Is there a limit to voltage or electric field strength?

[Mark R]

As title really.

Is there any limit to how high a voltage could be, not necessarily on earth, but in space?

What about electric field strength? Could, for example, you have some quasar like object consisting solely of protons, with a high electric charge, and subsequent very high surface electric field strength?

Has such an object been discovered?

 

[C1]

How much electricity is required to run the LHC? When it’s running at full power, the LHC will consume $100,000 worth of electricity each day.

What is the total energy of the beams? Because there are so many protons in the beams, the combined energy equals that of a 200 tonne train running at 200 kph.

How is the power of a particle collider measured? The power of a collider is expressed in terms of the energy of each particle, measured in electronvolts. At maximum power, the protons in the LHC will attain 7 tera-electronvolts, abbreviated to 7 TeV. (“tera” means “million-million&#8221


PS: It's not quite the question you are asking, but I thought since LHC power is measured in eV, the number is interesting as the intent is to eventually reach creation event levels of energy interms of eV.

I think that also a celestial object consisting of all like particles that have a charge (eg, like protons) might be problematic as the particles would repel each other.

 

[Gibsons]

How about a magnetar? They generate crazy strong magnetic fields... doesn't that imply some kind of electric field?

from wiki
The strong fields of magnetars are understood as resulting from a magnetohydrodynamic dynamo process in the turbulent, extremely dense conducting fluid that exists before the neutron star settles into its equilibrium configuration. These fields then persist due to persistent currents in a proton-superconductor phase of matter that exists at an intermediate depth within the neutron star (where neutrons predominate by mass). A similar magnetohydrodynamic dynamo process produces even more intense transient fields during coalescence of pairs of neutron stars.[11]

 

[Biftheunderstudy]

How about a magnetar? They generate crazy strong magnetic fields... doesn't that imply some kind of electric field?

from wiki
The strong fields of magnetars are understood as resulting from a magnetohydrodynamic dynamo process in the turbulent, extremely dense conducting fluid that exists before the neutron star settles into its equilibrium configuration. These fields then persist due to persistent currents in a proton-superconductor phase of matter that exists at an intermediate depth within the neutron star (where neutrons predominate by mass). A similar magnetohydrodynamic dynamo process produces even more intense transient fields during coalescence of pairs of neutron stars.[11]

The thing with most dynamo processes is that it is still a neutral plasma, the temperatures and energy are simply high enough that the charged particles can't recombine to form a neutral particle.

As for the OP's question, the vast majority of the universe appears to be neutral. The electric force is many orders of magnitude stronger than gravity, so it is very hard to accumulate any sort of meaningful charge separation from astrophysical processes. That said, the theory for how it would work if there were charge has been well thought out. For a black hole with charge, we have a name for that: Reissner-Nordström black hole.

So, to reiterate: If there were a charge separation that existed in the universe, because gravity is so much weaker, the electric force would quickly overcome gravity and force the charges back together.

 

[SecurityTheatre]

How about a magnetar? They generate crazy strong magnetic fields... doesn't that imply some kind of electric field?

Well, magnetic fields can exist without electric fields. It is the change or motion in a magnetic field that implies electric fields.

I suspect your limit to the voltage or field strength has to do with the possible density of matter (perhaps before it collapses into a black hole). Perhaps a large magnetar is approaching that point.

Not going to speculate further, I'm not a theoretical astrophysicist.

 

[DrPizza]

Ahhh! I hurt my head thinking about it from a unit analysis point of view. But, things I put together - started thinking about the same concept, but with respect to gravitational fields rather than electric fields - started with considering escape velocity - then kinetic energy per unit of mass of escape velocity (energy per unit of mass - joules per kilogram) - so, 1/2 mv² per unit of mass; and suddenly it's simply 1/2 v². Since we have a speed limit on v, then yes, it seems that there is a maximum gravitational potential energy per unit of mass near black holes. But, as you approach this, I'm sure Newtonian physics falls apart & you need relativity, and I want to go plant strawberries.

So, is there a maximum "electrical potential energy" per unit of charge near massively charged objects? I'm guessing yes.

 

[Paul98]

How much electricity is required to run the LHC? When it’s running at full power, the LHC will consume $100,000 worth of electricity each day.

What is the total energy of the beams? Because there are so many protons in the beams, the combined energy equals that of a 200 tonne train running at 200 kph.

How is the power of a particle collider measured? The power of a collider is expressed in terms of the energy of each particle, measured in electronvolts. At maximum power, the protons in the LHC will attain 7 tera-electronvolts, abbreviated to 7 TeV. (“tera” means “million-million”)


PS: It's not quite the question you are asking, but I thought since LHC power is measured in eV, the number is interesting as the intent is to eventually reach creation event levels of energy interms of eV.

I think that also a celestial object consisting of all like particles that have a charge (eg, like protons) might be problematic as the particles would repel each other.

But don't be fooled by the large number, 7 TeV( 7x10^12 eV) isn't much energy. it takes 6.24 x 10^20 eV to power a 100 watt bulb for 1 second.

 

[Jeff7]

What's the Schwarzschild radius for a cluster of densely-packed electrons?


Get close to that, and I bet you'd have some pretty substantial voltage...though I don't know what kind of effect a strong gravitational field would have on an electric field.

 

[C1]

But don't be fooled by the large number, 7 TeV( 7x10^12 eV) isn't much energy. it takes 6.24 x 10^20 eV to power a 100 watt bulb for 1 second.

LOL

Seems then like a god awful electric bill for what LHC is producing out of the input !

 

[Denbo1991]

I dont see any reason why, if you could isolate positive charges, that you couldnt have an arbitrarily high electric field strength. In the real world though, there is no perfect vacuum. An electric field of high enough intensity will start to cause nearby particles to ionize and create potential paths for conduction, thus neutralizing the charges.

 

[silverpig]

I believe the answer is yes. Once you put enough energy density into the electric field, you'll be able to produce particle pairs. I think they have seen this issue with ultra-intense lasers in vacuum.

It's sort of like the asymptotic freedom in strong interactions. You can pull the quarks farther and farther apart, but you are just putting more energy into the gluon field. At some point, the gluon field has enough energy to pair produce a couple new quarks, and you end up with 4 quarks instead of 2.

If you squish two electrons together, you'll push a ton of energy into a small space, and this will produce new particles. This is the basis behind particle accelerators. LHC does this but with protons and anti protons. The old version of LHC was called LEP and they did this with electrons and positrons.

If I was to ballpark the answer, I'd say something like:

mass of an electron = 0.5 MeV
mass of electron + positron = 1 MeV

If we give them each a bit of energy, say 1kV, the deBroglie wavelength of each is about 1 nm.

The electrostatic energy in an E field per unit volume is given by:

u = 1/2 (epsilon) |E|^2

So if you set u = 1 MeV in a spherical volume of 1 nm radius, you can look up epsilon and compare that to the E field produced by two electrons 1 nm apart. Keep moving the electrons closer and closer until the E field energy density is greater than 1 MeV per nm^3 or so.


I don't know if this is exactly right, but it'd probably get you in the ballpark.

 

[Z15CAM]

Higg's Boson Field