X: ROBITAILLE'S IDEAS
Star & Planet Formation & Features
Tetralogue on the Liquid Sun Revolution - Dr. P.M. Robitaille & Jim Keller, DemystifySci
Following is a Transcript of parts of the above video. The X in the title of this post means I don’t want to add this to Charles’ book as is. I want to revise it quite a bit so it’s much easier to understand. I’ve already added some of Robitaille’s material to Charles’ book. I think it improves Charles’ model. I may find eventually that it may superceed his model.
CONTENTS — FIND IN PAGE
SPECULATIVE ASTRONOMY & EARTH’S COMPOSITION
ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS & GALACTIC DYNAMICS
ELECTRIC & MAGNETIC FIELDS IN ASTRONOMY
MODELING THE SUN
And so, atoms are vibrating, producing a blackbody spectrum through their motion inside the lattice. But the lattice could also be moving. What’s happening in the Sun is that convection currents develop, and there’s energy in those convection currents. You get a certain temperature, which you could link to energy. E = kT — Boltzmann’s equation states that energy is equal to Boltzmann’s constant times temperature, a well-known expression in physics. So if you know the temperature, then using Boltzmann’s equation, you know the energy involved in that system. But that is only the vibrational energy of the system.
What I'm saying is you don't have equipartition in the Sun. When you have a gas, chemists talk about different modes of energy. Energy is distributed in different ways — you have translation, rotation, and vibration. If it's a diatomic gas, the atoms are vibrating, and the diatomic molecule could also be rotating. There's energy in rotation and energy in translation. There's a theory called equipartition theory, which states that energy must be equally distributed in all these different modes. But that doesn't happen in condensed matter. In condensed matter, there is no equipartition. You can have a certain amount of energy in the vibrational mode, which is what we see in the Sun — the vibrational mode of the Sun, with atoms vibrating within the lattice. But then there are also convection currents.
Now, how much energy is in the convection currents? We want to know that. And what I've said is we can see it when a flare occurs at the limb of the Sun. When this happens, gamma rays and X-rays are emitted from the limb, and we detect them. The reason it's at the limb is because of anisotropy — it’s not emitting in all angles but rather preferentially in one direction. At the limb, the angle is right for the radiation to reach Earth, and we see it. Now, why are we detecting X-rays there? Super high-energy light. What's happening is the flare breaks out from the Sun, ejecting material away. Material flowing along the surface then collides with it, like hitting a wall. That impact transfers all the translational energy into emission, and we see the X-ray.
What does this tell us? The energy equivalent of the convection currents reaches millions of degrees. That’s why, in the New York Times article, I wrote that the surface of the Sun is at millions of degrees. But all that energy is trapped in translation — we don’t sample it directly. We only observe vibrational energy through the Sun’s spectrum. I don't think people understood it — they probably thought, "Well, the surface of the Sun can't be at millions of degrees." But there was a reason I said it. That is the reason — we have energy trapped in convection currents that we aren’t sampling.
We also have energy in conduction. We have electrons. When we talk about plasmas, I said the Sun is a one-component plasma — you have a lattice. The protons are arranged in lattice points, while the electrons are free to flow through the lattice. The electrons are deionized, providing conduction pathways within the lattice.
In the metallic hydrogen model of the Sun, you can actually have conductors and insulators. The intercalate zones act as insulators, while the metallic hydrogen layer, the hexagonal planar layer, functions as a conductor. It’s a much better model because it could help explain why we observe magnetic fields in the Sun. You must have controlled conduction — electron flow or charge motion — to generate a magnetic field. How do you achieve that in a gaseous Sun? You can't. But in the metallic hydrogen model, conduction occurs naturally, explaining the presence of magnetic fields.
Now, you used the word temperature for convection energy. Yes, you can link convection energy to a temperature. That concept was confusing before. Imagine you have a ball, and inside, someone is swinging a heavy weight. The weight doesn't get hot, but it holds a lot of energy. A simple thought experiment illustrates this idea. Suppose you have an iron box that is hot, emitting blackbody radiation. Now, take another box — this one isn’t hot, but inside, there's a spinning weight. Occasionally, the weight collides with the walls, converting kinetic energy into heat, which then radiates outward.
