Call for Criticisms on New Solar Model

[Lloyd]

Evidence for Compressive Ionization?
Charles, when you started discussing your C.I. Electric Sun model, I remember you saying at that time that you got your idea for CI from some scientist, whose name I forget (something like Robitaile?). But Thornhill had discussed the same idea on his site, though I don't think he mentioned the term C.I. He had said that atoms in the core of a large body should gravitationally form dipoles, so that the negative sides face outward and the positive face inward. I think he "waved his hands" and the negative electron sides of the atoms formed electric currents toward the surface, leaving behind the positive nuclei. He then suggested that the nuclei would repel each other and result in equal pressure throughout the core. He said helioseismology showed that the Sun is indeed like that inside. Does that seem reasonable?

What would prevent electrons from being drawn back in between the positive nuclei? Did the scientist say how far apart the adjacent nuclei would be at CI pressures? The electrons should be strongly "drawn" toward the nuclei. Kanarev in Russia seems to have done many experiments and determined the size and the toroidal shape of electrons (and protons). He found the electrons to be something like 2 or 3 orders of magnitude larger than protons. In that case it seems reasonable to me that the interatomic space might be too small for them.

Do you know if there's been any kind of observations of CI material? And what about supercritical fluids? I guess the latter aren't necessarily involved in Earth phenomena. Artificial diamonds are produced by subjecting carbon to extreme pressure. Do you know what pressure would be needed for CI? Could diamonds be temporarily CI material when first formed?

This site, http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-To-T ... 8748.shtml, says:

The formation of a natural diamond requires very specific conditions, like exposure of carbon-bearing materials to high pressure, ranging approximately between 45 and 60 kilobars [= 4.5 to 6 GPa], but a comparatively low temperature range between approximately 1600-2370F (900-1300C). These conditions are known to be met in two places on Earth: the litospheric mantle below relatively stable continental plates, and at the site of a meteorite impact.

This site, http://humantouchofchemistry.com/artifi ... amonds.htm, says:

General Electric (GE), a major American company, tried to make diamonds in the 1950s. On December 16th, 1954 the first 'real' artificial diamond was made. GE scientist Tracy Hall had created a machine that could apply up to 18 gigapascals [18 GPa = 180 KBars] of pressure, and be heated up to 2000oC. Diamonds made this way are called HPHT diamonds.
- Hall's method involves dissolving graphite in molten iron in a compression chamber. The chamber is then pressed between two (or four) enormous anvils, and heated till diamonds start to form. Diamonds made this way are very tiny (no more than 0.15 mm across).

Quasars

You said: OK... and I'm saying that the AGN is a tokamak, which explains how it can emit polar jets. So I think that we start out agreeing, if Wal's relativistic protons and my relativistic fusion by-products are actually the same thing. But how do the particles gradually gain mass? And is there any observed correlation between the location of quasars and the polar jets? I thought that quasars are just randomly scattered in the vicinity of the AGN.

No, they're not random. Thornhill and at least several TPODs say that quasars are seen to be on or very near the minor axes of nearby galaxies, the minor axis being the polar direction. And I think I now remember that Arp said that first. Thornhill said quasars sometimes shoot out of galaxies equatorially, which explains the Dogleg galaxy, which has a spiral arm severed. TPODs say that the local groups of galaxies and quasars are about all axially aligned, so that, if galaxies do birth other galaxies, it can be determined which galaxies birthed which others. The Andromeda galaxy is said to be the mother of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is the mother of the Magellanic Clouds, if I recall correctly.

Tokamak
Well, I think I'm pretty satisfied that your nat-tokamak model may be able to explain quasars, as well as stars. I had previously thought that stars and galaxies are formed as tornadoes within tornadoes, but now it seems more likely that they may be nebular tokamaks within larger nebular tokamaks. Do you say that tokamaks transform into CI material? Or do tokamaks remain within CI material? It's hard to get all these details straight.

[CharlesChandler]

Don't blame me for yet another lengthy post -- you're the one who keeps asking tough questions!

When you started discussing your C.I. Electric Sun model, I remember you saying at that time that you got your idea for CI from some scientist, whose name I forget (something like Robitaille?).

Robitaille is worth studying in detail, as is Aspden, for the valuable work that they have done on a variety of related topics. But as concerns just the issue of compressive ionization, here is a good example, with the full abstract (since it's so central to the topics at hand).

In an earlier paper [Phys. Rev. A 44, 5122 (1991)], we presented a Helmholtz-free-energy model for nonideal mixtures of hydrogen atoms and molecules. In the present paper, we extend this model to describe an interacting mixture of H2, H, H+, and e- in chemical equilibrium. This general model describes the phenomena of dissociation and ionization caused by pressure and temperature effects, as encountered in astrophysical situations and high-pressure experiments. The present model is thermodynamically unstable in the pressure-ionization regime and predicts the existence of a plasma phase transition with a critical point at Tc=15 300 K, Pc=0.614 Mbar, and ρc=0.35 g/cm3. The transition occurs between a weakly ionized phase and a partially (≊50%) ionized phase. Molecular dissociation and pressure ionization occur in the same narrow density range; atoms play a minor role in pressure ionization. In the high-density phase, complete pressure ionization is reached gradually. The sensitivity of the coexistence curve and of the critical point to model parameters and assumptions is discussed in detail.

I then apply these principles to all elements, where the heavier elements will be more easily ionized, as their outer electrons are not so tightly bound.

Thornhill had discussed the same idea on his site, though I don't think he mentioned the term C.I. He had said that atoms in the core of a large body should gravitationally form dipoles, so that the negative sides face outward and the positive face inward. I think he "waved his hands" and the negative electron sides of the atoms formed electric currents toward the surface, leaving behind the positive nuclei. He then suggested that the nuclei would repel each other and result in equal pressure throughout the core. He said helioseismology showed that the Sun is indeed like that inside. Does that seem reasonable?

Helioseismology actually doesn't tell us much about the core, except that it is definitely there, and it definitely has a different density, because it produces a distinct shadow on the opposite side of the Sun. But p-waves don't pass through the core, so we don't know anything about the density gradient (if any). This, in fact, is what leaves the topic open to the speculation that it's hollow, while my take is that it's frozen rock solid, and p-waves bounce off of its rigidity. I agree that the density is probably quite consistent, and I agree that the reason would be electrostatic repulsion between ions. But we can't say that the seismic data support these assertions.

