Timeline for What would happen to a planet that was electrically charged?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
26 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 5, 2018 at 15:55 | comment | added | Mołot | adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/… - On astronomical scale, "We can regard conductivity as infinite", part about stellar bodies being isolated is iffy, at best. | |
| Dec 5, 2018 at 15:45 | comment | added | bobtato | @IlmariKaronen yes, I think something like "plasma stream" would be closer to the mark. There is a lot of electrical interaction between Io and Jupiter, which manifests as aurorae, ion currents in space, ejections of salt particles and other weird things, but no lightning. | |
| Oct 21, 2014 at 13:59 | comment | added | JDługosz | Ok, so an experiment in empty space would show the static repulsion overwhelming the gravitational attraction between the combs. | |
| Oct 20, 2014 at 17:32 | comment | added | Richard Tingle | @jdlugosz Because it's still a relatively small charge vs the entire planet. If the entire planet is charged (to a lower density but still a huge total) it's a whole planet of gravity vs a whole planet of charge. The fact the comb reacts at all shows gravity is weak | |
| Oct 20, 2014 at 17:01 | comment | added | JDługosz | @richardtingle I don't follow. Why doesn't my comb fly away if it has orders of magnitude more change more? | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 22:56 | history | edited | mechalynx | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 92 characters in body
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| Oct 9, 2014 at 22:53 | comment | added | supercat | A possible idea for a point #6, if you think it sufficiently relevant. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 22:41 | comment | added | mechalynx | @IlmariKaronen I'm not imagining a zig-zag bolt, just a discharge whatever shape it should take in that case. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 22:39 | comment | added | Ilmari Karonen | I'll have to express some skepticism, at least as far as the "huge lightning bolts" are concerned, if only because you don't actually get lightning in vacuum. You can get vacuum arcing, but that's a rather different effect. Of course, I suppose a sufficiently intense vacuum arc might sort of look like lightning from a distance, insofar as there'd be an electric discharge and a flash of light, but if you're imagining a lightning bolt zig-zagging through space, that's not really plausible. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 22:39 | comment | added | mechalynx | Explain the downvote please. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 22:23 | comment | added | mechalynx | @supercat I think I agree, if I understand correctly, but is this just an addition? a correction? I don't understand if you were going somewhere with this. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 22:20 | comment | added | supercat | A lot of particles, some of which are charged, enter and leave the Earth continuously. If the Earth had a significant positive net charge, that would increase the rate at which negatively-charged particles are captured by the Earth's gravitational field, as well as the rate at which positively-charged ones leave. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 22:15 | vote | accept | Mike Nichols | ||
| Oct 9, 2014 at 20:35 | comment | added | Richard Tingle | Indeed, in fact the evaporating atmosphere would make it even harder to maintain the isolation (and the energy requirements to charge the planet would be hilarious). The maths works out that way because gravity is stageringly weak compared to other forces (the fact that a charged hair or small magnet can hold something up against a whole planet's gravity highlights this | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 20:20 | comment | added | mechalynx | @RichardTingle I can't and won't argue with that; +1 for doing the math - the question remains, why does the charge stay there when it's high enough to overcome the resistance of a near vacuum, which would be an easier path? When it comes to small charges, their potential isn't high enough to create connections and circuits across air, so they stay confined within that place and cause their effects - If you confined all that charge and prevented it from escaping then yes you might get the atmosphere to evaporate - the problem is, it's hard to confine it unless you have a disconnected system. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 20:05 | comment | added | Richard Tingle | I've got out newtons law and colombs law and calculated the charge it would take to overcome gravity and I've come up with a very suprising result. Every kg of matter would require only 0.09 nano colombs of charge per kg (9*10^-11 C/kg) to completely overcome gravity. Of course that wouldn't breakup the rocks etc but all air, water, soil and other loose material would be lost at that point. For context static charges by rubbing are generally in the micro colomb range | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 19:12 | comment | added | mechalynx | @RichardTingle There's also a limit to how much charge you can hold in the first place, we can't just extend the imbalance indefinitely. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 19:11 | comment | added | mechalynx | @RichardTingle I don't see this being more than a problem of perhaps a few earthquakes at most - my disagreement is simple: unless the planet exists entirely isolated from everything, there's going to be an easier path. Think of an example, like a wire - if it has a billion volts, does anything happen to it just because it's holding the charge? Not really - if it releases it, it could melt, explode due to heating or more likely release it as an arc, but just holding the charge, seems unlikely to result in repulsive forces that could result in a planet exploding, especially close to a star. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 19:03 | comment | added | Richard Tingle | I'm not sure what would cause lightening in this scenario (except when things entered the atmosphere of cause). Electrical effects are all about potential differences and I can't see any reason why the potential differences would be any different from the real earth. On the other hand repulsive effects are all about actual charge which would be huge | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 19:01 | comment | added | Richard Tingle | O yes the whole thing seems highly highly implausible (marginally less so if you charged the entire solar system but still it would still neutralise eventually), thats not really the point. Its point 2 where you say if it did happen "you wouldn't see much of a difference" that I'm debating | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 18:55 | comment | added | mechalynx | @RichardTingle You'd get lightning and lots of it, but it wouldn't "repel itself" into pieces. Once the charges start leaving Earth, you have a flow. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 18:54 | comment | added | mechalynx | To charge something, you have to work electrons into it or out of it. Electrons are also free to move around if there's a powerful enough potential. Even considering the very sparse interstellar medium, we're still talking about charges. Unless you completely disconnect the planet from everything (as in, make it a rogue planet), most of that charge will be released towards the sun, exchanged with protons. Just like if you push against a wall, you slide backwards, if you have too many electrons they'll flow along the easiest path (which is towards the Sun) rather than make matter explode. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 18:49 | comment | added | Richard Tingle | I'm not sure that changes the overall equation. Lets say the planet had a net charge of -1 trillion volts (lets not discuss how it got that way). Now some points are going to be a little more or a little less than that but the point remains: everything has far too many electrons and the electrons would really rather not be near each other. So in other words if you (again somehow) made the net potential of a planet increasingly negative things would be increasingly repulsed from each other and eventually (at a huge potential) the planet would be no more | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 18:43 | comment | added | mechalynx | @RichardTingle The question is about a net charge, not the exact same potential and polarity at all points. | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 18:40 | comment | added | Richard Tingle | Re not seeing any difference because everything has the same charge: in the van de graph hair sticking up experiment all your hairs have the same charge and as a result repel each other. In a ridiculously highly charged situation (and I mean ridiculously) you would expect to see some effects (up to and including a breakup of the planet) | |
| Oct 9, 2014 at 18:14 | history | answered | mechalynx | CC BY-SA 3.0 |