Posted on 05/03/2003 12:33:42 AM PDT by Swordmaker
STARS ESCAPE FROM ASTRONOMICAL ZOO
Don Scott
The Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) site has run several discussions of the "variable star" V838 Monocerotis. Today they have another one.
Astronomy Picture of the Day - V838 Monocerotis
but also see
Astronomy Picture of the Day - V838 Light Echo: The Movie
They include comments like, "V838 Mon may be a totally new addition to the astronomical zoo."
I object to this "new" characterization. This zoo animal disproves standard fusion models. In fact this star (together with several others) simply demonstrates stellar evolution wholly NOT in keeping with thermonuclear stellar theory. To paraphrase my web page:
FG Sagittae breaks all the rules of accepted stellar evolution. FG Sagittae has changed from blue to yellow since 1955!
V605 Aquilae: Examination of old images and spectrograms reveal that V 605 Aquilae, studied by Knut Lundmark in the 1920's was a similar sort of beast,...
V4334 Sagittarii is better known as Sakurai's object, for its 1994 discoverer. It, too, changed both spectral type and surface composition very rapidly, and is now hydrogen-poor and carbon-rich, and well on its way to becoming the century's third new R CrB star.
So now there are at least four prime examples of stars that do not evolve according to the accepted thermonuclear model of how stars are powered. THESE CHANGES HAVE ALL BEEN OBSERVED DURING THE LAST FEW YEARS. These are stars that falsify the conventional understanding of stellar life cycles. All of them act in a manner predicted by the Electric Star hypothesis.
If we trust ancient observers of the sky (our group is based on doing exactly that, is it not?), then there are three additional stars that have changed ("evolved") during the last couple of millennia.
Sirius is a main sequence, brilliant white A-type star. The ancients (among them: Cicero, Horace, Ptolemy, and Seneca) called it red or "coppery" in color. Seneca, in the days of Nero, called it "redder than Mars", whereas he described Jupiter as "not at all red."
Castor is designated as the alpha star in the constellation of Gemini, but it is not as brilliant as the beta star, Pollux. Stars in constellations are always named alpha, beta, gamma, etc., in decreasing order of apparent brilliance. Castor is the 23rd brightest star in the sky while Pollux is the 17th brightest. It has been suggested therefore that since the time of the ancients, Castor has lost luminosity.
Capella was described as being a "red star" (we would call it M-type) by several ancient and medieval writers including Ptolemy and Riccioli. It has now been confirmed to be a binary - one G-type and one F-type. Not M-type.
In the Electric Star version of "stellar evolution" things can happen quickly. If the fusion model were correct, it would take hundreds of thousands of years for a star to change from one place in the HR diagram to another. It would not be observed within a "human lifetime", or have been observed over an astronomically relatively short period of a mere, say, 2000 years.
It didn't take FG Sagittae hundreds of thousands of years to "run down." The star V838 Monocerotis has moved half way across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram in a few months. Migrating across the HR diagram can happen very rapidly - and apparently does! How many such counter-examples does it take for astrophysicists to realize their stellar fusion theory has been falsified?
Don Scott
Some Points Rebutting Electric Stars
for rebuttal of Electic star wackiness.
He's probably in his "Control Room"..... perhaps dressed in leather.... whips and chains maybe?
That's nothing; "Medved" used to post stuff about how the Grand Canyon was the result of one of these cosmic lightning bolts..... so when we asked him "where are the fulgurites?" he'd reply by saying: "they were blasted out into space by the impact of the lightning bolt, you dolts!"
Crank science, on parade....
Re: variable stars, consider that the reported findings may simply be normal for certain types of variable stars as opposed to stellar evolution of normal (main sequence) stars:
"The fact that each type of variable is found in a rather compact region of the HR [Hertzsprung-Russell] diagram seems very significant. This suggests that light variation is not an accident that can happen to any star, but that a specific combination of physical conditions must be required to make a star vary."
- "The Stars: Their Evolution and Structure" - R.J. Tayler; Wykeham Publications (London) Ltd, 1974
IOW, we have a theoretical model for the evolution of most (non-variable) stars that seems to work extraordinarily well, while there are still some types of stars (certain types of variables) for which we may not have models that are fully mature.
The fact that we don't have fully mature models for every conveiveable star in the universe simply isn't sufficient grounds to toss out the science that says stars are fueled by fusion.
I don't recall the details, but rest assured it involved some major handwaving. Part of it comes from denying the Earth is geologically old, and then claiming there is insufficient time for erosion to have produced the Grand Canyon.......
... while claiming that Saturn used to "hover" over the North pole of Earth, "reducing the 'felt' effect of gravity," and that pets have psychic abilities.
He wasn't nick-named "The Clown Prince of Astrophysics" for nothing.....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.