Regardless, the basic idea that gravity creates ionization is very reasonable. (See page 114 of Aspden, H., 2003: The Physics of Creation. Southampton, England: Sabberton Publications.) Protons are 1836 times heavier than electrons, and so will be more affected by gravity. A helium nucleus is 1836 x 4 times heavier, so the effect is even stronger. Hence positive ions will be pulled toward the core, and electrons will bubble up to the top, within the limits of the Coulomb forces at play (repulsion of like charges and attraction of opposite charges). Since the electric force is so much more powerful than gravity, it wouldn't seem that there would be much of a charge separation. But it's all relative. The Sun is 333,000 times more massive than the Earth, so there is 333,000 times more gravity, and 333,000 times more of a "fair weather field" than we have on Earth. Is an electric field like that going to start to display some distinctive properties? I think so.

But I really think that there is a lot more to it than just gravitational separation. The actual amount of gravitational force acting on any given particle is extremely small. But the weight of all of the particles above it adds up to a respectable force, once you get a couple hundred thousand kilometers inside the Sun. The pressure is, of course, an effect of gravity, but you wouldn't call it gravitational separation, but rather, compressive ionization.

Did the scientist say how far apart the adjacent nuclei would be at CI pressures?

Different scientists say different things. The absolute limit for hydrogen "seems" to be 106 pm between nuclei, because 53 pm is the radius of the k-shell, which is the lowest electron level for hydrogen. At that distance, the density is 1.41 g/cm3. Robitaille refers to the threshold of liquid metallic hydrogen, which is 0.6 g/cm3, roughly 1/2 the absolute limit. The paper cited above found a threshold at 0.35 g/cm3, which is 1/4 the absolute limit. At room temperature, hydrogen compressed to 0.07 g/cm3 becomes an incompressible liquid, and this is at 1/20 of the absolute limit. Why so many different numbers? Great question!

Kanarev in Russia seems to have done many experiments and determined the size and the toroidal shape of electrons (and protons). He found the electrons to be something like 2 or 3 orders of magnitude larger than protons. In that case it seems reasonable to me that the interatomic space might be too small for them.

This gets into a whole different brand of theory, about which I know extremely little. It's all interrelated, so how can you answer one question without answering all questions? For now, I'm leaving the sub-atomic physics up to other theorists, and I'm using compressive ionization as a working hypothesis. There is support for it, though not everybody agrees. Unfortunately, it's a tough thing to test, and there are few practical applications, so the lab results are sparse, and the theories are unconstrained. But it certainly seems to explain a lot of stuff.

What would prevent electrons from being drawn back in between the positive nuclei? The electrons should be strongly "drawn" toward the nuclei.

This can only be because the nuclei are too close together, and there isn't the room for electrons. Maybe it's that the shells got broken, or, as Kanarev says, the electrons are too big. But if something like this were not the case, matter would be easily compressible down to the density of a neutron star, because the "degenerate matter" would have atomic nuclei and free electrons (and no electron shells) with no net electrostatic repulsion, and hence nothing to prevent the gravitational collapse. Yet this certainly isn't the rule, and might actually never happen (i.e., neutron stars might be impossible). And if it was possible, what would prevent it in the core pressure (i.e., 1017 N/m2) inside the Sun? So there has to be something preventing it. That's the "something" that is the foundation of the compressive ionization model.

Artificial diamonds are produced by subjecting carbon to extreme pressure. [...] Could diamonds be temporarily CI material when first formed?

I "think" that the graphite~diamond transition occurs before any sort of ionization kicks in. Graphite has a highly regular crystal lattice, and so do diamonds. But they're different. To go from the one to the other, you have to supply enough force to overcome the covalent bonds in the graphite, sending the electrons into higher energy states, to push the atoms closer. In the diamond arrangement, there are a new set of covalent bonds that can form, so the electrons settle back into lower states, and the new crystal lattice is stable in the new configuration. But I "think" that the electrons are never actually expelled, and thus it isn't ionization.

The formation of a natural diamond requires very specific conditions [...] met in two places on Earth: the lithospheric mantle below relatively stable continental plates, and at the site of a meteorite impact.

This is why I track meteors -- if one of them ever impacts the Earth and I'm the first one there, I'll be rich! And if I don't find any diamonds, I can still make beaucoup bucks doing an appearance on the "World's Most Dangerous Jobs" TV series.

I thought that quasars are just randomly scattered in the vicinity of the AGN.

No, they're not random. Thornhill and at least several TPODs say that quasars are seen to be on or very near the minor axes of nearby galaxies, the minor axis being the polar direction. And I think I now remember that Arp said that first.

Then I'd say that tokamak exhaust supplied the matter, especially if it was sputtering.

Thornhill said quasars sometimes shoot out of galaxies equatorially, which explains the Dogleg galaxy, which has a spiral arm severed.

I'd call this a hurricane that spawned a tornado.

Do you say that tokamaks transform into CI material? Or do tokamaks remain within CI material?

No -- I think that there are two types of stars: 1) slowly spinning stars (like our Sun) that are held together by CI, and 2) fast spinning stars that are held together by magnetic confinement (i.e., nat-tokamaks, including black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, magnetars, quasars, and white dwarfs). I think that when CI stars lose enough mass to drop below the threshold for CI, they bloat out into red giants, while nat-tokamaks whittle down to white dwarfs, still spinning really fast, and with powerful magnetic fields, and still generating the gamma rays indicative of nuclear fusion, but on a much smaller scale.

[tayga]

Helioseismology actually doesn't tell us much about the core, except that it is definitely there, and it definitely has a different density, because it produces a distinct shadow on the opposite side of the Sun. But p-waves don't pass through the core, so we don't know anything about the density gradient (if any). This, in fact, is what leaves the topic open to the speculation that it's hollow, while my take is that it's frozen rock solid, and p-waves bounce off of its rigidity. I agree that the density is probably quite consistent, and I agree that the reason would be electrostatic repulsion between ions. But we can't say that the seismic data support these assertions.

Not that it affects your argument, very rigid materials have a very high modulus of incompressibility which in turn leads to a very high velocity of p-wave propagation. The shadow is not due to p-waves 'bouncing off' the dense material but to the refraction they experience as they pass from a less dense material to a denser one or vice versa. The shadow is explained pretty well by the following diagram:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earth ... w_zone.svg

[ElecGeekMom]

Forgive the interruption, but is seawater denser than land (e.g., the North American continent), or is land denser than seawater?