The two boxes could have the same blackbody temperature. Yet, one could contain 100 times more energy because convection holds energy in a way independent of temperature. The Sun functions similarly — while the vibrational energy defines its blackbody spectrum, the true energy stored in convection holds energy in a really interesting way, independent of temperature. It needs a method to translate the temperature, which I really liked. If there's a large amount of convection energy in the Sun and then it hits something, you can sort of gauge how much energy is in that by what the emission is. Then you have the conductive energy too, which is kind of like what you would feel if you grabbed a live wire, I suppose. But you can also see the magnetic fields, and you should be able to calculate this. As an engineer, my brain goes to what sensors we need or whether we already have enough data.
How do we start making the models to figure this out? Because, again, it would be useful to know how the Sun works. This is a really interesting failure point of magnetohydrodynamics because it doesn't actually deal with the currents themselves. It assumes the magnetic fields are baked into the equations. This is especially true of the science we've inherited. I was taught that equations describe atoms, but we can only solve them for something as simple as hydrogen. Maybe we can, maybe we can't. At some point, all science becomes statistical or curve-fitted, and while that is useful, you have to know the boundaries of it. Because as soon as you're outside the boundaries, you're talking nonsense.
The magnetic fields in the Sun are clearly very dynamic, especially during flaring periods, where things get wildly intense. This is an interesting entry point to many crises in astrophysics and cosmology, where boundary conditions are exceeded. The famous Schwarzschild solution to the field equations supposedly opens the door to black holes, but it obviously exceeds the boundary conditions of the theory it was designed for. All the fun stuff happens when you go beyond physical reality and start proposing exceptions, all of which are untestable. By the way, I think Steve will tell you that it wasn’t Schwarzschild but Hilbert who made the mistake. It's not actually Schwarzschild’s solution, though astronomers keep attributing it to him.
... Planck had included a derivation of Kirchhoff’s law in his book, but when Steve and I analyzed it, we found serious problems that no one had ever pointed out before. For those who don’t know, Kirchhoff’s law states that within any opaque object — meaning light cannot pass through its walls — the radiation inside will always be the same and will depend only on temperature and frequency. Kirchhoff never conducted any experiments to prove his law; he derived it mathematically. But his law is critical for Planck because it gives a universal nature to Planck’s constant and Boltzmann’s constant.
Later in The Theory of Heat Radiation, Planck claims that these constants would hold true universally. He even argued that if an alien being on another planet measured them, they would arrive at the same values. But if Kirchhoff’s law is wrong, then we have no universality of these constants, and Planck had said that these constants will be measured even if you had an alien being in another planet far away, he would get Planck's constant, he will come to the same constant, and that is not true because Kirchhoff’s law is false.
SPECULATIVE ASTRONOMY & EARTH’S COMPOSITION
I know it's funny that the Earth is made out of exactly the right atoms to make computers, right? Every once in a while, though, the universe kind of winks at you a little bit, and more than a little bit, it seems like. Yeah, it's more than a little.
And so, in relation to that, is this question of electric currents. Because I know that in terms of the Sun, electricity is important. When we talk to astrophysicists and cosmologists, currents are not a major factor in how they model anything. They don’t think about currents or chemistry much at all. There is astrochemistry, but they have very limited material on the Sun. They try to explain only the reactions they already know. If they have calcium hydride, they know they need to mix calcium with hydrogen to get calcium hydride, but they don't try to think beyond that in terms of condensation reactions on the Sun. That's a big difference.
Earlier, you said the reason the corona appears to be at millions of degrees is because you have this. Can you — is it fair to call it electrochemistry in the corona? We know that's what's happening. Okay, so let's talk about that — why is it important? First, we know the corona has a continuous spectrum.
For astronomers, the way they try to justify the spectrum of the corona is they say, "Well, wait, it's actually a photospheric spectrum that has been scattered by relativistic electrons, causing this continuous spectrum in the corona." Because they don't have condensed matter there, how do they get a continuous spectrum? They just scatter the photospheric spectrum, and then by scattering it, they can get rid of the Fraunhofer lines. The photospheric spectrum — if the surface of the Sun is emitting a blackbody — has atoms above it absorbing radiation, creating Fraunhofer lines superimposed on that spectrum.
Also, in order for them to get that blackbody spectrum in the first place, since they assume a gas model, how do they get it? I had said that to get a blackbody spectrum, you need the vibration of nuclei within a lattice structure. They don't have that in a gas model. So what they do is, in the Sun, they say most of the continuous spectrum comes from the negative hydrogen ion, which is hydrogen with two electrons. That’s highly unstable. It should not be present at all.
The problem is that if you look at the main sequence of stars, temperature changes along the sequence. As you go to O-class stars, you still get the continuous spectrum, but now you can't use the negative hydrogen ion to explain it. They need a different agency to explain that spectrum. How do they get the spectrum on the Sun now? It was Wilt and Chandrasekhar who said negative hydrogen ions exist at the photosphere level, causing the continuous spectrum. But that's not sufficient — they need other processes.
That led to the stellar opacity project — I think it was at Los Alamos — where they took a whole bunch of processes that had nothing to do with thermal radiation, summed them together, and said, "Oh, with all these processes added up, we can get a blackbody spectrum." The problem is none of those individual processes occur at the same temperatures. They're looking at transitions like bound-bound transitions within atoms and combining them all to create a soup that eventually mimics a blackbody spectrum.
What I say is no — the Sun has to generate a blackbody spectrum the same way we observe blackbody radiation on Earth. It has to happen instantly, not through summing unrelated processes. Eventually, science will shift to a condensed matter model to explain this. Above the Sun’s surface, neutral atoms absorb blackbody radiation, forming the Fraunhofer spectrum.
Now, in the corona, they don’t have all the same processes they used to explain the Sun’s internal continuous spectrum. They observe a continuous spectrum but don’t have negative hydrogen ions or the mechanisms they claimed to use inside the Sun. So they argue the spectrum originates from photospheric light, scattered by relativistic electrons, which supposedly removes the Fraunhofer lines, leaving behind a continuous spectrum. This idea is absurd. It requires an extremely precise level of selective scattering, fine-tuned to produce exactly the correct spectral distribution. Occam's razor states the simplest explanation is usually correct. What I argue is that the corona is self-luminous, not merely scattering photospheric light.
At the eclipse of 1869 — I believe in Iowa — someone noted the corona was self-luminous. He saw a continuous spectrum and concluded the corona emitted its own light. But astronomy moved away from that conclusion. Instead of accepting that the corona generates its own light, they proposed that relativistic electrons selectively scatter radiation. I reject that. The corona is self-luminous, and we can see structured streamers within it. The corona is not relativistic electrons — it is a dynamic plasma emitting its own light. Moreover, the coronal spectrum reddens as it moves away from the Sun’s surface, meaning it is cooling. Well, this shouldn't be happening if you're just scattering the light of the photosphere, right? Why is the spectrum of the Sun reddening as you move away from the surface? This speaks to temperature — the temperature is lower as you move away.
Okay, but the current theory says we're at millions of degrees, and this gets back to electrochemistry. Why are we getting millions of degrees? What I'm saying is that in the corona, you have condensed material, and it's linked all the way down to the surface of the Sun. You can see that if you take an iron 13 spectrum of the Sun, iron 13 is present very close to the surface and all the way out in the corona. You can see the iron 13 throughout. What’s happening is that you have charged material. It's electropositive, so the corona is plasma — mostly plasma — but there is some condensed matter. That condensed matter is electropositive, and it's bringing charge from the outside of the corona. If you have a neutral atom like iron, it touches this highly electropositive material and loses its electrons. The electrons are then channeled back to the surface of the Sun. When this becomes equivalent to a condensation reaction, heat is involved. To get rid of the heat, the iron promotes one of its remaining electrons, which emits light and removes the heat. That’s the emission line we see — it’s a sign of a condensation process. That’s why the lines are emitting. They are losing electrons and emitting light.
Why is this electropositive material there? Why is it present? I'm not sure, but if you look at the formation of a star — how would we form a star? One way would be through hydrogen clusters. In the modern theory of solar formation, you have a cloud, and it self-gravitates. That’s the standard model of the Sun. The nebular cloud self-gravitates and forms a star, as if the "hands of God" came and pushed the gas together. But the problem is that gases don't self-compress. That doesn't happen. If you cause a gas to gravitationally collapse, as astronomy requires, you actually generate negative heat capacity. As the gas emits light, it becomes hotter. The temperature increases as photons are emitted, which results in negative heat capacity. Normally, a gas has positive heat capacity — if it emits light, it cools.
What’s happening is that all gases on Earth have positive heat capacity. But in astronomy, because they force gases to self-gravitate, their calculations make the heat capacity negative. That error is embedded in their mathematics. They concluded, "Oh yeah, stars will actually heat as they age." Eddington even wrote in his book, "I don't know how we're going to get out of this — how are we going to get out of this vicious cycle?" As a star condenses on itself, the temperature goes up while it radiates away heat. How do they escape this contradiction? They solved it by awarding a Nobel Prize to Chandrasekhar for degenerate matter.
In this model, the star compresses itself until it forms a degenerate object, stopping further compression. That’s why they push the white dwarf theory — it conveniently resolves their negative heat capacity issue for the Sun. These are related problems, not independent ones. They created a mathematical monster and then tried to solve it with degenerate matter in stars. This is also observationally contraindicated because giant nebular clouds are not gravitationally bound. It’s becoming increasingly evident that this assumption is incorrect. Some of these clouds have been observed expanding, showing that gravitational collapse is not happening.
Gases naturally expand to fill a void, so their model just doesn’t work. The mathematics doesn’t work. If gravitational collapse isn’t forming stars, then how are stars built? It’s fairly easy to calculate. Take a gas with the mass of the Sun in a large space. Assign it a temperature and energy, then ask: what are the odds of it collapsing? The gravitational field of any portion of the gas falls off so fast that it doesn’t counteract its natural tendency to disperse just from random thermal motion. It’s not a difficult calculation — it’s straightforward. Pop a huge balloon in space, and it will {scatter}.
So then the counter theory is, "Oh, there's a big gas cloud, and something like a shock wave from a supernova causes movement in the gas to trigger the condensing event." But it's not obvious what. Well, James Jeans went even further with the idea of forming a star from gravitational collapse. Jeans actually invoked photons or some external influence containing the gas, slowly forcing it into self-compression.
But if it’s not self-compression, what is it? What I say is, if you look at cluster chemistry — I'm an inorganic chemist — you see that hydrogen doesn’t just exist as diatomic molecules where two hydrogen atoms come together and stop growing. That’s incorrect. If you add a proton, you get H3+, and you can keep building from there. As long as you have a positive charge, larger and larger clusters can form. Laboratory experiments have produced hydrogen clusters with more than 100 atoms bonded together.
These hydrogen atoms come together, and the electrons within the cluster start to deionize. That’s how they stick together — they share electrons. A star, I argue, begins by a simple process: individual hydrogen atoms come together, and then positive charge accumulates. Eventually, the cluster grows larger and remains electropositive. Once a star forms, where does this positive charge go? I say it gets moved into the corona. The surface of the Sun itself is known to be neutral. Above the granules, there are plenty of neutral atoms. That’s also my argument against the negative hydrogen ion — why don’t we see fluoride or chloride ions?
We don’t see free fluoride or chloride ions, even though hydrogen chloride has been detected in sunspots. If there is chloride and fluoride in the Sun, you never see them as free ions — only as molecules. If that’s true, if even chloride and fluoride don’t appear as free ions, then how would we ever see a free hydrogen anion? It just doesn’t make sense.
Is there any hope of detecting these primordial starlets, these hydrogen clusters? I don’t know what "hope" means in this context — they’re incredibly far away. How would we detect them? Maybe by spectroscopy, but I don’t know what the spectroscopic signature would look like. Maybe we’ve already seen it. If we can already create clusters of 100 hydrogen atoms in the lab, is there a way to stimulate them using ambient radiation in the galaxy and then observe their absorption? That seems like a good engineering approach.
This might just be my ignorance, but maybe someone listening to this video would say, "Oh, well Pierre, here’s a spectrum of H83+ — this thing already exists, and here's its spectral signature." I’ve never seen that data, so I can’t say what it would look like.
What induces hydrogen to start bonding this way? In a gas, it’s all about sharing charge. A proton looks for electrons and simply shares whatever electrons are available. It’s all about deionizing electrons across multiple atoms, and that’s exactly how metallic hydrogen behaves — it shares its electrons extensively.
