Epsilon Aurigae

[Marnee]

"How do you distinguish between mass and matter?"

Well the same way we always have, since Newton and even earlier. Inertial mass is defined as a property of a given quantity of matter at the time is it observed (measured). From wikipedia: "is a measure of an object's resistance to changing its state of motion when a force is applied." This would be true assuming an electric universe or a gravity universe. The question is: what is mass really a function of? This is where ideas like electromass come in. I totally dig this idea....

In EU mass is considered variable for it is dependent on the pervasive (and always fluxing) electromagnetic field.

[nick c]

All they know is that the star is variable. They suspect it is a binary star, but they can never see the companion that is "eclipsing" it. Turn of the century they thought it might be a "semi-transparent"(???) star, but now they seem to think that the companion is a 'disk with a hole in it', because there is a period of minor brightening at the centerpoint of the eclipse period. In addition, the "eclipse" lasts pretty damn long by eclipse standards.

Here is a diagram of that proposed arrangement of the Epsilon Aurigae system:
http://www.hposoft.com/Astro/PEP/EAUR/EAURMYS.html

[mharratsc]

I have no words... the pure genius of being able to deduce that a solar-system-sized flat washer is in orbit around a distant star!

And here I was starting to believe in the EU theory, silly me! >.<


Mike H.

[Lloyd]

* In my reading of the article it sounded like a disk was not observed at all. What was observed was brightening and dimming of the star at various intervals. A disk with a hole in it could supposedly account for the pattern, but only if the disk changes shape or orientation, as I recall. So don't put a lot of faith in the disk. I believe the pattern can also be accounted for by 2 or more planets in a similar orbit etc.

[KickLaBuka]

Where's the link to your book? I never did find it. I don't have time to read it anyway, but others may.

http://electromass.com
or google search electromass
or google search Justin Sandburg

It's right up your ally Lloyd. I hope you find the time. It takes at most 3 hours of heavy reading and 3 days of thought.

[nick c]

hi Lloyd,

* In my reading of the article it sounded like a disk was not observed at all. What was observed was brightening and dimming of the star at various intervals. A disk with a hole in it could supposedly account for the pattern, but only if the disk changes shape or orientation, as I recall. So don't put a lot of faith in the disk. I believe the pattern can also be accounted for by 2 or more planets in a similar orbit etc.

I don't buy into the disk explanation either, I posted that diagram so that we could see what was being proposed. I don't think planets could account for the data either. The problem is with the length of time of the eclipse period and in the middle of that period there is a slight brightening. Epsilon Aurigae is a very mysterious star! perhaps it is not even an eclipsing binary?

nick c

[kc0itf]

Nice to see a good discussion here!

I posted the website since it seems a major initiative of the IYA. Even though they want to hear citizen theories, which ones will they accept? Maybe this can be a foot in the door for EU!

[nick c]

Here is a link to an article on Epsilon Aurigae from Astonomy Magazine.

Recent observations also suggest ongoing changes within the system, as might be consistent with a red giant evolving to a white dwarf.

This is one of the few genuine mysteries left to us in the galaxy, and it might be changing before our eyes. "[It's happening] on a time scale of decades rather than centuries or millions of years," said Robert Stencel of the University of Denver.
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=8501

Perhaps we may have another (rapid movement in the Hertsprung-Russell Diagram) anomaly to the accepted theory of stellar evolution?

nick c

[kc0itf]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100108.html

[junglelord]

There's A "Dark Disk of Material" Hovering Out In Space

Some kind of obstruction is blocking our view of Epsilon Aurigae, a star in the constellation Auriga. Its exact nature is unknown — but astronomers say that if you've got a telescope, you could help them figure it out.

Epsilon Aurigae is a binary system, or a star locked in a pattern of mutual orbit with a second body. It lies in the constellation Auriga, about two thousand light-years away from Earth. We like this star, because it gives us the chance to shout out to some old-school Green Day.

About every twenty-seven years, Epsilon Aurigae undergoes an eclipse that lasts between twenty and twenty-four Earth months. During this time, the light from the star dims appreciably. Astronomers aren't sure what causes the eclipse; they believe it's the companion body in the binary system, but there's disagreement as to what exactly that body might be.

One popular school of thought is that the orbiting, eclipsing body is a huge disk of... something. Possibly dust and space debris, but really, no one is sure. Robert Stencel, a professor of astronomy at Denver University and longtime studier of Epsilon Aurigae, described the mystery object as "a dark disk of material" in a recent press release. "The exact shape and makeup of the disk has been unknown," said Stencel, "but it will be better defined soon."

"Soon," because there's another eclipse happening right now, and that affords us the chance to study the phenomenon again. This is where you and I come in, if we have any stargazing equipment. A project called Citizen Sky has put out an open call for amateur astronomers to watch Auriga and contribute information on the mysterious star-blocker. (Stencel is a team member of Citizen Sky, in addition to his professorial duties. He wears many hats, it seems.)

Epsilon Aurigae is so bright that it can be seen from just about anywhere on Earth, so if you're of a mind, head over to the Citizen Sky site and see whether it looks interesting. If it turns out — and I'm just going to say what we're all thinking here — if it turns out that the object orbiting Epsilon Aurigae is an alien mothership of some kind, and you're the first to identify it as such, then there's a decent chance you could get the thing named after yourself.

I know what it is, its plasma in dark mode!
Lets call it Junglelords Dark Mode Plasma Ring!

[Frost]

http://spitzer.caltech.edu/news/1036-ss ... to-a-Close

But Hoard and his colleagues were most excited about nailing down the radius of the disk to approximately four times the distance between Earth and the sun. This enabled the team to create a multi-wavelength model that explained all the features of the system. If they assumed the F star was actually a much less massive, dying star, and they also assumed that the eclipsing object was a single B star embedded in the dusty disk, everything snapped together.

Are there spectral changes associated with the dimming event? The various descriptions seem to imply that there are, perhaps information about these spectral changes would help us determine the best EU explanation.

[mharratsc]

I imagine something along the lines of a capacitor. I believe it was Sirius A & B that I was reading about on one of the plasma cosmology websites that said that Sirius A shines pretty bright in the visible spectrum, and B they couldn't even see for the longest time. They pointed Chandra at it tho and saw that B was incandescent, glowing super bright in x-rays.

I wonder if they've bothered to point any of the other scopes out that way, other than opticals?

It's possible that E.A. has a non-optical-emitting counterpart, and they're just spinning around each other, behaving like a relaxation ocillator? One star eclipsing another isn't the only way that a star could be dimming out like that.

Think of it like a really long duration EU pulsar, maybe.