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Chandra and Spitzer composite X-ray/infrared
image of the Cepheus B nebula.
Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/PSU/K. Getman et al.);
IR (NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA/J. Wang et al.)
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How Are Stars Born?
Jun 01, 2010
It is commonly assumed that stars
are gravitationally compressed hot
gas.�
�Is it a fact�or have I dreamt
it�that, by means of electricity,
the world of matter has become a
great nerve, vibrating thousands of
miles in a breathless point of
time?�
--- Nathaniel Hawthorne
What are the stars? The question
might seem self-evident, since we
are taught from an early age that
they are intensely bright, burning
balls of hydrogen gas. A star's
great size, therefore its great
gravitational attraction, is what
holds the planets in their orbits.
Its core of fusion fire sends energy
on a million-year journey before the
radiation is emitted from its
surface, so dense is its interior.
How are stars formed and by what
agency are they ignited? The answer,
according to accepted astrophysical
theories, is gravity. At some time,
billions of years before any
particular shining star was born, it
started out as a wispy cloud a
thousand times less dense than the
most rarified mist. One of the
questions that astronomers have been
asking for many years about the
process is what caused such
insubstantial clouds to condense?
Star formation is initiated
according to two main theories.
First, the gaseous cloud might cool
down from whatever high temperature
it once possessed (although what
event heated the cloud is not
elucidated), thermal energy falls
off, allowing gravity to assert
itself on the individual particles
and the cloud falls in on itself.
Second, the explosion of a supernova
(or intense bursts of radiation from
a nearby star) might generate shock
waves that pass through the
proto-stellar cloud, forcing the
particles to collide and clump
together. Gravity then takes up its
familiar position, eventually
pulling the cloud into a structure
dense enough for fusion to take
place.
According to a recent
press release from the Marshall
Space Flight Center and the Chandra
X-ray Observatory, there is reason
to believe that radiation from
neighboring massive stars could be
the most common method for pushing
the nebular clouds into collapse.
The Cepheus B nebula is
approximately 2400 light-years from
Earth, and is composed primarily of
hydrogen gas. As astronomers reckon
age, there is supposed to be a large
population of young stars bordering
a region where a massive star's
radiation impinges on the cloud.
Infrared data from the Spitzer Space
Telescope appears to show "protoplanetary
disks" around many of the stars,
indicating (according to theory)
that they are young, since older
stars would have already absorbed
the dust and gas. Older stars would
not exhibit the specific infrared
frequencies that are supposed to
indicate disks.
In this paper we will not take up
stellar ages and the conventional
viewpoints that determine them.
Suffice to say here is that stellar
diagrams that attempt to establish
age according to color and
temperature are missing important
points. If other electrical factors
are added, temperature and
brightness become a matter of
externally applied electric currents
and not internally generated fusion
energy. The differences in the two
concepts are not trivial, especially
when they are used to explain other
observations. It is an entirely new
paradigm.
Regardless of whether it is shock
waves or "radiation pressure," the
energy that drives the effects in
conventional theories is kinetic and
mechanically induced. In fact,
lowering the thermal activity is how
the first theory suggests stellar
formation begins. The second theory
requires a star 20 times more
massive than the Sun to irradiate
the cloud from close up for millions
of years.
In the Electric Universe, gravity,
density, compression, and mechanical
phenomena give way to the effects of
plasma. The stars are not hot, dense
balls of hydrogen being crushed into
helium and electromagnetic radiation
by gravitational pressure. Rather,
they are isodense balls of plasma�a
form of slow-motion lightning�with
all the fusion taking place on the
surface. Since they are the same
density throughout, with no
superdense fusion cores, their mass
estimates are most likely being
seriously overstated by papers
written from the consensus.
The Electric Universe definition of
"plasma" is not the conventional one
of "ionized gas." It is that
confused apprehension of plasma that
falls back on ideas about gas
behavior and thermal ionization.
"Plasma," as theorist Mel Acheson
wrote, "is an emergent (i.e.,
higher-level or statistical-level)
orderliness of complex electrical
forces: such properties as
filamentation, long-range attraction
and short-range repulsion, braiding,
characteristic velocities, formation
and decay of plasmoids, and identity
of properties at different scales."
Electric stars aren't begotten in
nebular clouds, their progenitor is
charge separation. Everything we see
in the Universe�99.99% to be more
precise�is ionized to some degree,
therefore it is plasma. Positive
ions and negative electrons move
within plasma in ways not governed
by gravity, although gravity might
cause some heavy positive ions to
create a charge surplus in one
volume of space over another. When
that happens, a weak electric field
develops.
An electric field, no matter how
weak, will initiate an electric
current that generates a magnetic
field. Those fields interact with
the magnetic fields generated by
other currents. In images from
space, as well as in high-speed
photographs of plasma activity in
the laboratory, those currents are
seen to form twisted pairs of
filaments, called Birkeland
currents. Birkeland currents follow
magnetic field lines and draw
charged material from their
surroundings with a force 39 orders
of magnitude greater than gravity.
Magnetic fields pinch the ultra-fine
dust and plasma into heated blobs of
matter called plasmoids.
As the effect, called a "z-pinch,"
increases, the electric field
intensifies, further increasing the
z-pinch. The compressed blobs form
spinning electrical discharges. At
first they glow as dim red dwarfs,
then blazing yellow stars, and
finally they might become brilliant
ultraviolet arcs, driven by the
electric currents that generated
them.
Stephen Smith
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