Neil Ashcroft, who wrote to me, was probably the leading expert on metallic hydrogen theory in this country. When I published the 40 Proof paper, people were upset because I emailed scientists worldwide. My sons and a whole team gathered a list of physics departments worldwide, and we emailed 70,000 physicists the paper. That’s incredible. Physicists cannot claim they don’t know about the 40 Proof paper — I emailed it to 70,000 physicists across the world.
CHARLES’ MODEL OF FILAMENTS
I asked AI if hydrogen clouds form into filaments, because Charles’ model says stars form from electrical implosion of interstellar filaments, so Robitaille may be helping to explain the filaments. Here’s AI’s reply.
Yes, hydrogen gas clouds do form into filaments, which are elongated, thread-like structures crucial for star formation. Here’s a breakdown of the key findings from research:
1. Filaments as Star-Forming Structures
Molecular hydrogen (H₂) in interstellar clouds aggregates into dense, narrow filaments where stars form3,9. These structures act as "stellar nurseries," channeling gas into dense clumps that collapse under gravity to form stars1,4.
For example, the massive filament Maggie (3,900 light-years long) in the Milky Way contains both atomic and molecular hydrogen, with gas converging at points to form dense clouds where molecular hydrogen accumulates2,5,7.
2. Transition from Atomic to Molecular Hydrogen
Filaments like Maggie represent regions where atomic hydrogen (H) transitions to molecular hydrogen (H₂)-a process critical for star formation but still not fully understood2,5,7.
Observations show that molecular hydrogen makes up ~8% of Maggie’s mass, with gas velocities along the filament remaining coherent, indicating a stable structure2,5.
3. Role of Environment and Feedback
Filaments often intersect with infrared bubbles or H II regions created by massive stars. These energetic environments inject kinetic and thermal energy into the gas, influencing star formation rates and cloud dynamics4,9.
For instance, in the filament G47.06+0.26, feedback from young massive stars shapes the gas kinematics and triggers subsequent generations of star formation4.
4. Observational Evidence
Surveys like THOR (using the Very Large Array) have mapped atomic hydrogen filaments, revealing their role in cloud assembly and star formation2,5.
Simulations show that molecular hydrogen’s ortho-to-para ratio (OPR) in filaments affects thermodynamics and chemistry, influencing how dense cores form6.
5. Lab Studies
Experiments with cryogenic hydrogen filaments demonstrate how these structures can be stabilized and manipulated, offering insights into their astrophysical counterparts8.
Summary
Hydrogen gas clouds - both atomic and molecular - naturally organize into filaments due to turbulence, magnetic fields, and gravitational instabilities. These filaments channel gas into dense cores, facilitating star formation. Structures like Maggie highlight the Milky Way’s dynamic interstellar medium, where filaments serve as cosmic highways for material flowing into nascent stars2,3,5,9.
ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS & GALACTIC DYNAMICS
That Monday was Thanksgiving, and John went to work. An astronomer who knew him well was furious after receiving the WMAP paper. I had just finished emailing OSU when he reached out, furious about the paper and eager to talk to John. He said, "Robitaille sent me this WMAP paper," and went on and on. John later told me how he responded — he simply asked him, "Did you read it? Did you take the time to read it?" Some people did take the time to read it, and their responses made that clear. The "40 Proof" paper had a similar reception, downloaded tens of thousands of times from the Progress in Physics server. Dimitri would track these downloads and keep me informed, so I knew the work was being read and considered.
Now, what was the question that prompted this discussion? Oh, why is it positive? You can see that now — it grew as a positive entity. What I’m saying is that it’s like a Van de Graaff generator. The Sun has a corona, and it sends charges outward from the surface. The surface is surrounded by neutrals, which means the expelled charges move away, creating specific effects. I think everything fits — once metallic hydrogen forms, the charges are pushed outward. The Sun is more electron-rich, though it could be close to neutral with positive charges concentrated on the outside. The math in this scenario becomes complex because of the Sun’s immense size, making it difficult to determine the exact charge distribution. Conductors are fascinating because they place all excess charge, whether positive or negative, on the outside, resulting in extremely high field strengths. Even though 99.99% of the matter remains neutral, these powerful fields still interact with atoms in remarkable ways — stripping electrons and creating various spectra.
