Mar 27 2008
Arguing About Stars
“Like all sciences, astronomy advances most rapidly when confronted with exceptions to its theories…” (An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, Bradley Carroll & Dale Ostlie)“By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.” (Psalm 33:6, NIV)
Contemporary thought in astronomy and cosmology says that stars start life as clouds of dust in the vast emptiness of space. These clouds are compressed through collisions or by blast waves from supernovae and may eventually condense into one or more stars. Stars then go through a multi-billion year lifecycle:
Most stars, including the sun, are “main sequence stars,” fueled by nuclear fusion converting hydrogen into helium. For these stars, the hotter they are, the brighter. These stars are in the most stable part of their existence; this stage generally lasts for about 5 billion years.
As stars begin to die, they become giants and supergiants (above the main sequence). These stars have depleted their hydrogen supply and are very old. The core contracts as the outer layers expand. These stars will eventually explode (becoming a planetary nebula or supernova, depending on their mass) and then become white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes (again depending on their mass).
Smaller stars (like our Sun) eventually become faint white dwarfs (hot, white, dim stars) that are below the main sequence. These hot, shrinking stars have depleted their nuclear fuels and will eventually become cold, dark, black dwarfs.
[This obviously presupposes that God is nowhere in sight, and has no hand in stellar creative activities.] So color and luminosity are generally linked to a star’s temperature, as shown in the “H-R Diagram” to right. Or so most astronomers believe.
Since the color of a heated body depends on temperature, the different classes take on different, though subtle, colors, from slightly reddish for class M to orange for K, through yellow- white to bluish for classes B and O. Star colors can be noted rather easily even with the unaided eye, especially when those close together contrast against each other. Stars of classes L and T, none of which are visible to the naked eye, range from red through deep red to “infrared” (these optically invisible under any circumstances).
Not necessarily so, some would argue.
There are a group of astronomers, astrophysicists and cosmologists who hold to the Electric Universe theory, which contends that electrical charges acting in space offer a better explanation for ‘The Way Things Are’ in space.
There are stars that violate the standard model of stellar evolution. Stars that are too cool and too small for atomic fusion to take place in their cores have caused astronomical researchers to scramble for explanations. Since stars are supposed to have a mass of at least 75 times that of Jupiter for fusion reactions to occur, another speculative mechanism for what powers them has been suggested: gravitational collapse. In other words, gravity is pulling the cold, dark star into greater compaction, which must be what is creating the additional heat and x-ray emissions.
“In the ES [Electric Star] model, perhaps the most important factor in determining any given star’s characteristics is the strength of the current density in Amperes per square meter (A/m2) measured at that star’s surface. If a star’s incoming current density increases, the arc discharges on its surface (photospheric tufts) will get hotter, change color (away from red, toward blue), and get brighter. The absolute brightness of a star, therefore, depends on two things: the strength of the current density impinging into its surface, and the star’s size (the star’s diameter). Therefore, we add another scale to the horizontal axis of the HR diagram: Current Density at the Star’s Surface.”
The really interesting bit is that NASA and the established space community want nothing to do with such a view of the cosmos. That’s not surprising, because the folks at Thunderbolts, one of the primary Electric Universe web sites, describe their theory this way:
Electric Universe [challenges] “the myths of ‘Big Bang’ cosmology, and does so without resorting to black holes, dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, magnetic ‘reconnection,’ or any other fictions needed to prop up a failed theory.
To NASA and much of academia, such a view seems to be as dangerous an idea as a loving God who “determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.”
The earth, the stars and all of Creation provide a general revelation of the nature and hand of God. The more we learn in any field of scientific observation, the more we see His hand in everything. We can argue about the specifics of the pieces, and how they all fit together, but we can’t escape the growing evidence that the hand of God was and is behind it all.
“You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.” (Nehemiah 9:6, NIV)
