- Photo Credit: NASA/STScI/CfA/P Challis
- Supernova 1987A is the closest supernova event since
the invention of the telescope.
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- Exploding the Myth of the Imploding Supernova
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- (When a star called "SK -69 202" exploded on
February 24, 1987, becoming "Supernova 1987A", the shock to
conventional theory was as great as the visual wonder in the heavens.
The event did not "emulate the theory", but rather appears to
have involved catastrophic electrical discharge.)
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- Prior to Supernova 1987A, astronomers assumed that a
supernova signaled the death throes of a red supergiant star. But the
star that exploded -- SK -69 202 -- was a blue supergiant, perhaps 20
times smaller than a red supergiant and a much different breed of star.
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- Astronomers had long supposed that supernovae occur when
a star "exhausts its nuclear fuel", causing a collapse or implosion
followed by a violent "rebound" effect when the outer layers
of the star hit the core. The resulting blast, they said, ejects a spherical
shell of material into interstellar space where it collides with its own
slower moving stellar wind generated during its earlier, more stable phases.
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- But Supernova 1987A tells a different story.
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- Pictured above is the changing appearance of Supernova
1987A over a 27-month period as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The photograph shows three axially aligned rings. The bright inner ring
is about 1.3 light-years in diameter. The conventional theory of supernovae
had not predicted, or in any way anticipated, the distinctive bi-polar
structure of Supernova 1987A, similar to that of many nebulas now documented
(Link).
Nor did the theory have anything to say about the bright "beads".
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- Since there is an entrenched habit today of reinterpreting
the surprises of the space age as if they were not really surprises,
readers would do well to remember the original statement by Dr. Chris
Burrows of the European Space Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute
in Baltimore, Maryland, when Supernova 1987A was first discovered. "This
is an unprecedented and bizarre object. We have never seen anything behave
like this before". Thus, the "Astronomy Picture of the Day"
for July 5, 1996, states without equivocation that "the origins of
these rings still remains a mystery" (Link:).
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- Nevertheless, the inertia of prior theory is strong enough
that astronomers continue to identify the rings as "shells"
of gas struck by the supernova's high-energy "shock front" --
though it is only necessary to look at the pictures to see that the rings
are not shells. They are tori (rings) around a dynamic center occupying
a common axis -- a characteristic structure observed in high-energy plasma
discharge experiments. But the crucial feature of SN 1987A is the bright
beads.
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- Both the number and position of the beads conforms to
Birkeland current filaments in a powerful plasma discharge known as a
"z-pinch." Electrical theorist Wallace Thornhill has predicted,
".the ring will not grow as a shock-wave-produced ring would be expected
to. Some bright spots may be seen to rotate about each other and to merge.
It is an opportunity .to be able to verify the electric discharge nature
of a supernova."
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- More than fifty years ago a British scientist, Dr. Charles
E. R. Bruce (1902-1979), argued that the bipolar shape, temperatures and
magnetic fields of "planetary nebulae" could be explained as
an electrical discharge. Bruce was ideally situated to make the discovery,
being both an electrical engineer versed in high-energy lightning behavior
and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was ignored.
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- Since that time, the structure and dynamics of high-energy
electrical discharge in plasma has been well researched -- most importantly,
in the work of Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfvén, and over the past
two decades or more by Alfvén's close colleague, Anthony Peratt.
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- The work of the cosmic electricians bears directly on
the "Iron Sun" debate. When Oliver Manuel began to formulate
his model of the Sun (Link),
ideas about supernovae lay at the heart of his thinking. From a study
of the unusual isotopic composition of meteorites, Manuel had concluded
that the objects had formed from the remains of a supernova. In this,
he was following a tenet of conventional astronomy, which argues that
elements heavier than iron and nickel in the solar system were created
by distant supernovae over billions of years. Except that Manuel concluded
that the supernova creating iron and other heavy element abundances in
meteorites was the precursor to our own Sun.
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- Though the Iron Sun model brings with it an insightful
critique of the standard nuclear fusion model of the Sun, Manuel did not
break free from the old gravitational concepts on the nature of supernovae;
but he did add a new twist, suggesting that the Sun hides a neutron star
around which accreted an iron shell after the Sun's supernova explosion.
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- As the electrical theorists see it, the mistake of following
a conventional myth invariably set Manuel on a dead-end course. The Electric
Sun model, these theorists claim, can account for all of the strange phenomena
exhibited by the Sun and its environment. And the explanations do not
require them to guess what is inside the Sun or to posit unlikely events
leading to the birth of the Sun.
