Archive for January, 2008

Jan 05 2008

Electron g factor

Published by under Quantum Mechanics

The current electron spin g factor given by NIST is -2.002 319 304 3622 *.  Since the earth is in orbit around the sun, and receives its replacement gravitational energy from the sun, this may be why the g factor is greater than 2 in magnitude.  It makes me wonder if the g factor at Jupiter is closer to -2, and greater in magnitude than the Earth g factor at Venus because it is closer to the sun.
The magnetic moment of the electron is tied to this g factor:
μS = geμB(S/ћ),
where μS is the magnetic moment of the electron, with units of Amp–meter2, and μB represents the Bohr magneton.  The spin angular momentum of the electron, S, is ћ/2.
It may be that when l g l, for electrons in a macroscopic mass, drops below 2, atoms start to collapse.  If so, it is certainly possible that electrons near the center of our galaxy have l g l < 2, with atoms collapsing at a slow rate. * http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?gem|search_for=g+factor

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Jan 01 2008

Ulysses’ Measurement of the Solar Wind

Published by under Astrophysics

According to a Wikipedia article on Comet McNaught, NASA and ESA’s Ulysses spacecraft “made an unexpected pass through the tail of the comet”, where its Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer (SWICS) “measured the composition speed of the comet tail and solar wind”.
The article explains that sensor data showed that oxygen ions in the solar wind had picked up electrons to replace some of their missing electrons as the ions passed through the tail of the comet.  It goes on to say that “the tail had slowed the solar wind to half its normal speed.”
Space science professor Michael Combi is quoted as saying:  “This was very surprising to me. Way past the orbit of Mars, the solar wind felt the disturbance of this little comet. It will be a serious challenge for us theoreticians and computer modellers to figure out the physics,” *
Here we learn that as atomic ions traveling radially outward from the sun in the solar wind pick up electrons and incorporate them into atomic orbitals, the ions slow down.  For anyone willing to learn some physics, this is because after the ions pick up electrons, they collect more gravitions.  The ions will slow down due to increased gravitational acceleration back toward the sun.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_McNaught

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