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Siriusly Red
Aug
14, 2009
As has often been pointed out, by
definition the uniformitarian creed
precludes the very real possibility
of rare and radical changes in
nature.
Since the late 19th
century, most geologists have fondly
embraced the adage of the British
lawyer and geologist, Sir Charles
Lyell (1797-1875): ‘The present is
the key to the past.’ Its naïve
implication is that all phenomena
that ever happened in nature still
occur today and can be observed.
Historical evidence is valuable
precisely because it offers an even
better key to the past than
present-day analogues: eye-witness
accounts.
A prime application of the
historical method concerns the
colour of Sirius A or α Canis
Majoris, the brightest star in the
night sky. Sirius appears bright
white today, but – as the English
amateur astronomer, Thomas Barker
(1722-1809), first pointed out in
1760 – was emphatically qualified as
red in many classical texts.
Poetical passages aside, Seneca
commented that Sirius was of a
deeper red than Mars, while Ptolemy
labeled the star “reddish” and
grouped it with five other stars,
all of which are indeed of red or
orange aspect.
Even as late as the 6th century CE,
the Gallo-Roman chronicler, Gregory
of Tours, could label the Dog Star
rubeola or ‘reddish’. It is claimed
that the earliest unambiguous
reference to Sirius as a white star
is found in the pages of the Persian
astronomer, ‘Abd al-Raḥman al-Sufī
(903-986 CE).
What to make of all this? The
paradox has sparked a prolonged and
fairly intense debate, which has led
to a fair number of publications,
including Noah Brosch’s recent book
Sirius Matters (2008). The evasive
explanation that Sirius’s red traced
to a simple textual error is easily
refuted by the eminent authority of
Ptolemy and Seneca as well as the
observation that the same
attribution is attested in a number
of other cultures. For example, the
Pawnee, of the North American
Plains, associated each of the four
intercardinal points with a colour,
a type of weather, an animal, a
tree, and a star.
The southeastern corner was the
domain of red, the “Red Star” –
which might be the planet Mars – and
the wolf, explicitly linked to
Sirius. Another suggestion, that an
optical illusion accounts for the
confusion, seems merely a red
herring. It may be so that the star,
to the unaided eye, often appears to
be flashing with red, white and blue
hues when near the horizon, but such
scintillations would not have
deluded such a skilled observer as
Ptolemy. The belief in a red Sirius
was clearly genuine. But how can it
be reconciled with the white hue
seen today?
Two Canadian archaeoastronomers,
David Kelley and Eugene Milone,
followed a rather more promising
direction: “We conclude that the
bulk of the evidence supports a
literal red Sirius interpretation …
Thus, the discovery that the bright
star, Sirius, was once described as
red, when it is now clearly white,
may light up formerly obscure paths
of stellar evolution.” The trouble
is that, on the current astronomical
model of stellar evolution, no shift
from red to white is possible over
such a short time.
In 1985, the German astronomers,
Wolfhard Schlosser and Werner
Bergmann, concluded that Sirius B,
the faint binary companion of Sirius
A, had been a red giant in
Antiquity. If correct, there must
indeed be some hitherto “obscure
paths” of stellar behaviour. With
some exasperation, Kelley & Milone
posed the questions: “Are there any
instances in which stars have
undergone shorter time scale changes
than evolutionary time scales would
require? … How then could it have
been a red giant only 2000 years
ago? … How reliable are the reports
of a color change? … Are we
interpreting the reports correctly?”
It is not that scholars have not
tried. Remaining faithful to the
accepted model of stellar change,
Kelley & Milone experimented with
the idea that a diffusion of
hydrogen from the top layer into a
lower layer of carbon inside the
star could have triggered “a
thermonuclear runaway … that would
lead to a retracing of the star’s
evolution back through the red giant
branch, and making the star that
became Sirius B to appear as much as
100 times more luminous than Sirius
A.” While such a ‘red’ state could
in theory be sustained for “hundreds
of years”, a “major impediment” is
“a 100:1 brightness ratio of a red
giant to Sirius A”, which “would
make it brighter than Venus at that
planet’s impressive maximum, but its
brightness is recorded by Ptolemy,
and there is no evidence for any
great change in the overall
brightness of the Sirius system.”
This obstacle effectively falsifies
the idea.
A second thought-experiment is that
the circumstellar matter moving from
one star to the other may
occasionally dim its companion “and
thus the system as a whole, as well
as redden it.” The objection here is
the lack of evidence that any such
nebulosity has taken place in recent
times.
All of this should have raised a red
flag for the validity of the
thermonuclear model of stellar
evolution. Before the development of
this model, and of the so-called
Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, in the
early 20th century, scientists had
no compunction to speculate that
stars may occasionally change in
brightness – as novae do – as well
as in hue.
In fact, the answer must allow for
recurrent fluctuations, as a white
colour for Sirius has occasionally
been reported in earlier times. The
renowned Chinese historian, Sīmă
Qiān (±140-86 BCE), produced an
astrological statement to that
effect: “When the Wolf changes
colour, there will be much piracy
and theft.” His western colleague,
Hephaestio of Thebes (4th century
CE), allowed for a clear variation:
“… if Sirius rises bright and white
and its appearance shines through,
then the Nile will rise high and
there will be abundance, but if it
rises fiery and reddish there will
be war”. Manilius and Avienus,
meanwhile, reported a ‘sea-blue’
colour for the star.
If the behaviour of stars is
controlled electrically, the puzzle
receives an almost instant solution.
In his book The Electric Sky, the
American electrical engineer, Donald
Scott, offers a masterful refutation
of the accepted theory of stellar
evolution. A list of
counter-examples of this theory
includes Sirius. On the substitute
‘electric star model’, the behaviour
of stars as “balls of electric
plasma” is determined by the
intensity of electrical input.
Repeated changes could have resulted
in nova-like fluctuations in colour
and brightness, which may have ended
in a binary pair resulting from
fissioning. Clearly, the entrenched
idea that stars are fueled by
nuclear fusion and evolve in a
uniformitarian manner can no longer
be taken as read.
Contributed by Rens Van Der Sluijs
http://mythopedia.info
Books by Rens Van
Der Sluijs:
The Mythology of the World Axis;
Exploring the Role of Plasma in
World Mythology
http://www.lulu.com/content/1085275
The World Axis as an
Atmospheric Phenomenon
http://www.lulu.com/content/1305081
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