by Ted Frimet

I got burned

clouds, sun and the fabric of space-time

Well, I was out late last night, with my 12” Dobsonian, and my feral cat Priss. She was a good girl, and stayed aloof, while the local gophers and skunks didn’t venture very close. Actually, no critters at all!

All was well. Despite the heat and humidity, the stars didn’t twinkle much that night. I must conclude that the upper atmosphere was stable enough to try out a 6.7 mm eyepiece on the Ring Nebula. However, I settled into an 11 mm for the best part of the evening. Later on, while into my second bottle of water, I put in a 2 inch 56mm, and kicked back and watched the star show.

I had attempted a long sleeve shirt to ward off mosquitoes, but the humidity was too trying. Down to a tee-shirt and some Deep Woods Off, I must say, that there were either no buggers about, or the repellent worked most excellently. An outdoor astronomer can ask for nothing better. Truly.

Days leading up to my few hours of scope time, I was pondering Sol. The conundrum of the outermost part of our Sun, being hotter than the inner part is, to say the least, counter intuitive. However, with the presence of iron at its core, a cooler internal temperature must prevail.

Soon, the Parker Solar Probe, http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu, should collect the data to help us make heads or tails of the plexing nature of inconsistent temperatures. And unlock a few more mysteries contained within.

Last month, I wrote an essay on Cepheid Variables, and noted how Helium sucks light. Knowing that the suns surface was hotter than its core, gave me pause on the conclusions I supported, within the essay.

As of late, I turned to a youtube channel, in the hopes that there might be some clarification. I didn’t find much. Not just yet.

I commented on the above youtube channel:

Hi. At time slot 5:07, we are stating that the further away from the core of the star, the cooler it gets. This isn’t so with our star, so why would it be true with a cepheid variable? The conundrum we are trying to work out, as vexing as it is, is that the periphery of our Sol is HOTTER than the internal core.

I wrote an essay based upon similar ideas that you presented, and neither of our statements seem to hold water.

I wrote:

“I crawl from under the weight of my books, my tempest, and key into Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cepheid_variable (5). It’s author(s), brings to light so simply that it is the veil of Helium that obscures our light. That during the due course of ionizing helium, the ionized gas becomes opaque, even more so, when both electrons are stripped off. The trapping of heat, that is an increase in temperature, causes an expansion. And with this expansion comes a subsequent cooling; it becomes less ionized, permitting contraction, and allowing starlight to escape. It is known as the Eddington Valve (or kappa-mechanism).”

Here is the full essay:

https://princetonastronomy.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/man-bites-dog/

Of course, it comes to mind, that I was just comparing a core to the corona. Perhaps all the physics takes place at the periphery of the star,

and has little to do with the internal workings of the cepheid, herself.

Working backwards in time, I didn’t stop there. There have been many times during outreach, when I help people visualize the solar activity, and make it akin to earth bound clouds. It is within this scope, that I have given this a few days thought.

As a reminder, when we look up at a cloud, we do not see into it. For all practical purposes, when we use our naked eye telescopes to peer at this meteorological wonder, we only see its periphery.

You always see the outside of the cloud.

I have been trying to use a visual model of clouds, to try to understand how celestial matter shapes space-time. So far, I have managed to ascertain a thought model that the interaction happens at the periphery of the cloud, and not within. That is, there is no averaging of matter density and a calculated point within the sphere of the sun, earth or moon, when it comes to interacting with fabric of space-time. I allude that it happens at the skin.

Well, that is all that I have, so far, and will continue on with my quest to establish space-time curvature with matter.

Now, I am thinking about clouds, once again. The light scattering affect does not come from within the cloud. And a point of fact, that the light you see does not come from direct tangential photons, either. Light streams across and interacts broadly through-out the surface of the cloud. And we get to see it. If we had the biological capacity, we could see it holographically. Well, I will leave that to holographic photographers to show you the clouds, some day.

And then I thought about star light.

Yes of course photons take millions of years to pass from the furnace below sols surface. And eject at the periphery. Though, we never really considered that photonic activity streams across the surface of Sol, and that we get these tangential streams striking our retinas. That is, the light that you see, may not have come directly from the point you think you are looking at.

If we were to simplify the surface of the sun, as a sphere, then it becomes more tangible to visualize energy passing across the surface, akin to a tsunami wave across the curvature of our greatest and vast oceans.

The wave can contract or expand. The tsunami can grow in height, or become a shrinking violet. As a tsunami encounters shallow water, its velocity decreases, and its height grows.

https://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/tsunami/general/physics/transform.html

Well, it is well worth noting that the maximum velocity of light does not alter. However, there are a few encumbrances that do affect the velocity of light in a medium.

The outer sphere of the sun is akin to shallow water, as it is less dense. I can only hope that the Parker Probe confirms this.

And in the case of ionizing Helium, which originally blocked light from escaping, in a cepheid variable, is affected not by a cooling affect, but by an increase of wave velocity in the shallow waters of the suns photosphere.

Not unlike the tsunami, whose height grows in shallow water, the periphery of our sun grows in response to diminished densities. Ultimately, this drop in density permits Helium to collect its precious cargo of previously stripped electrons, and allows the passage of a greater energy flux.

Variability of cepheids is based upon a tidal ebb and flow across a suns surface.