Now, can you explain the back-of-the-envelope calculation you're doing regarding motion through the galaxy? The published literature confirms that strong magnetic fields exist within the galaxy. These fields influence charged particles, causing them to move, while some percentage of the interstellar mass remains ionized. This suggests that movement occurs on a significant scale. One particularly useful aspect of magnetic fields is their ability to polarize light, which allows us to observe field strength even from great distances. That’s an incredible property that makes studying these interactions possible. There are theories that claim stars orbiting the galactic center are moving too fast. The Electric Universe hypothesis argues that this phenomenon occurs due to a large magnetic field and an extensive current influencing motion. I wondered what would happen if I took the known magnetic field strength at the galaxy’s center and assumed the Sun was charged. How much charge would be required to accelerate a charged mass in a circular motion, completely ignoring gravity?
Surprisingly, the charge density in the Sun is quite low, measured in farads per kilogram. Only a few extra electrons would suffice to generate the necessary charge. If the Sun possesses a net charge, it doesn’t need to be particularly large. That’s the unusual aspect — electromagnetic fields are 10^39 times stronger than gravity, meaning even minuscule charge differences can lead to significant effects. While charges generally balance over time, the universe itself appears to maintain an equilibrium between positive and negative charges. However, charges also prefer to move, and plasma in space is non-collisional, meaning there is little resistance. That factor alone is remarkable, allowing the plasma to move without slowing down. Because of these conditions, the plasma essentially behaves like a superconductor, which defies conventional expectations. In electrical engineering, circuits contain capacitors, inductors, and resistors. If resistance is completely absent, energy naturally oscillates back and forth, turning the system into a large-scale oscillator.
These principles suggest that a strong magnetic field in the galaxy could alter motion directions periodically. If we calculate the resonance frequency of the galaxy, that would determine the pattern of motion. It turns out that an undulating magnetic field does exist, as discussed by Ben Davidson, who suggests that the galaxy is approaching a reversal of its magnetic field. These fields are extraordinarily strong, yet their local details are complex. Magnetic fields self-organize into progressively larger structures, behaving similarly to turbulent flows. Looking at a fine portion of turbulent flow makes it appear chaotic, yet the overarching movement remains distinct and directional. These calculations are becoming easier to perform, though whether they accurately represent reality remains an open question. To further investigate, we would need to determine the Sun’s charge, which might be feasible with the right approach. Scientists are also mapping the galaxy’s magnetic field — a remarkable achievement. Additionally, we have insight into what percentage of interstellar gas is ionized, which further enhances our understanding of these interactions.
Ionized particles interact with electromagnetic fields far more readily than neutral particles. However, if the plasma is dense enough to be collisional, ions can influence neutral particles as well. Within this model, the charge on the Sun’s surface could play a role in its orbital motion. If the Sun holds a net charge, it would necessarily be affected by the galaxy’s magnetic field. That idea alone raises intriguing possibilities. These equations are simple — almost too simple — but they suggest fundamental interactions worth exploring. All our Electric Universe listeners probably just cheered at the possibility. However, I still don’t know if the Sun does have a net charge. It’s a beautiful, straightforward calculation assuming the Sun is positive on the outside. In this framework, it’s either neutral with separated charges or net positive with the charge concentrated inside the conductor. Both scenarios remain viable hypotheses. If the corona contains enough positive charge to drive electrochemical effects while lacking negative charge — and there's no negative charge on the surface
ELECTRIC & MAGNETIC FIELDS IN ASTRONOMY
Then doesn't it make the outside of it positive? Right, it makes it look like the Sun has a net positive charge, in which case it would be affected by magnetic fields. If you know the charge, you know the force, which is a really interesting thing.
Another thing about the plasma physics guys like Alfvén and Peratt — they see the magnetic fields and the mass in filaments, either wrapping around or stretching across galaxies. It's unbelievably complicated, but you can see filament structures both within and between galaxies through charge interactions. Tony Peratt, when I published the New York Times article, was the one who asked me to send my paper on Kirchhoff's law to IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science. Tony called me and said he wanted two papers from me — one on Kirchhoff and one on the Sun.
By the time he asked me, I had said in the New York Times article that I believed Kirchhoff was right. But when Tony reached out, I had already come to the realization that, oh my gosh, no — it's all theoretical. Kirchhoff is wrong. Kirchhoff's law is not correct. The 2003 paper in Entropy was the first where I clearly stated that Kirchhoff's law is invalid. It takes the vibration of atoms within a lattice structure to produce a blackbody spectrum.
That was one thing I wanted to mention. The other was something that came up when we were talking about the Sun recently. People have been asking me about planetary formation. I had only briefly touched on it in a paper where I discussed how intercalated regions play an important role in planetary formation, but I hadn't explored it in depth. However, last week — two weekends ago in Colorado — I gave a talk for the first time on planetary formation.
In my model, the Sun's chromosphere exhibits condensation reactions, which explains why the spectral lines appear in emission. If you see emission lines in astrophysics, you are observing condensation reactions. The first stars become extremely hot. Wolf-Rayet stars are considered the oldest stars in astronomy, though Underhill believed they were young. These stars lack lattice structures, so they do not display continuous spectra and do not appear on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram.
Wolf-Rayet stars are so hot that they lack an organized lattice, but they are still undergoing condensation, which leads to extremely powerful emission lines. In the standard model, these lines are attributed to stellar winds pushing material away from the star. But I argue that this is not what's happening. Instead, these emission lines are evidence that condensation is still occurring. Hydrogen and helium emission lines appear as hydrogen continues to be added to the star. Then, the Wolf-Rayet star evolves into a luminous blue variable, which oscillates between having a lattice and producing weak emissions. As the star attempts to form a lattice, it becomes unstable due to immiscibility issues. Luminous blue variables are extremely active stars that expel material.
This leads to my hypothesis about planetary formation — planets were formed when the Sun was in its luminous blue variable stage. At that time, it had high angular momentum and expelled the first planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn. That also suggests that metallic hydrogen could have first formed within the Sun before being ejected to create these planets.
Why does Uranus have an extreme axial tilt? Its rotation is nearly perpendicular to the other planets but still within the ecliptic plane. What could have happened is that Uranus passed close to other planets and interacted gravitationally, causing its tilt to change.
I shared this idea with Steve, and he noted that Pluto is outside the ecliptic — perhaps it wasn’t expelled from the Sun but was a captured planet instead. Pluto might have been expelled from one of the gas giants rather than directly from the Sun. Saturn, for example, has a slight axial tilt, which could have influenced Pluto’s orbit. Mercury is another example — it is significantly outside the ecliptic plane. These planets might not have originated from the Sun at all.
Speaking of captured planets, under your model, the stars don’t all go nova, right? They cool off, and as they do, wouldn’t they end up looking a lot like Jupiter or Saturn? What I say is the stars are moving. As they move down the main sequence, they slowly cool. Most stars stay along the main sequence, gradually cooling until they become red dwarfs. But if you extend that main sequence long enough, you actually reach the spectrum of Jupiter — objects with very high molecular characteristics, rich in molecules at the end of the sequence, particularly M-class stars.
So stars remain on the main sequence as they cool. However, some stars are unstable. When I talk about the Sun, I say that it has intercalated zones within its structure. When these zones expand, the star transforms into a red giant. This is analogous to a piece of graphite — if you take a centimeter-thick piece of graphite, saturate it with gas, and then strike it with a hammer, it will expand one hundredfold. A star with intercalated regions behaves similarly. If it experiences a shock, these regions transition from solid to gas phase, leading to either a supernova explosion or a gradual transformation into a giant star. This could explain why some stars undergo repeated nova events.
Several stars have exhibited recurrent nova behavior, which is astonishing. The intercalated zones, when fully understood, not only explain the Sun's emission but also offer insight into other stellar types. Once an intercalated region forms, it provides a natural mechanism for producing red giants and supernovae without requiring entirely new theoretical models — these behaviors align with established inorganic chemistry principles.
Where are all these dead stars at? What do you mean, the dead stars? So if they’re cooling off the main sequence — you know? Well, I don’t know how old the universe is, that’s what I’m saying. So if the Big Bang turns out to be not 14 billion years ago — yeah, 26...