The Electromagnetic Force

web.archive.org/web/20051003211220/http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/EM_forces.html

Gravitational Gravitational/ Electromagnetic

Electromagnetic

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The plasma physicist Hannes Alfvén drew an analogy between the human body and and
large bodies in space. Before the invention of the microscope1, it was absurd to think
that a strong, healthy man could be weakened by something millions of times smaller
than he 2,3. Surely, most ancient peoples thought, the warding off of large and powerful
spirits was necessary to prevent sickness and death.

So too, before the discovery of the pervasive plasma state in space by satellites,
planetary probes, radiotelescopes, and other instruments used to measure
electromagnetic radiation outside the visible, it seemed unthinkable that large bodies
such as stars and the nebulae (galaxies) could be interacting in any other way than
through gravitational forces. Indeed, the whole history of astronomy before the
radiotelescope was founded on the enormous success Johannes Kepler had in predicting
the motion of the planets through Newton's gravitation. This clock-like precision changed
with the discovery that space was filled with flickering sources producing intense
continuous, flickering and chaotic electromagnetic radiation [the pioneering papers on
radio astronomy were all published in electrical engineering journals; astronomers of the
era could see no rational reason why radiowaves might emanate from space nor that
they could be harbingers of current-conducting space plasma].

While there is no doubt that planetary systems interact gravitationally with their host
star, matter in the solid, liquid, and even non-ionized gaseous state is not known for
certain to exist anywhere other than in the crustal region of planets, meteorites, and
comets. For example, all space above the earth is plasma, and the core of the earth is
magnetohydrodynamic magma (magnetized plasma).But even the crustal regions
consist of the atoms of matter that are made up of the two longest-lived fundamental
particles, electrons and protons, that are the constituent members of plasma4.

Gravity can hold sway, for example in our planetary system, only when forces much
stronger than gravity are canceled out; electromagnetism, for instance, which is the
binding force for virtually all ordinary biological and chemical phenomena or Earth, is
intrinsically 10^39 times stronger than gravity. If the dominant form of matter were
subject to the electromagnetic force as well as to the force of gravity, gravity would be
swamped by the more compelling pulls and tugs of electromagnetism.

An indication of the dominance of the magnetic force is given by a ball bearing on a

table. All of the Earth's mountains, seas, core, sand, rivers, and lifeforms exert a
gravitational pull on the bearing preventing it from flying off into space. Yet the smallest
horseshoe magnet easily snatches it away.

But perhaps the most important characteristic of electromagnetism is that it obeys the
longest-range force law in the universe. When two or more non-plasma bodies interact
gravitationally, their force law varies inversely as the square of the distance between them;
1/4 the pull if they are 2 arbitrary measurement units apart, 1/9 the pull for a distance of
3 units apart, 1/16 the pull for 4 units apart, and so on. When plasmas, say streams of
charged particles, interact electromagnetically, their force law varies inversely as the
distance between them, 1/2 the pull if they are 2 arbitrary measurement units apart, 1/3
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the pull for a distance of 3 units apart, 1/4 the pull for 4 units apart, and so on. So at 4
arbitrary distance units apart, the electromagnetic force is 4 times greater than that of
gravitation, relatively speaking, and at 100 units, apart, the electromagnetic force is 100
times that of gravitation. Moreover, the electromagnetic force can be repulsive if the
streams in interaction are flowing in opposite directions. Thus immense plasma streams
measured in megaparsecs, carrying galaxies and stars, can appear to be falling towards
nothing when they are actually repelling.

The electromagnetic forces between two Birkeland currents, which are electric
currents aligned along magnetic-field lines. These currents have parallel
components that exert a long-range attractive force and circular components
that provide short-range repulsion.

Left: The geometry used in computer simulations. If the electrons are moving
near the speed of light they emit synchrotron radiation beamed along their
magnetic-field line, so the emission nearly mirrors the magnetic field pattern.

Right: How the forces due to the Birkeland current components vary with
separation, along with the behavior of the combined (net) force.

1. An electron microscope is able to view particles down to 0.2 nanometer (one

nanometer is a billionth of a meter) or less in size, or more than a thousand times
smaller than a microscope. With high-voltage electron microscopes, image resolution on
the atomic level can be reached.

2. Bacteria are measured in microns, or 0.00004 inches and viruses are about 3,000
angstroms in size, or 1/100,000 inch.
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3. The oldest sign of life is a fossilized bacterial cell discovered in a rock in Africa and
estimated at about 3.5 billion years old.

4. The proton may well have a lifetime longer than 10^18 billion years, a period perhaps
comparable with Joseph Bohm's age for the plasma era of an evolving universe.

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