Variable Stars
When I was researching topics for this article, Wal Thornhill said to me,
"Have a look at variable stars, particularly bursters, where I think you will find the brightness curve is like that of lightning with a sudden rise time and exponential decay. Some stars are regular and others irregular. The irregular ones seem to average the power over the bursts. When they are more frequent, the energy is less per burst. If there is a long latency, the next burst is more powerful. It's the kind of thing you would expect from an electrical circuit when the trigger level is variable and the power input constant.
I think many variable stars are actually binaries with some kind of electrical interaction. Long period Miras (A type of variable star) may actually have an object orbiting within the shell of a red giant (as I have proposed for the proto-Saturnian system)"
Following Wal's suggestion, I looked at the recent Hubble image of Mira itself, the flagship star of that class of variable stars. Mira's image reveals a huge plasma emission on one side of the star. The official explanation includes the words, " Mira A is a red giant star undergoing dramatic pulsations, causing it to become more than 100 times brighter over the course of a year. …. Mira can extend to over 700 times the size of our Sun, and is only 400 light-years away. The …. photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the true face of Mira. But what are we seeing? The unusual extended feature off the lower left of the star remains somewhat mysterious. Possible explanations include gravitational perturbation and/or heating from Mira's white dwarf star companion." [Italics added.]
http://electric-cosmos.org/hrdiagr.htm
Mira has a white dwarf companion, just as Wal suggested was likely. So, a much better possible explanation of its pulsating output is that an electrical discharge is taking place between Mira and its companion, much like a relaxation oscillator. It's not really "mysterious" at all.
There are many examples of unequally sized, closely spaced, binary pairs that are variable and emit frequent nova-like explosions. The list includes:
SS Cygni - A yellow dwarf and a hot blue-white dwarf. Orbital period 6.5 hours! Separation distance 100.000 miles or less. Burnham asks, "Is SS Cygni ..... dying out after having been [a full scale nova] in the past?"
U Geminorum - A B-type blue dwarf and a G-type dwarf. Orbital period 4.5 hours! Separation distance a few hundred thousand miles. In this case Burnham states, "Spectroscopic studies reveal the existence of a "rotating ring of gas" (plasma) around the blue star, and it appears that the explosive increase of light is due not only to the brightening of the star, but to a large increase of radiation from the cloud."
Z Andromedae and R Aquarii - Both of these consist of a hot blue dwarf mated to a red giant.
T Coronae and RS Ophiuchi - Both have recurrent nova-like eruptions and are close binary systems.
Gamma Ray Bursters
In 1998 NASA gave their description of what constitutes a "gamma ray burster".
"October 13, 1998: Cosmic gamma-ray bursts have been called the greatest mystery of modern astronomy. They are powerful blasts of gamma- and X-radiation that come from all parts of the sky, but never from the same direction twice. Space satellites indicate that Earth is illuminated by 2 to 3 bursts every day. What are they? No one is certain. Until recently we didn't even know if they came from the neighborhood of our own solar system or perhaps from as far away as the edge of the universe. The first vital clues began to emerge in 1997 when astronomers detected an optical counterpart to a gamma-ray burst. In February 1997 the BeppoSAX X-ray astronomy satellite pinpointed the position of a burst in Orion to within a few arcminutes. That allowed astronomers to photograph the burst, and what they saw surprised them. They detected a rapidly fading star, probably the aftermath of a gigantic explosion, next to a faint amorphous blob believed to be a very distant galaxy." [Italics added.]
Doesn't this sound like fissioning again? An explosion, followed by a rapidly fading star, accompanied by some sort of companion! Might it be that the reason they "never [come] from the same direction twice" is that the creation of the binary pair has relieved the electrical stress (at least for a long enough time that we humans haven't yet seen a recurrence)? The February 2001 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine contains these words,
"Does every gamma-ray burst begin with the supernova explosion of a massive star? New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Italian-Dutch BeppoSAX satellite suggest this is so. Some astronomers think it's still too early to draw firm conclusions, though they hail the new observations as revolutionary. In any case, a link between gamma-ray bursts and supernovae seems to be convincingly confirmed."
Pulsars
Although pulsars do not occupy a specific place in the HR diagram, it is worth noting that they, too, have characteristics that are most comfortably explained via the ES model. Pulsars are stars that have extremely short periods of variability in their production of EM radiation (both light and radio frequency emissions) . When they were first discovered it was thought that they rotated rapidly - like lighthouses. But when the observed rate of "rotation" got up to about once per second for certain pulsars, despite their having masses exceeding that of the sun, this official explanation became untenable. Instead, the concept of the "neutron star" was invented. It was proposed that only such a dense material could make up a star that could stand those rotation speeds.
But, one of the basic rules of nuclear chemistry is the 'zone of stability'. This is the observation that if we add neutrons to the nucleus of any atom, we need to add an almost proportional number of protons (and their accompanying electrons) to maintain a stable nucleus. In fact, it seems that when we consider all the natural elements (and the heavy man made elements as well), there is a requirement that in order to hold a group of neutrons together in a nucleus, a certain number of proton-electron pairs are required. The stable nuclei of the lighter elements contain approximately equal numbers of neutrons and protons, a neutron/proton ratio of 1. The heavier nuclei contain a few more neutrons than protons, but the limit seems to be 1.5 neutrons per proton. Nuclei that differ significantly from this ratio SPONTANEOUSLY UNDERGO RADIOACTIVE TRANSFORMATIONS that tend to bring their compositions into or closer to this ratio.
Flying in the face of this observed fact, mainstream astrophysicists continue to postulate the existence of stars made up of solid material consisting only of neutrons, "neutronium". This is yet one more example of Fairie Dust entities fantasized by astrophysicists to explain otherwise inexplicable observations. The 'neutron star' is simply yet another fantasy conjured up, this time, in order to avoid confronting the idea that pulsar discharges are electrical phenomena. A nucleus or charge free atom made up of only neutrons has never been synthesized in any laboratory nor can it ever be. In fact, a web search on the word 'neutronium' will produce only references to a computer game – not to any real, scientific discussion or description. Lone neutrons decay into proton - electron pairs in less than 14 minutes; atomlike collections of two or more neutrons will fly apart almost instantaneously.
Perhaps some astronomers have begun to realize neutronium is embarrassingly impossible. In any event, a less easily falsifiable entity has now been proposed. Wal Thornhill has written about this latest mainstream explanation of pulsar emissions:
"The discovery now of an x-ray pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658 (J1808 for short), located in the constellation of Sagittarius, that flashes every 2.5 thousandths of a second (that is 24,000 RPM!) goes way beyond the red-line even for a neutron star. So another ad hoc requirement is added to the already long list - this pulsar must be composed of something even more dense than packed neutrons - strange matter! ...When not associated with protons in a nucleus, neutrons decay into protons and electrons in a few minutes. Atomic nuclei with too many neutrons are unstable. If it were possible to form a neutron star, why should it be stable?"
"Strange matter"! Yet another ad hoc fictional invention! They have been getting away with this kind of nonsense for decades. How ludicrous does it have to get before some responsible astronomer cries out that this Emperor Has No Clothes On?
Some pulsars oscillate with periods in the millisecond range. Their radio pulse characteristics are: the 'duty cycle' is typically 5% (i.e., the pulsar flashes like a strobe light - the duration of each output pulse is much shorter than the length of time between pulses); some individual pulses are quite variable in intensity; the polarization of the pulse implies the origin has a strong magnetic field; magnetic fields require electrical currents. These characteristics are consistent with an electrical arc (lightning) interaction between two closely spaced binary stars. Relaxation oscillators with characteristics like this have been known and used by electrical engineers for many years. Therefore, I was pleased when I saw the following announcement:
Hubble Space Telescope Observations Reveal Coolest and Oldest White Dwarf Stars in the Galaxy: "Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have detected five optical companion stars orbiting millisecond pulsars. Only two other such systems are known. Three of the companions are among the coolest and oldest white dwarf stars known." [Italics added]
It is becoming obvious that pulsars are electrical discharges between members of binary pairs.
The Crab Pulsar
The "Crab Nebula" (M1) is a cloud of gas (plasma) that is the remnant of a nova explosion seen by Chinese astronomers. Lying at the center of the nebula is a pulsar- a star called CM Tauri. The frequency of repetition of the pulsar's output is 30 pulses per second. The length of each flash, however, is approximately 1/1000 sec., one millisecond! The obvious question to ask next is: Is this star a binary pair? No companion is visible from even the largest earthbound telescopes. But, the Hubble orbiting telescope has recently found a companion, "a small knot of bright emission located only 1500 AU (1500 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun) from the pulsar. This knot has gone undetected up until now because even at the best ground-based resolution it is lost in the glare of the adjacent pulsar. The knot and the pulsar line up with the direction of a jet of X-ray emission. A second discovery is that in the direction opposite the knot, the Crab pulsar is capped by a ring-like 'halo' of emission tipped at about 20 degrees to our line of sight. In this geometry the polar jet flows right through the center of the halo."
M1 - The Crab Nebula
The shape of this pulsar centered object is exactly that of an electrical homopolar motor - generator.
Supernova Remnant G11.2-0.3
On August 6, 2000, and October 15, 2000, the orbiting X-ray telescope Chandra discovered a pulsar at the geometric center of the supernova remnant known as G11.2-0.3. This observation provides strong evidence that the pulsar was formed in the supernova of 386 AD, which was also witnessed by Chinese astronomers. The official description of the image included the words:
"The Chandra observations of G11.2-0.3 have also, for the first time, revealed the bizarre appearance of the pulsar wind nebula at the center of the supernova remnant. Its rough cigar-like shape is in contrast to the graceful arcs observed around the Crab and Vela pulsars. However, together with those pulsars, G11.2-0.3 demonstrates that such complicated structures are ubiquitous around young pulsars."
Upon examination, the image of the central star reveals that it is at the center of a 'cigar shaped' plasma discharge, not a 'bizarre wind nebula' (whatever that is). Although no binary companion has (yet) been found, the presence of the observed plasma discharge makes one suspect it is only a matter of time.
Each new discovery of a binary pair of stars, one of which is either a variable star or pulsar, at the center of a nova remnant, is one more piece of evidence that Juergens' electric star model and Thornhill's theory of the fissioning of those electric stars are both valid.
Electric Star Evolution
In the Electric Star hypothesis, there is no reason to attribute youth to one spectral type over another. We conclude that a star's location on the HR diagram only depends on its size and the electric current density it is presently experiencing. If, for whatever reason, the strength of that current density should change, then the star will change its position on the HR diagram - perhaps, like FG Sagittae, abruptly. Otherwise, no movement from one place to another on that plot is to be expected. And its age remains indeterminate regardless of its mass or spectral type. This is disquieting in the sense that we are now confronted by the knowledge that our own Sun's future is not as certain as is predicted by mainstream astronomy. We cannot know whether the Birkeland current presently powering our Sun will increase or decrease, nor how long it will be before it does so.
Summary
A fresh look at the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, unencumbered by the assumption that all stars must be internally powered by the thermonuclear fusion reaction, reveals an elegant correspondence between this plot and the Electric Star model proposed by Ralph Juergens and extended by Earl Milton. In fact the correspondence is better than it is with the standard thermonuclear model. The details in the shape of the HR diagram are exactly what the tufted electric star model predicts they should be. The observed actions of nova-like variable stars, pulsars, the anomalies in the line spectra of B-type stars, and the high frequency of occurrence of binary pairs of stars are all in concordance with Thornhill's Electrical Universe theory, his stellar fissioning concept, and the Electric Star model as well. Completely mysterious and unexplained from the thermonuclear model point of view is the 'impossible' evolutionary behavior of FG Sagittae and V838 Monocerotis. Yet these phenomena are perfectly understandable using the ES model. We eagerly await NASA's next 'mysterious discovery' to further strengthen the case for the Electric Star hypothesis.
