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A red giant star rises over an imaginary
horizon. Artist: James Gitlin.
Seeing Red Giants
Jun
29, 2010
Many red giant stars exhibit
variations in their luminosities
over periods of several months to a
few years. Recent observations “show
that all the possible explanations…fail.”
Of course, what consensus
astronomers think is possible
excludes the possibilities from
dissenters and other sciences. The
consensus model attributes the
luminosity variations to mechanical
pulsations: the star expands and
contracts, growing brighter and
dimmer, its light output bouncing
like a lid on a boiling pot. The
boiling pot is the assumption that
defines the consensus: a star is a
gravitationally bound and internally
heated ball of gas.
Complicating the consensus model is
a longer-period secondary
variability in some of the stars. As
well, the stars eject an abundance
of matter or surround themselves
with expanding rings. It’s hard to
stretch the Victorian-era theories
of gravity and gas around those
observations, and the sharp details
of the new observations have poked
holes in the theories’ coherence.
The Electric Universe is one of the
dissenters: a star is an
electromagnetically bound and
externally powered discharge in
plasma. A
red giant is a star without a
photosphere. Instead of the
high-current-density arcs, or anode
tufts, that radiate heat and light
at high temperatures from the
“surfaces” of stars like the Sun, a
low-temperature chromosphere has
expanded to scavenge enough
electrons to maintain the red
giant’s discharge. Without a
photosphere, the star lacks the
regulatory mechanism that maintains
a constant output in sun-like stars.
(See “Transistor Action at the Solar
Surface” in The Electric Sky by
Donald Scott, p. 96.) Variations in
the supply current cause the
chromosphere to expand and contract,
balancing the electron flow. The
current density—and so the
luminosity—vary in step.
The same effect occurs on the Sun
above the (regulated) photosphere.
The corona is exposed to the
unmoderated supply current, and its
luminosity varies accordingly. Since
the Sun is much smaller than a red
giant, the current density at the
corona is much larger and the
radiation is in the ultraviolet and
x-ray range. In those wavelengths,
the
corona is dim at solar minimum
and bright at solar maximum.
The chromosphere of a red giant is
cool, so it is loaded with molecules
and dust (clumps of molecules). It
acts as an anode in the discharge,
and the molecules and dust are
positively charged. They act as
charge carriers in the same way that
protons do in the hotter discharge
current (called, in consensus
theory, a “wind”) of the Sun.
Astronomers see this flow of
material and call it mass ejection,
ignoring its electrical nature.
The acceleration of the charge
carriers away from the anode—a
characteristic that contradicts the
idea of mechanical mass ejection—is
due to the electric field.
Naturally, as the driving voltage
varies, the current—and hence the
loss of matter—varies. The rings
seen around some red giants appear
when the dusty and molecular plasma
of the positive current collects in
the toroidal or ring currents that
form around the discharge axes.
A persistent current requires a
circuit, otherwise the positive
charges build up at one end and the
negative at the other until the
electric field between them cancels
out the driving voltage and the
current stops. The presence of other
elements in the circuit along with
the red giant’s chromosphere can
produce oscillations in the current.
Those other elements are such things
as double layers, which may be
invisible and which have capacitive
properties, and the galactic
Birkeland currents that act as
transmission cables, which have
inductive properties. Thus the
periodic variations in the red
giants’ luminosity are neither
unexpected nor difficult to explain:
Our radio and television
technologies are based on the
fundamental ability of capacitors
and inductors to cause oscillations
in current flows.
These circuits can be traced in the
spiral arms and magnetic fields of
galaxies and between galaxies. The
Electric Universe insight that a
star is a plasma discharge in an
external circuit provides a vision
of the cosmos that is the
diametrical opposite of the
consensus vision. In the latter, the
cosmos is a scattering of isolated
specks in a vast emptiness; in the
former, it is an interconnected web
of coupled circuits.
Mel Acheson
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YouTube video, first glimpses of Episode Two in the "Symbols of an Alien Sky"
series.
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Three ebooks in the Universe Electric series are
now available. Consistently
praised for easily understandable text and exquisite graphics.
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