[Lloyd]

What's denser: land or seawater?

Whichever floats is less dense. Whatever sinks is more dense (if it's not setting on something much less dense). Land consists of materials of various densities.

Wikipedia says: The bulk density of soil depends greatly on the mineral make up of soil and the degree of compaction. The density of quartz is around 2.65g/cm³ = 2.65g/cc,
but the (dry) bulk density of a mineral soil is normally about half that density, between 1.0 and 1.6g/cm³ = 1.6g/cc.
Soils high in organics and some friable clay may have a bulk density well below 1g/cm³ = <1g/cc.

- Wiki.answers.com says clay soil density averages 2.3 grams per cubic centimeter = 2.3g/cc.
- http://hypertextbook.com says "Seawater is usually some 3.5 percent heavier than fresh water because it contains about 35 pounds of salts in each 1,000 pounds of water": it's density is 1035 kg/m^3 = 1.035g/cc.
- http://www.gl.ntu.edu.tw says "the density of sedimentary rock is about. 2500 kg/m3" = ~2.5g/cc.

Now do you feel informed?

[webolife]

EGM,
Did you mean to ask about the relative densities of continent and seafloor rather than sea water?
If that's what you meant then the basaltic seafloor crust is more dense generally than the granitic continental crust.

[CharlesChandler]

Has anybody calculated the isobars running under the continents as well as the oceans? I guess I could do it, knowing the densities, but if somebody has already done it, I'll just go with that. I want to see what that does (good or bad) to the "CI = Moho" idea. Also it would be interesting to know what happens to the isobars in the trenches.

[Lloyd]

Web said: Did you mean to ask about the relative densities of continent and seafloor rather than sea water? If that's what you meant then the basaltic seafloor crust is more dense generally than the granitic continental crust.

That reminds me of why I calculated the percentage difference between 27 and 28 a couple days or so ago. I made the calculation, which is a bit over 4%, but then I forgot what I was calculating.

Now I remember I was calculating the percentage difference between basalt and granite.
The average density of oceanic basalt is 2.8g/cc and that of continental granite is 2.7g/cc.
I think the two rock types are about the same except for grain size. It is conventionally assumed that slower cooling results in the difference in size. Do you agree with that assumption, Web? That issue is very relevant to this discussion, since it would help us test our theories of Earth formation.

I'll see if I get time to find an answer to Charles' question about isobars shortly.

[Lloyd]

CC, Regarding Your Last Long Post
LK: Do you say that tokamaks transform into CI material? Or do tokamaks remain within CI material?
CC: No -- I think that there are two types of stars: 1) slowly spinning stars (like our Sun) that are held together by CI, and 2) fast spinning stars that are held together by magnetic confinement (i.e., nat-tokamaks, including black holes, neutron stars, pulsars, magnetars, quasars, and white dwarfs). I think that when CI stars lose enough mass to drop below the threshold for CI, they bloat out into red giants, while nat-tokamaks whittle down to white dwarfs, still spinning really fast, and with powerful magnetic fields, and still generating the gamma rays indicative of nuclear fusion, but on a much smaller scale.
LK: So tokamaks produce CI material in both the slow and fast spinning stars. But, the slow ones eventually expand, while the fast ones stay small. Right? If so, then is there a way to make the Sun spin fast enough to prevent it from expanding?

CC: But the weight of all of the particles above it adds up to a respectable force, once you get a couple hundred thousand kilometers inside the Sun.
LK: But the Earth doesn’t have that many kilometers, though you’re saying it has CI material too. So apparently megameters must be sufficient. Right?

Regarding Your CIPM Webpage
CC: Conduction in the high-pressure aggregate should have distributed the heat within the first couple million years.
LK: But EU theorizes that some planets are only thousands of years old, which may include Earth. Can you calculate more precisely how fast a newly formed planet should cool down to Earth's present temperature? Mathis says the charge field determines a planet's temperature and that Venus gets its charge from the Sun and the planets. He says the charge field is photons, which makes sense to me.

CC: Direct measurements of the internal temperature show that it increases by 2030 °C/km.
At that rate, the temperature at a depth of 40 km should be 8001200 °C,
LK: The Kola peninsula borehole encountered slow rock plasticity at about 12 km.

CC: This is because at the atomic level, electrons can only exist as free particles or in specific shells, and if the atoms are pushed too close together, the shells fail, thus releasing the electrons as free particles.
LK: This seems to suggest that shock waves might ionize atoms routinely. True?
- I think Kanarev's findings on the sizes of electrons would also be worth mentioning here as a reference [in your paper] to show how easy it may be for electrons to get squeezed out.

Reconsidering Hollow Stars etc - CC: So as depth increases, so does the pressure, and hence the ionization, at a more-or-less steady rate.
LK: That's only true down to half the Earth's radius, according to the Wikipedia graph I referenced on the forum. Right?
- By the way, it seems important to try to settle the issue of hollow planet theory. Would nat-tokamaks rotate while forming stars etc? If they can get protostar matter rotating fast enough, it seems that the star could well end up being hollow. Could nat-tokamaks do that? Or would the CI material inside be too solid for centrifugal force to move it away from the core? If spinning could make cores hollow, there must be a minimum spin rate they would need to maintain in order to remain hollow, unless CI material would be solid enough to remain hollow. Since I think you have stated that tokamak forces are likely responsible for stellar and planetary rotation, is it at all plausible that fast rotating stars and planets could be hollow due to tokamak forces? The Wikipedia graph of Earth’s gravitational force from surface to center supports the hollow planet and star theory, doesn’t it? And so does the shadow effect on seismic waves on Earth and the Sun. Right?

CC: After the event, the rock cools, and is subjected to a tensile force.
At this point, the plates are actually being pulled together.
LK: It’s hard to visualize two plates being “pulled” together, except by a vacuum. How does the pulling work? Does the shrinking of cooling rock exert the pull? About how much overall movement would that produce?

Ratcheting Plates - CC: In other words, the plates are not being pushed together by pressure at mid-ocean ridges. Rather, they are being pulled together by a ratchet effect in the subduction zones.
LK: As usual, your ideas make lots of cents. I mean sense. The west coast is overriding the Pacific ridge, so is the ratchet pulling the plates apart there? I guess there are actually 3 plates there, the Pacific-west, the Pacific-east and the N American, setting on top of the two on the west coast. Would the ratchet at the subduction zone in the western Pacific near Asia be able to pull the Pacific plates apart in the location under N America, or would they pull all of the N American plate too, extending all the way to the mid-Atlantic ridge?

CC: Perhaps the reduced pressure allowed charge recombination deeper in the magma chamber, and the secondary eruption was caused by all of the additional heat from the current flowing into the magma.
LK: Can magma be CI material?

[Lloyd]

Regarding Moho Pressures in Isobars
http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70013070 [from 1985]

The thickness of the continental lithosphere can therefore be defined by the depth to a particular isotherm Tc above which (at geologic strain rates) the high-temperature ductile strength falls below some arbitrary strength isobar (e.g., 100 MPa). For olivine Tc is about 700??-800??C but for other crustal silicates, Tc may be as low as 400??-600??C, suggesting that substantial decoupling may take place within thick continental crust and that strength may increase with depth at the Moho, as suggested by a number of workers on independent grounds. Put another way, the Moho is a rheological discontinuity. A second class of laboratory observations pertains to the general phenomenon of ductile faulting in which ductile strains are localized into shear zones.

Google Book
http://books.google.com/books?id=BHgOwN ... pa&f=false

Viscous-ductile properties
Effective viscosity of the lithosphere varies from 10^19 Pa's at the lithosphere-aesthenosphere boundary to >10^26 Pa's in cold mantle near Moho depth. Several ductile mechanisms such as diffusion creep, grain boundary sliding (GBS), pressure solution, and cataclastic flow may play important role at appropriate conditions, but the leading part belongs to the dislocation creep (... 1995): [Graph and calculation are included on the book page. - LK]

From the Google Book we can calculate the Moho pressure in Bars.
1 pascal = 1.0 × 10^-5 bars; so 10^26 Pa's = 10^21 bars. If you meant kilobars, instead of isobars, that's 10^18 KBars.

If you want the Moho on a diagram with isobars, these may help you:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 1X08003464
http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1- ... 64-gr5.jpg
http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1- ... 64-gr3.jpg

[CharlesChandler]

Hey Lloyd! Is it easier going back & forth between this and other formats (such as Google Docs) if we don't use the "quote" mechanism, but use colors instead? I don't care, so I'll just go along with this for now.

LK: So tokamaks produce CI material in both the slow and fast spinning stars. But, the slow ones eventually expand, while the fast ones stay small. Right?

CC: Actually, CI and natural tokamaks (NT) are two totally different constructs, and they explain two totally different types of stars.

A CI star spins slowly, and eventually, due to mass loss in stellar winds, drops below the threshold for CI, at which time the binding force falls apart, and the star expands into a red giant, achieving the hydrostatic equilibrium it would have always had, if not for the attractive force of charged double-layers.

NT stars don't have a minimum mass in the same sense, as they don't need for gravity to be up to a certain level to help maintain the compressive ionization. Rather, NT stars are held together by magnetic confinement, and since there is no friction to slow them down, they'll just keep spinning forever, or at least until they eventually collide with something else.

You're probably recalling an earlier stage in this theoretical development, in which I had NT's in the core of all stars. But in the end, there just isn't any evidence of relativistic rotation inside the Sun, nor of the magnetic fields that it would generate. So that piece had to come out. Now there are CI stars and NT stars, depending on the rotation rate, and both have very different characteristics. But that's not a problem -- it's a fix. There is no continuum between the "normal" main sequence stars and the exotic stars (black holes, neutron stars, etc.). In other words, there isn't a cluster of black holes at one end or the other of the main sequence, nor is there any other pattern to them. And no matter what I did, I just couldn't get one construct to explain both property sets. But sorting stars into two groups, one of them explained by CI, and the other as NT's, accounts for the lack of continuity between them, and for the distinctive properties of each type.

[-------]

CC: But the weight of all of the particles above it adds up to a respectable force, once you get a couple hundred thousand kilometers inside the Sun.

LK: But the Earth doesn’t have that many kilometers, though you’re saying it has CI material too. So apparently megameters must be sufficient. Right?

CC: In the Sun, the threshold for CI appears to be at 125 Mm below the surface, while in the Earth I'm thinking that it occurs at only 50 km below the surface. This seems odd, but it might still be correct. In the Sun, that 125 Mm on top is mostly hydrogen, which is very light. Furthermore, hydrogen is tough to ionize, as its single electron is tightly bound to the nucleus. In the Earth, the pressure under the surface builds up much faster, because the crust is much heavier than hydrogen. Furthermore, heavier elements are easier to ionize, as their outer electrons are weakly bound to the nuclei.

[-------]

CC: Conduction in the high-pressure aggregate should have distributed the heat within the first couple million years.

LK: But EU theorizes that some planets are only thousands of years old, which may include Earth. Can you calculate more precisely how fast a newly formed planet should cool down to Earth's present temperature? Mathis says the charge field determines a planet's temperature and that Venus gets its charge from the Sun and the planets. He says the charge field is photons, which makes sense to me.

CC: According to Tassos (pg. 46), "the 2 x 1030 J of the supposed primordial heat could have lasted for only the first 67 million years, given constant expenditure at the present annual global energy dissipation rates." This is way out of range for the standard model, which maintains that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, meaning either that the Earth is somewhat less than 67 million years old, or the internal heat comes from some other source. But it's also out of range for an extremely young Earth (< 6000 years), as it would still be molten, or the initial temperature was far less. Regardless, the uneven distribution of near-surface heat is not expected if the source was the initial condensation, and suggests near-surface sources. So I'm exploring the possibility that ohmic heating from electric currents is the primary heat source.

[-------]

CC: Direct measurements of the internal temperature show that it increases by 20-30 °C/km. At that rate, the temperature at a depth of 40 km should be 800-1200 °C,

LK: The Kola peninsula borehole encountered slow rock plasticity at about 12 km.

CC: The depth at which plasticity is achieved is an interesting topic. I'm still using the working hypothesis that the plasticity is ionization, which weakens the crystal lattice. CI is a function of pressure, but also of the chemical composition of the rock. So the pressure at which plasticity (i.e., CI) is achieved might vary, depending on differences in composition.

[-------]

CC: This is because at the atomic level, electrons can only exist as free particles or in specific shells, and if the atoms are pushed too close together, the shells fail, thus releasing the electrons as free particles.

LK: I think Kanarev's findings on the sizes of electrons would also be worth mentioning here as a reference [in your paper] to show how easy it may be for electrons to get squeezed out.

I agree. I'm trying to stay out of QM in this thing, but I should at least show that there is a possible theoretical substrate.

[-------]

CC: So as depth increases, so does the pressure, and hence the ionization, at a more-or-less steady rate.

LK: That's only true down to half the Earth's radius, according to the Wikipedia graph I referenced on the forum. Right?

CC: Here's the link that you posted (for good book-keeping):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... tyPREM.jpg

That shows the force of gravity per depth, and you get your pick of which density model to believe. But the pressure is a function of how much stuff is bearing down on something from above, and this always increases with depth if there is any gravity at all.

[-------]

LK: By the way, it seems important to try to settle the issue of hollow planet theory. Would nat-tokamaks rotate while forming stars etc?

CC: Actually, I'm thinking that the NT is a star. So there's only 3 major pieces to that construct: 1) the accretion disc, 2) the NT, and 3) the bipolar jets. The NT is the star in the middle of the whole thing. As a toroidal plasmoid, it has a doughnut hole in the center. But I don't think that the properties of an NT star could morph into the properties of a CI star. As long as the NT star is spinning at a relativisitic speed, the centrifugal force will keep the center open, and the magnetic pinch effect will consolidate the matter into a toroid. The only thing that could slow down an NT star would be a collision with something else, which would perhaps create a supernova. So I don't see any overlap between the constructs of NT stars and CI stars.

The only possibility that I ever considered for a hollow-core star was that perhaps a star that used to be heavy enough for nuclear fusion in its core, but no more, might have a hole left where the fusion used to be. The extreme temperatures under a constant gravitational force would create a low-pressure core. If a really thick iron crust solidified, it could (potentially) keeps its shape, even after the fusion stopped, leaving a hollow interior. But that begs more questions than it answers. First, with fusion in the core, how did a thick iron crust on top get cool enough to solidify? Second, how thick would the crust have to be to keep its shape despite gravity pressing in, and with a vacuum in the interior? Third, would the properties of such an object resemble a real star -- what would be the source of the photons, etc.?

[-------]

CC: After the event, the rock cools, and is subjected to a tensile force. At this point, the plates are actually being pulled together.

LK: It’s hard to visualize two plates being “pulled” together, except by a vacuum. How does the pulling work? Does the shrinking of cooling rock exert the pull? About how much overall movement would that produce?

CC: Yes, the rock shrinks as it cools, and if traction at the fault holds, the continental plates try to recede, pulling the oceanic plates with them. In the case of the Pacific plate, it's one integral unit, so the continents are pulled forward.

CC: In other words, the plates are not being pushed together by pressure at mid-ocean ridges. Rather, they are being pulled together by a ratchet effect in the subduction zones.

LK: As usual, your ideas make lots of cents. I mean sense. The west coast is overriding the Pacific ridge, so is the ratchet pulling the plates apart there? I guess there are actually 3 plates there, the Pacific-west, the Pacific-east and the N American, setting on top of the two on the west coast. Would the ratchet at the subduction zone in the western Pacific near Asia be able to pull the Pacific plates apart in the location under N America, or would they pull all of the N American plate too, extending all the way to the mid-Atlantic ridge?

CC: Well, there's a mid-Atlantic ridge, but there isn't a mid-Pacific ridge. So I'm thinking that the Eurasian & Australian plates are ratching eastward, and the Americas are ratcheting westward. This leaves a void in the Atlantic that is filled by upwelling magma, and the continents are creeping toward Hawaii, consuming the Pacific plate as they go.

[-------]

CC: Perhaps the reduced pressure allowed charge recombination deeper in the magma chamber, and the secondary eruption was caused by all of the additional heat from the current flowing into the magma.

LK: Can magma be CI material?

CC: The working hypothesis is that all matter can be ionized by pressure, including solids, liquids, gases, plasmas, and supercritical fluids.

I'm currently studying the Moho data you found. Thanks!

[Lloyd]

Charles, I don't know how using colors instead of quotes affects the Google Docs. I just use colors to make it easy to see who says what (sometimes), whereas quotes alone don't do that and quotes also affect the clarity of the text.

Two Kinds of Stars
That's very interesting about CI (compressive ionization) and NT (natural tokamak) being two different kinds of stars. It seems to make a lot of sense. So the faster rotation of NT stars prevents enough gravitational pressure from building up inside to form CI material. Right?
-If you're right that the Sun will expand into a red giant star when it runs low on CI material, it looks like the only way to prevent that would be to feed the Sun asteroids or planets. Right? Do you think the Sun's expansion would be fatal to life on Earth?
- I think Thornhill has suggested that red giants are merely regular stars under so much electrical stress that the surface boundary has to form at a larger than usual radius; and the outer shell is so thin that planets can orbit within it, and life can even exist on such planets, and the star's outer envelope can help keep the planets warm enough for life. Do you see any plausibility in that theory? In your theory, would a red giant's distinct outer envelope also be caused by electrical stress? If gravity were the only force on the outer shell, there would be no distinct boundary or envelope; would there?

Life on Planets of NT Stars
Could NT stars radiate enough heat to permit life to exist on nearby planets? I found on this webpage http://www.space.com/17848-alien-planet ... rails.html that 4 planets have been found so far near pulsars. And I found the following message that seems to suggest that there may be enough heat from pulsars to permit life. (The article that the message comments on even has in the title the idea that such planets may leave electric trails.) The question then is, would the magnetic field be too strong near a pulsar for any life form. Or would it be too strong for life as we know it, or for humans? Or would humans be able to shield themselves from the magnetic fields? If a planet were far enough away from a pulsar not to harm life there, would it be warm enough for life at such a distance?

Another Robitaille?
The message about heat from pulsars is at http://www.space.com/15260-pulsars-prob ... holes.html, and the author of the message is said to be Brian Robitaille. Is that our famous one associated with the idea of compressive ionization? He calls himself "Fry Cook at Bonos" and here's the message. I thought the heat might need to be from IR radiation, but he seems to suggest that it's not necessary.

YES I would imagine a pulsar is very hot. But heat and infrared radiation are not the same thing. All wavelengths are capable of causing heat because they all vibrate molecules, but I think we are fixated on that idea because living creatures that emit heat emit it in the infrared spectrum as do all objects according to the Black Body law (which is why we use infrared to view sources of heat). It really depends on matching the optimal wavelength to cause maximal oscillation in the material. Heat is really just another definition of energy, and pulsars have plenty of that. And now that I think about it, since all materials absorb or reflect IR light, it would prove most difficult using that range since you would not only pick up emission sources such as stars but you would also register ALL matter (excluding of course dark matter) no matter how faint the emissions from cold gas and dust are ... Gamma and x-ray's are less commonly produced therefore it would be easier to use that spectrum. But anyway, pulsars emit all kinds of wavelengths but IR is among the least common. Some pulsars emit mostly Gamma, others emit a lot of X, and still others emit mostly radio wavelengths compared to other wavelengths. I suspect this may be because these sources are easier to see since not may things emit in these frequencies. Maybe one day we'll find some that emit primarily in another range but it really varies on the individual pulsar. Regarding the accuracy and quality of IR cameras, the James Webb Space Telescope (successor to the Hubble) is optimized for IR studies having more sensitivity and range than Hubble. The higher resolution and "sharpness" of the telescope will give us unprecedented photos from visible light to the mid range of IR. Can't wait to see even younger baby pictures of our still young universe... *sigh*... But again, regardless of the spectrum, light will still be distorted by materials in it's path.

... Forgive the length... I do ramble, mostly on topic.
Reply · · April 15 at 4:28am[/quote]

Improbability of Hollow Stars
Sounds like you've greatly reduced the probability of hollow stars and planets, but, rather than reduce my estimate from about 50% probability to about 10%, I think I'll say 30%, because Thornhill's model of quasars and stars forming as low mass plasmoids, in which subatomic particles start at very small mass and increase to normal mass levels with age, still seems plausible, based on the quasar data discussed earlier. Since we probably don't have new particles to study in the solar system, his theory may be harder to disprove. But, if you think you know of any disproofs, I imagine it would be interesting to hear of it/them.

Ratcheting Plates

LK: ... Would the ratchet at the subduction zone in the western Pacific near Asia be able to pull the Pacific plates apart in the location under N America, or would they pull all of the N American plate too, extending all the way to the mid-Atlantic ridge?
CC: Well, there's a mid-Atlantic ridge, but there isn't a mid-Pacific ridge. So I'm thinking that the Eurasian & Australian plates are ratching eastward, and the Americas are ratcheting westward. This leaves a void in the Atlantic that is filled by upwelling magma, and the continents are creeping toward Hawaii, consuming the Pacific plate as they go.

Indeed, there is no mid-Pacific ridge, but there is an eastern Pacific ridge. And that's what the western U.S. portion of the N. American plate is overriding. My idea is that the eastern Pacific ridge used to be a mid-Pacific ridge, formed before the mid-Atlantic ridge, but then the impact above Madagascar opened up the Atlantic rift, and the American plates were pushed westward and stopped when the N. American plate ran into and then partly over the Pacific ridge. It sounds like the western Pacific "subduction" would indeed pull the northern plates all the way from the mid-Atlantic ridge, but it should pull the southern plate only from the eastern Pacific ridge, unless it has frozen shut. I imagine the Pacific ridge under the western U.S. would be cemented together by the N. American plate, but since there is magma under the western U.S., maybe it there is spreading there due to the ridge underneath.
- Have you studied this Wikipedia image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics? Here's the image link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... -04-17.jpg.
- It shows:
1) Africa and Eurasia rotating clockwise toward the northern part of the western Pacific trench;
2) N. and S. America rotating counter-clockwise toward the northern and eastern parts of the Pacific plate boundary (northern trench and eastern ridge), pivoting on Central America;
3) the Pacific plate moving northwest toward both parts of the 2 trenches;
4) Australia moving toward the central part of the Pacific trench just northeast of Australia; and
5) Antarctica being almost stationary.
- So it looks like "subduction" is occurring on only one line worldwide, at the eastern Pacific trench, which extends from Alaska to Vladivostok, Japan, New Guinea, New Zealand, and nearly to Antarctica. At the northern part of the eastern Pacific ridge the Pacific and N. American plates seem to be scraping past each other, but acting almost like subduction, while at the southern part of the same ridge, the plates are pulling apart, just like along the mid-Atlantic ridge. Conventional science would say they're pushing apart, but your data and conclusion are more plausible.

[CharlesChandler]

So the faster rotation of NT stars prevents enough gravitational pressure from building up inside to form CI material. Right?

Yes.

Do you think the Sun's expansion would be fatal to life on Earth? I think Thornhill has suggested that red giants are merely regular stars under so much electrical stress that the surface boundary has to form at a larger than usual radius; and the outer shell is so thin that planets can orbit within it, and life can even exist on such planets, and the star's outer envelope can help keep the planets warm enough for life. Do you see any plausibility in that theory? In your theory, would a red giant's distinct outer envelope also be caused by electrical stress? If gravity were the only force on the outer shell, there would be no distinct boundary or envelope; would there?

I don't understand what kind of "electrical stress" would cause a larger-than-usual radius. In the model I'm using, the expansion represents a weakening of the electrostatic forces binding the star together. In other words, the attraction between charged double-layers pulls them together, creating a star more compact than it has a Newtonian right to be. Then, it is the discharging of those potentials that generates the heat and light that we see. But "if" the star is losing mass to its stellar wind, the compressive ionization relaxes, the charges recombine, and the attraction between the charged double-layers goes away, because they're not charged anymore. Without the electric force, the whole thing comes unglued, and it expands.

Would life be possible inside the envelope of a red giant? I dunno. The radius is bigger but the temperature within that radius is lower. So I agree that it's possible that life would continue. Of course, life as we know it exists only within an extremely narrow range of temperatures, so I wouldn't be the farm on it.

Could NT stars radiate enough heat to permit life to exist on nearby planets?

There could potentially be plenty of heat, but it would all be delivered via x-rays and gamma rays. Life as we know it wouldn't last long, unless everybody wore space suits anytime they had to go outside.

Would the magnetic field be too strong near a pulsar for any life form?

If a pulsar is a natural tokamak, and if you were on the plane of rotation, there wouldn't be any net acceleration of magnetized particles (such as iron in your blood). Magnetic fields only accelerate particles where the lines of force are converging, and on the axis of rotation, at some distance away, the lines of force would be parallel, hence no acceleration. But every iron atom in your body would be polarized by the field, and as you walked around, maybe this would keep the iron atoms all facing in one direction. Perhaps that would break up the molecules, and maybe that would be bad. If somebody offers you tickets for a trip to a pulsar, give them to somebody you don't like.

The author of the message is said to be Brian Robitaille.

Pierre-Marie Robitaille is the guy I've been quoting on a variety of topics. I don't know if Brian is any relation.

Ratcheting Plates
Here's a set of diagrams that I did, to further explore this idea.

http://qdl.scs-inc.us/2ndParty/Images/C ... heting.png

1. Pressure is equalized, but plates are converging.
   1. This shows colliding continental & oceanic plates. In the "tectonic ratcheting" model, something else had to initiate the collision. I'm going with Fischer's Shock Dynamics. Then, given an existing momentum, the ratcheting effect then kicks in, as illustrated in the successive panes.
   2. Note that I'm showing the "subduction" as a ramp-like fault, where the one plate rides over-top of the other one, and they stay more or less parallel to each other. You had mentioned this, and the data support it, so I drew it this way.
   3. As such, it "seems" that the upper plate gets worn down by the friction, as does the lower plate, and then the lower plate melts if it is forced into the mantle. So the dramatic folding in the typical diagram of a subduction zone doesn't seem to be realistic, and this "seems" to be more accurate.
2. High pressure causes rock to buckle, enabling charge recombination below.
   1. With existing momentum, pressure builds up in the plates.
   2. The part most likely to buckle will be where the top plate starts to thin out.
   3. The buckling greatly reduces the pressure underneath, as the fold eliminates the weight that was bearing down on the rock below. If it was ionized by the pressure (CI), it will now be de-ionized (shown in yellow). In other words, electrons will rush in to recombine with ions.
3. Ohmic heating causes expansion, increasing buckle, and decreasing traction.
   1. The buckling, which enables an electric current, which generates heat, which causes the rock to expand, and thus exaggerating the bubble, constitutes a positive feedback loop. So a runaway expansion occurs.
   2. Also note that the buckle reduces the size of the mating surfaces between the two plates. Thus the traction is reduced, increasing the chance of a rupture of the fault.
4. Fault ruptures and pressure is equalized at the higher temperature.
   1. When the pressure overwhelms the traction, an earthquake occurs, relieving all of the stress. Now the top plate lays back down across the bottom plate.
   2. Note that the top plate is hotter, and it has expanded, so it extends further up the bottom plate.
5. As rock cools, it shrinks, and if traction holds, plates are pulled together.
   1. With the two plates fused back together, traction between them is re-established. But note that this occurs at the higher temperature. As the top plate cools, it contracts, and thus shrinks. If the traction holds, the shrinkage pulls the rest of the top plate toward the fault.
   2. Note that the cooling process will take a lot longer than the heating process (which happened fast, because of a positive feedback loop). As a consequence, the plates are subjected to a tensile force much longer than they are under collisional pressure. Once they come under pressure, the buckling of the crust causes the traction to fail. So friction at the fault doesn't slow the plates down, while the tensile force during the bulk of the cycle constitutes a net inward force on the two plates. Hence plates are not being pushed together by pressure in the mid-ocean ridges, but rather, are being pulled together by ratcheting in the subduction zones.
6. Pressure is equalized, but plates are converging.
   1. And the process repeats.

This will be about all from me for the time being. I've gotten into financial hot water with all of the time that I have been putting into this, instead of working for a living. Who would have thought that the CI model of the Sun would have stood up to so much questioning, and then go on to offer explanations for tectonics and volcanism? I didn't know that this was going to turn into such an open-ended project. It has been a lot of fun, and more than a little bit addictive. But I have to start a work project tomorrow that I simply have to stay on until it's done, or I'll lose a client. I wish I was like some other people, who can just skim over the thunderbolts threads, make a few quick comments, and be done with it. But I feel obligated to listen carefully to criticisms and suggestions, and to give thorough answers. In a highly detailed model, where useful answers sometimes requires hours of research, the damage to my schedule adds up. So I have to break off. I strongly encourage those of you who have the time to continue on in my absence. I'd like to offer Lloyd my most sincere thanks for the incredible amount of labor that he has put into it. I intend to answer all of his questions. But first I'll have to get literate in geophysics, and before that, I have to get back to reality for a little while.

Cheers!

[Lloyd]

Quasars from Low Mass to Large Mass?
Though Charles may not be able to check this out for a spell, I figured I may as well post the following here now, rather than lose it somewhere else. The question is really whether subatomic particles start out at low mass and gradually gain in mass themselves, until they reach their normal masses. I think the following discussions give some pretty good clues about the best thinking along these lines.

http://saturniancosmology.org/files/gravity/light.txt
[Thornhill:] I agree with Davies that the charge on the electron has not changed. But neither has the speed of light. Unlike Davies, it seems to me that the basis of the physical universe is electric charge, governed by a near-instantaneous electrostatic force. All forms of matter and its interactions spring from that simple basis. Every particle and collection of particles is a resonant system of orbiting charges, from which comes resonant quantum effects and the manifestation of inertial mass. Resonance explains the puzzling non-radiating ground-state of an atom. Gravity, magnetism and nuclear forces can all be understood in terms of electric dipole forces between distorted systems of orbiting charge.

http://thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpBB3/v ... f=3&t=4252
[Thornhill:] Arp outlines the empirical relationships between active galaxies, quasars, BL Lac objects and galaxy clusters:
1. High-redshift objects (such as quasars) are aligned on either side of low-redshift eruptive objects (often active galaxies). The pairs have equal positive and negative dispersions from a redshift periodicity value. This implies that quasars are ejected with quantized intrinsic (not Doppler, i.e., velocity) redshifts from active galaxies.
[In 1967 Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge noted the preferred values of redshifts of quasars. In 1971 K. G. Karlsson derived a formula relating those values: (1+z2)/(1+z1) = 1.23 (where z2 is the next higher redshift from z1). This gives observed quasar redshifts of z = .061, .30, .60, .96, 1.41, 1.96, etc. Arp comments wryly that this is one of the truly great discoveries in physics, for which Karlsson "was rewarded with a teaching post in secondary school and then went into medicine."]
2. The youngest ejected objects appear to have the highest redshifts. As distance from the active galaxy increases, the objects decrease in redshift—stepwise, in consonance with Karlsson's periodicity. This implies that intrinsic redshift decreases with age in quantum jumps.
3. The objects also tend to increase in brightness and to slow down with distance. This implies that they gain mass as they age.
[Nereid:] Starting with 0.061, the sequence is (to 3 significant figures): 0.305, 0.605, 0.974, 1.428, 1.987, 2.674, 3.519, 4.558, 5.837, and 7.409.

