaxy.
So I think I have to chuck this argument that alien civilizations in
tandem with
their magnetosphere are the cause of pulsars. At least the strongest
pulsars are probably
simply Jupiter sized planets without life. And the weak pulsars we
observe could be
life-filled planets like Earth.
Now as to whether stars can be pulsars, perhaps that is impossible
since there are no
neutron stars and there are no stars that have magnetospheres as far
as I know.
So I may end up with this pulsar discussion that they are
predominantly Jupiter sized
planets and some are alien civilizations creating a weak pulsar.
Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies