1. IONS PUSHED TO ONE SIDE OF THE STALK
3. BOL'S IN VERTICAL MOTION - THE LORENTZ FORCE
4. BOL'S IN VERTICAL MOTION - PART 2
5. THE SUPERBOL AND ALTERNATING CURRENTS
10. MAGNETIC DUST
13. MAGNETIC DUST SUCKED IN AND SPRAYED OUT
In her book Cropcircles
Janet Ossebaard wrotes In cropcircles is found up to 700 times more magnetite as normal
. Magnetite here are small spheres of magnetic iron, very well visible under a microscope, whirling down every day as meteoric dust.
Every magnet consists of one North pole and one South pole. The two magnetic poles of one single magnetic dust particle attract each other, thus contributing a little to its coherence. Here we treat magnetic dust particles as small spheres.
Fig. 10.1
The magnetic north pole of a dust particle is attracted by the magnetic south pole of the earth, which actual is (nearly) at the geographic North Pole by common agreement. So in fact the north pole of the particle wants to go north. On the other hand due to the earth magnetic field the south pole of the particle wants to go south. In fact the earth magnetic field tries to tear the particle apart. (This doesn't succeed - the magnetic field of the earth is too weak. Besides, when on breaks a magnet into two halves one obtains two new magnets, not two separated poles.) The earth magnetic field is that big that it can be assumed of equal strength and direction all over the dust particle. So the force that urges the magnetic north pole of the particle to go north equals the force urging the magnetic south pole of it to go south. Thus the particle will not be set in motion due to the earth magnetic field.
Fig. 10.2
As one can see, the force working on magnetic particles - magnets - lies along a magnetic field line. The force working on magnetic particles is in the same direction as the magnetic field at that place. The motion of magnets in a magnetic field resembles that of electric charges in an electric field and is not guided by something complicated as the Lorentz force. Force lines and magnetic field lines are the same now.
Fig. 10.3
Fig. 10.3: several aligned dust particles, if near enough to each other, should form strings.
Fig. 10.4
If a second string happened to lay aside, the strings should stick together. In this case the geometric preference of sticking (bumps of one string fits into holes of the other) coincides with the magnetic preference of lay (N and S poles nearest to each other), providing the dust particles to remain their alignment along the magnetic field line. If the particles are going to twist a little the outcome may be different, by example the magnetic alignment direction of the particles might point outside the flat plane shown here.
Fig. 10.5
The attraction between the neighboring dust particles in one single string is stronger than the attraction of neighboring particles of neighboring strings, if such a configuration would keep its shape. That is because the latter have a little larger distance relative to each other than the first. The force between magnets drops as the square of their mutual distance. But as far as I can see a coherent plane of equal directed magnetic dust particles should be possible. If you put a second plane like that just above the first then the neighboring particles of the two planes would repel each other. But when you move one plane along the other over one red arrow distance while keeping the planes parallel, then mutual attracting magnetic poles are above each other everywhere. So I expect touching planes trying to take that position. A coherent filled-in space of aligned magnets should be possible.
But the planes are made of spheres. The geometrical bumps of one plane then do not fit the best into the holes of the other plane. For that a displacement over the green arrow would be the best. So in practice one would expect parts of such a structure being laid according to the red arrow displacement while other parts are laid according the green arrow displacement. Probably parts will be allowed to shift easily between the two states, giving the resulting structure some unexpected flexibility.
These structures are not observed normally, I suppose because the magnetic field of the dust particles and the earth magnetic field is too weak and the density of dust is to low. But when the density is increased hundreds of times and the dust is guided by a stronger magnetic field things may be different.