Evidence for ejection of quasars from galaxies.
http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/intri ... laxies.pdf

http://scientopia.org/blogs/galacticint ... redshifts/
- One idea which has emerged from the EU camp is that, observationally speaking, there appears to exist an increase in the mass of the quasars as the quantized redshift in quasars falls. This is an important aspect of Arp's observations which was noteworthy enough to end up in the documentary, "The Cosmology Quest". It also appears quite clearly on page 108 of Seeing Red, Arp's explanation for his observations, where he states:
- "Now comes a key point: If the mass of an electron jumping from an excited atomic orbit to a lower level is smaller, then the energy of the photon of light emitted is smaller. If the photon is weaker it is redshifted ... it suffices here to understand that lower-mass electrons will give higher redshifts and that younger electrons would be expected to have lower mass."
- One way to explain intrinsic redshift is as quantized changes in energy levels of electrons, protons and neutrons within the atom. Within the EU view, the masses of subatomic particles change in response to electrical stress. In an Electric Universe, that includes magnetic and gravitational stress. Wal Thornhill argues that increasing negative charge on bodies increases their mass and gravity (see "Orbital Energy" in http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=q1q6sz2s).
- ... the plasmoid formed in a plasma gun is the most copious beamed source of neutrons known. So, most of the mass ejection will be neutral and decaying, once free of the plasmoid's electromagnetic influence, into protons and electrons (nascent hydrogen).
- The second fact is that electrons, being much lower in mass than protons, will remain entangled in the plasmoid in greater numbers and for longer than protons. Also, strong electric fields in the plasmoid will tend to separate the electrons and protons, giving oppositely directed beams.

http://othergroup.net/thoth/thoiii09.txt
- [Thornhill:] Quantum theory has nothing to offer by way of a physical model to explain the redshift jumps across entire galaxies. And since there is no real model of how gravity works, there is no sensible explanation of how inertial mass can increase with time, nor of its link with gravitational mass.
- ... I think the biggest changes occur early in the history of a proto-galaxy where the brightness is increasing most rapidly. That is, the electric stress on stars is rising from the red anode glow to the bright tufting stage. Yes, planetary orbits would be affected but I doubt that it would be sufficient to set in motion the events of the recent history of the solar system. If the effects were that drastic I would expect to see a galaxy somewhere in deep space with a lot of nova/supernova activity in evidence, caused by sudden gravitational disturbances in binary star systems. We need to get a handle on what the redshift quantum represents in terms of mass increase of atoms. Arp gives a change of the electrons inertial mass of about .024% (if my arithmetic is right) for a 72km/sec change in redshift. If this is applied to all subatomic particles then it would not cause drastic effects.

http://www.bazaarmodel.net/phorum/read.php?3,8359
- [Thornhill:] We cannot have a theory of everything until we have a workable concept of the structure of matter that satisfies the observation that inertial and gravitational mass are equivalent. When we accelerate electrons or protons in an electromagnetic field they become less responsive to the fields the more they are accelerated. This has been interpreted as an increase in mass. However, charges have no mass. So how do they give the electron, proton and neutron the property of mass?
- The accelerating electromagnetic field will distort the orbits of charges within the electron or proton. It seems the more distorted a particle becomes, the more easily the energy supplied to accelerate the particle is assimilated in further distortion rather than in acceleration. Hence the apparent increase in mass. The inertial mass of a particle is a measure of the degree to which it responds to an electric field by distorting rather than accelerating. It implies the charge centers of a proton at rest have to be separated more than those in an electron at rest. That allows the proton to distort more readily than an electron in the same electric field and accounts for their differences in size and mass.
- ... The equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass implies that gravity is also an electrical force.
- ... The electrical relationship between matter and mass allows us to understand how quasars can be newborn objects that have low mass and brightness and high intrinsic redshifts. With time, their mass increases and their intrinsic redshift decreases in quantum jumps. This shows that quantum effects also occur on a galactic scale. It is another powerful argument for the near infinite speed of the electric force.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/elect ... erse03.htm
- It seems simpler and more sensible to suggest that both nuclear and chemical energy is released or absorbed by the rearrangement of the resonant orbits of charged particles. It is then common sense to suggest that mass is the measured response of a system of charged particles to an external electrostatic force. The more massive an object, the more the electrostatic force contributes to the elastic deformation of its protons, neutrons and electrons, rather than their acceleration. This is the phenomenon seen in particle accelerators and conventionally attributed to relativistic effects. But relativity reduces to classical physics in a universe where the electrostatic force has near-infinite speed.

http://www.discordancyreport.com/theory/
- One theory postulated by English astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle and Indian astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar is the Hoyle-Narlikar Theory of conformal gravity. This theory proposes that the inertial mass of a particle of matter starts at zero and increases as it interacts with an increasing number of surrounding particles with time. According to this theory, younger and more recently created electrons will have smaller masses than older, less recently created electrons. These less massive electrons will emit lower energy photons with the resulting light redshifted in comparison to the photons emitted by older electrons. If it is presumed that smaller more compact extragalactic bodies are younger objects then this theory nicely explains why these younger objects are more redshifted.

http://electric-cosmos.org/ouruniverse.htm
- Electrical repulsion that is alternat...ely felt (when planets' plasma sheaths intersect) and then not felt (when the sheaths do not intersect) could circularize orbits relatively quickly. In addition there is strong evidence that gravity and mass itself is dependent on electrical charge.

[Lloyd]

Red Giant Stars
That's another thing I wanted to discuss with Charles and will mention it now so I don't forget to later. He said Red Giant Stars are what Sun-like stars become when they lose (not loose like a goose - I know proper spelling, usually) too much of their CI substance and their electric double layer/s. However, it's the double layers that he said are responsible for the Sun having a distinct limb, or surface boundary. So, without a double layer, I don't know what would give a red giant or supergiant star a distinct limb. But, on the other hand, maybe they don't have distinct limbs anyway. Here's Aldebaran, the closest red giant star at about 68 ly.
http://www.greatdreams.com/constellations/aldebaran.jpg

And here's Betelgeuse, the closest red supergiant star at 500 ly.
http://scienceforkids.kidipede.com/phys ... lgeuse.jpg

Neither one seems to be focused well enough to see any features clearly.