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- Concerning the birth of stars, the Electric Sun model
embraces the new science of plasma cosmology. Plasma cosmologists can
demonstrate the principles of star birth in the plasma "z-pinch";
and they achieve their results both in the laboratory and in supercomputer
simulations. In contrast, the earlier notion of gravitationally collapsing
molecular clouds began as a theoretical guess and never found the required
observational support. Nor has it been shown how planets can form from
a ring of dust about a star, a crucial requirement.
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- Stellar explosions have always been a problem for conventional
gravitational theory. What could trigger the sudden release of such prodigious
energy? The sudden gravitational implosion of the entire star is an ingenious
idea for a trigger but highly implausible because it requires spherical
symmetry on the vast scale of a giant star. The ejections observed from
supernova remnants show that the process is axially symmetric. However,
if a star is the focus of a galactic electric discharge together with
internal charge stratification, it may naturally undergo an expulsive
stellar "lightning-flash" to relieve the electrical stress.
An electric star has electromagnetic energy stored in an equatorial current
ring such as the torus (imaged in UV light) around our Sun. As stated
by electrical theorist Wallace Thornhill, "Matter is ejected at low
latitudes by discharges between the current ring and the star. The Sun
does this regularly on a small scale. However, if the stored energy reaches
some critical value it may be released in the form of a bipolar axial
discharge, or ejection of matter along the rotational axis."
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- Creation of heavy metals, according to Thornhill, does
not require a supernova. In the electric model of stars, electrical energy
produces heavy elements near the surface of all stars -- a claim now given
additional support by Manuel's own findings.
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- But the Iron Sun model makes the curious claim that energy
from neutrons, supposedly repelled from its neutron star core, provides
most of the Sun's radiant energy and the protons for the solar wind.
The Electric Sun model, on the other hand, says that external electrical
energy, supplied from the galaxy, is responsible for producing the radiant
output of the Sun, the solar wind and most of the heavy elements seen
in the solar spectrum. The production of iron atoms requires energy input.
So all stars participate in the synthesis of heavy elements. (This is
a far more satisfying theory than relying upon rare supernovae, which
then disperse their heavy elements into deep space). The solar wind is
merely an equatorial current sheet forming part of the circuit that "drives"
the Sun. The magnetic field of the Sun is generated by a varying direct-current
power input to the Sun. It is only to be expected, therefore, that the
observed power variations would be reflected in the sunspot cycle and
in changes in both x-ray brightness and the magnetic field of the Sun.
No mysterious "dynamo" inside the Sun could explain these synchronous
patterns.
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- The Electric Sun model anticipates the building of heavier
atomic nuclei from the protons and neutrons at the foot points of solar
flares. But it also expects most nuclear reactions to occur in the tornadic
discharges (Link)
that form solar granulations (where the nuclear kitchen is in full view).
In particular, the latter prediction fits the observed anti-correlation
between neutrino count and sunspot number. The more sunspots there are,
the fewer solar granulations and neutrinos. This unique correlation does
not fit any model that proposes an energy source inside the Sun, unrelated
to sunspots.
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- For an Electric Sun, what happens in the Sun's core is
of little consequence. We should expect an incompressible solid or liquid
core composed of heavy elements gathered in the primordial z-pinch and
later synthesized in the continual stellar discharge. But since the glowing
sphere we call the Sun is an electric discharge high in its atmosphere,
we should naturally expect the lightest element, hydrogen, to predominate
as the plasma medium for the discharge. There is no need to postulate
an internal source of energy to support the photosphere since (as direct
observation confirms) the photosphere and phenomena above the photosphere,
such as flares and prominences, are not governed by gravity.
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- The energy which fuels the Sun may be transferred over
cosmic distances via Birkeland current transmission lines. This energy
may be released gradually or stored in a stellar circuit and unleashed
catastrophically. The cosmic circuits now revealed threading themselves
along the arms of the Milky are the energy source for the supernova explosion-
not the star. Only an external power source can explain why the continuing
energy output of some nebulae such as Eta Carina exceeds that available
from the central star (Link).
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- A supernova does not signal the death throes of a star.
There is nothing inside the star to "die." Nor does it herald
the birth of a neutron star.
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- To be continued
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- Thanks to Wallace Thornhill (www.holoscience.com) for
much of the scientific content of this series.
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