- Above: The energetic stellar jet of HH
(Herbig Haro) 49/50, as seen through the Spitzer Space Telescope.
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- With the discovery of Herbig Haro objects,
or "jetted stars", astronomers have scrambled for explanations.
But these stars, now observed by the hundreds, only accent a common and
fundamental misunderstanding of space.
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- The image above appeared as the "Astronomy
Picture of the Day" (APOD) on Feb 3, 2006 (Link: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060203.html).
The caption identifies this stellar jet as a "cosmic tornado"
light-years in length, with gases moving at 100-kilometers per second.
"Though such energetic outflows are well known to be associated with
the formation of young stars, the exact cause of the spiralling structures
apparent in this case is still mysterious".
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- In fact, astronomers express great astonishment
at such formations. Gravitational models featured in twentieth century
astronomy never envisioned narrow jets of anything streaming away from
stellar bodies. Neither gravity nor standard gas laws would allow it.
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- So the problem grows worse the more we
discover. To see the problem clearly, just consider the language used to
describe the stellar jets of "Herbig Haro objects" such as that
imaged above. The words typically employed are taken from the behavior
of wind and water on a rocky planet we call "Earth" -- a body
that stands out as an exception in a universe that is 99.99 percent plasma
and dominated by electric currents and their induced magnetic fields. A
bizarre example of the outmoded language is the description of stellar
jets on NASA's Hubble Telescope website -- the very page to which the APOD
caption links for an explanation of "such energetic outflows".
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- The explanation begins with these words:
"Stellar jets are analogous to giant lawn sprinklers. Whether a sprinkler
whirls, pulses or oscillates, it offers insights into how its tiny mechanism
works. Likewise stellar jets, billions or trillions of miles long offer
some clues to what's happening close into the star at scales of only millions
of miles, which are below even Hubble's ability to resolve detail".
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- Those who know what a plasma discharge
is might say, "If you think a lawn sprinkler offers a good analogy
for the picture above, put a sprinkler in space and try it". Any
attempt to understand stellar jets across light years of space in terms
of a nozzle on one end should be a career-ending embarrassment.
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- To explain the narrow tornado-like jet,
the Hubble page says: "Material either at or near the star is heated
and blasted into space, where it travels for billions of miles before colliding
with interstellar material." Does a star have the ability to create
collimated jets across (not billions, but) trillions of miles by merely
"heating" material in its vicinity? The matter in the jet is
hot and it is moving through a vacuum. If one is to use an analogy with
water, the better example would be a super-heated steam hose. It will not
form a jet of steam for more than a few feet before the steam disperses
explosively.
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- The authors' explanation not only contradicts
simple observation and experiment, it contradicts the century-old gravitational
theory on which the entire page is based. Under the popular theory of star
formation, it is matter "falling" inward under the influence
of gravity that creates stars. No one proposing this "nebular hypothesis"
ever imagined, in advance of recent discoveries, that after gravity accomplished
its mass-gathering feat, it would give way to a more powerful force evident
in the jet. (As for the reference to collisions with interstellar material,
that is based entirely on the bizarre explanation itself, not on anything
actually observed.)
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- "Why are jets so narrow?" the
NASA writers ask. "The Hubble pictures increase the mystery as to
how jets are confined into a thin beam". Then, after noting that the
Hubble pictures tends to rule out the idea (popular just a few years ago)
that a disk around the star could provide the needed "nozzle",
the authors note: "One theoretical possibility is that magnetic fields
in the disk might focus the gas into narrow beams, but there is as yet
no direct observational evidence that magnetic fields are important".
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- Following this virtual dismissal of magnetic
fields, the authors pose two questions which bear directly on the role
of magnetic fields, though they are clearly unaware of the connection.
"What causes a jet's beaded structure", they ask. And "why
are jets 'kinky'"? They do not realize that they have just cited two
of the most easily recognized features of plasma discharge -- "beading"
and "kink instabilities". But rather than enter the world of
electrified plasma, so unfamiliar to astronomers, the web page takes us
into "waterworld". "...The beads are real clumps of gas
plowing through space like a string of motor boats". And the "kinks
along their path of motion" can be seen as evidence for a stellar
companion, one that "pulls on the central star, causing it to wobble,
which in turn causes the jet to change directions, like shaking a garden
hose".
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- It is statements such as this that cause
plasma experts -- those who have spent a lifetime observing the unique
behavior of electric currents and electric discharge in plasma -- to wonder
about the future of theoretical science. For the cosmic electricians there
is nothing out of the ordinary in stellar jets. Their counterparts appear
regularly in the plasma laboratory. They can be modeled in computer simulations.
Their analogies can be seen in Earth's upper atmosphere, in Martian dust
devils, in the volcanoes of Jupiter's moon Io, on Saturn's moon Enceladus,
in the jets and tails of comets, in the penumbra of sunspots -- and even
in the vast polar jets now seen exploding from distant galaxies. (See Things
That Are Impossible, http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050419impossible.htm)
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- If the electrical theorists are correct,
those offering conventional answers to newly discovered objects in space
need a crash course on plasma and electricity.
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- NEXT: A Tornado in Space (2)
- Remembering Hannes Alfvén's Admonition
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- Photo Credit: Credit: J. Bally (Univ.
of Colorado) et al., JPL-Caltech, NASA.
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