On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Horace Heffner wrote: > I just got around to reading the experimental results at: > > http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/airexp.html > > I was surprised to see: "- I can't see any effects from a 3/4" > neodymium magnet. At 10nA, the magnetism around each thread must be > incredibly small." That's an indication the ratio of q/m is very > small. A very tiny current still makes for a large deflection if q/m > is large.
That's only for vacuum environment. If fluid mechanics plays a role in the forming of the narrow flow pattern, then perhaps the EM forces might be insignificant when compared to the fluid forces. If so, then a magnet might have no noticable effect on the charged stream in air, while it would have a huge effect if the same stream was flying through a vacuum. > Looks like you have a large molecular chain made of polar > molecules, maybe made of H20 or CO2 or both, with very high > resistance. Or it could just be a fairly slow flow of charged matter. Such a stream might have a narrow shape which is stable, just as narrow fluid laminar jets are a stable shape. I strongly suspect that these "filaments" are fluid jets which would normally become turbulent, but somehow the electrostatic forces are somehow suppressing any turbulence. Somehow the EM forces would make any kinks in the flow pattern become smaller, rather than growing as they usually would. If so, then the same electrostatic forces might suppress turbulence on aircraft surfaces if those aircraft could be coated with ions and subjected to a strong e-field. Others like JL Naudin think that the military uses this to suppress sonic booms. But what if it suppresses turbulence as well? On high-RE devices such as aircraft surfaces, most friction is due to turbulence and not do to viscous drag. If turbulence is gone, then fuel use is drastically lowered, and a long-distance bomber could be very small (not like a B-52.) One way to do such a thing would be to cover an aircraft with piezo ceramic tiles, drive the fuselage with high voltage AC to create a plasma layer in the air adjacent to the tiles, then charge the fuselage to one HV polarity to create the DC electrical forces. (And perhaps add a bit of carbon in the tile ceramic to allow some microamps of DC leakage.) I had the above idea in my head for years, and now recently someone has found pieces of "tile" pucks which look much like I imagine, and which also appear to have suffered a high voltage burn-through that could have been the reason the tiles fell from the sky: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Eyewitness2007 (((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) ))))))))))))))))))) William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 425-222-5066 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci