Review astronomy book
Making Sense of Astronomy and Geology by Dirk Bontes. 3rd edition, Amsterdam, Sept. 2000 metal/or plastic spiral bound version. d.bontes at(=@) gmail.com.
The rich diversity of papers presented at a conference on astrophysics might be published as a book without Introduction or Conclusion. Making Sense of Astronomy and Geology (MSAG) is that sort of book, with two important differences: two of the ‘papers’ – the book’s 25 chapters – are from a conference on planetary geology and all are by Dirk Bontes. Intended as a minor addendum to his as yet unpublished opus, The Nature of Reality, the collection grew to 256 pages and became a book in its own right.
MSAG opens with stars and planets that orbit within the body of much larger, low density stars. A later chapter deduces a model for the magnetic fields of stars and planets, concluding that most extra-solar planets – and some black holes in supposedly binary systems – are illusions created by Zeeman Effect stars. Other chapters explain the physical and orbital characteristics of planets and moons; discuss galaxies, quasars, supernovae and planetary nebulae, and elucidate how they were formed; offer novel explanations for warped galactic discs, nascent solar systems, polar ring galaxies, and the structures of spiral galaxies; introduce a new redshift mechanism in which the wavelength of light lengthens as it moves away from its source, contrary to General Relativity; examine phenomena explained by General Relativity and show them to be explicable by more conventional theories; and argue that ‘triads’ of charged particles can be accelerated by lines of magnetic force. The chapters on geology show that Mars was dealt a mortal blow by a pair of impacts early in its history and that Earth’s ice ages are belated effects of the comet impact that ended the Cretaceous.
Or thus says the Preface, which starts by recommending readers to acquire a book with Hubble Space Telescope photographs. That is sound advice, for MSAG unfortunately contains very few diagrams and no pictures. 160 quotations from two popular journals, Astronomy and Sky and Telescope and 200 more drawn from other magazines, textbooks and websites comprise a high proportion of the text. [The reader has to be on the alert to identify the author’s own writing: if quotations and references could be indented, it would make reading easier]. Many chapters start with a series of quotations, some followed by brief comments: MSAG then either develops each quoted theory, or disputes it and promotes an alternative. In general I find Bontes’ arguments against the prevailing consensus somewhat more persuasive than his proposed alternatives. However ...
The Preface’s promise: ‘Each page has one or more fresh ideas’, is no overstatement. Three are:
(a) ‘From the free energy shed by the photons and neutrinos emitted by a galaxy new particles congeal, resulting eventually in new, free hydrogen atoms in interstellar and intergalactic space, the source of new stars ...This is a steady state universe’ [p. 63].
(b ) ‘the solar magnetic field is the dominant source of the heat generated within Earth's interior’ [p. 156].
(c) ‘High energy gamma ray bursts (GRBs) occur once or twice per day in remote galaxies scattered (randomly) over the sky. ..supernovae occur far more frequently: on average once every second somewhere in the observable universe’ [p.187].
From (c) MSAG deduces that every supernova is preceded by a GRB; but virtually all supernovae are observed, while only a small fraction of the narrowly-beamed GRBs illuminate the Earth. (b) leads one to ask how much, if any, of Earth’s interior heat derives from radioactive decay. Is almost all radioactivity is confined to Earth’s crust, and if so, how did it get there? (a) is discussed below, under Redshifts.
Because the range of topics is so wide it does not lend itself readily to summarisation. Instead three major themes of most interest to readers of this journal are examined in more detail.
A. Intrastars (stars orbiting inside huge primary stars)
Chapter 1 introduces supernova SN 1987 A and goes on to discuss regularly variable Mira(-type) stars. Bontes argues that a different mechanism is needed from that explaining the variability of Cepheids: (his case cites the Hertzsprung- Russel diagram, without the diagram!). Essentially he sees the observed luminosity of the vast, diffuse Mira stars being increased when the orbit of a hot intrastar inside it lies on the Earth side, a maximum occurring when the intrastar lies on the Earth/Mira sightline and its heat has to penetrate only the thinnest layers of its primary. This would produce tidal bulges, which have been observed on Mira stars. Bontes believes a hot spot seen on Betelgeuse, an enormous semi-regular Mira star, is actually an intrastar.
Chapter 3 is a fascinating discussion of Eta Carinae (eC), a ‘gargantuan variable star’. It is about 120 times as massive as the Sun, and produces 4-5 million times as much energy.
‘Interrupted jets of matter, bisected by a dark lane, emanate from eC. The jets demonstrate that an explosive eruption seen in 1837 was caused by a collision between eC and a neutron star: the dark lane proves that the neutron star, still orbiting within eC, is an active pulsar’.
Originally eC may have had a more massive binary companion which went supernova, the neutron star being a remnant. An explosion recorded in 3000 BC by the Sumerians, who saw: ‘A bright new star above the southern horizon’, may have been this supernova event. In 1899 eC brightened again, reputedly ejecting matter from its equatorial disc: Bontes suggests this was due to collision with a body less massive than the neutron star, possibly a planet of the original binary system which acquired extra matter from the supernova event and became a small star or brown dwarf. Between Dec. 1997 and Feb. 1999 eC doubled in brightness across all wavelengths; no reason is known but the neutron star is almost certainly involved.
Since the 1837 collision, eC material has been falling on to the neutron star, increasing its mass. Bontes argues (p. 49) that to conserve its angular momentum the neutron star has to shed this extra mass and does so via the bipolar matter jets. However his review of angular momentum in the eC system – eC, neutron star and matter jets – does not distinguish between the rotational and orbital angular momenta of the two stars, nor recognise that as eC loses mass it will conserve its angular momentum by increasing its rate of rotation. This is further discussed in Redshifts (below)
B. Electromagnetism
Several chapters discuss how the actions of magnetism and electricity, and interactions between them, affect the Sun, Earth, and cosmos. Rotation of a star or planet transports ionised matter through space, creating a neutral electric current. Bontes theorises that the Lorentz force separates positive and negative charges to form two currents at different distances from the centre. The difference between the two oppositely oriented fields generated by these currents is the net magnetic field. Differential rotation rates of the Sun's interior gases causes magnetic field lines in the gases to get pulled round the Sun faster at lower than at higher latitudes: the wrapping process stretches the lines, gradually changing their orientation to the equator from perpendicular to parallel and reducing the electric current vector in the direction of rotation to zero, in a period of about 11 years. At that point the magnetic field lines disappear and the Sun's magnetic poles are interchanged.
Bontes offers an ingenious argument to explain this catastrophic change of state. He regards a magnetic field line as a line of elemental magnetic entities, calling them ‘magnetrons’: current rotation just beyond 90° leads to a 180° realignment of each magnetron. However the term 'magnetron' was bestowed 60 years ago on a centimetric oscillator which powered airborne radar transmitters and is now almost ubiquitous in microwave ovens. I suggest as an alternative ‘magnetor’ (= ‘magnetic vector’), because the magnetic field line for any specified field strength defines the magnetic force vector at each point along its length.
Bontes uses his theory to explain e.g. sunspots (and reversals of Earth's magnetic field), Zeeman Effect stars, planetary nebulae, and warped discs. The Lorentz force separates electric charges as weIl as currents, explaining how old stars shed their outer layers and why supernovae explosions are so violent (they are driven by electrostatic repulsion). He suggests that orbital spacings and inclinations of solar system planets and their moons, may reflect a tendency towards minimising electromagnetic interactions with the Sun’s interplanetary magnetic field and with each other. A considerable number of ad hoc modifications to the theory have to be invoked to explain some of the many bizarre stellar and galactic objects but this indicates – in my view – not weaknesses in the theory so much as how strange and complex our universe is.
3. Redshifts
In chapter 4 – ‘A new redshift model’ – Bontes says:
‘The photons that are the vectors of light, though massless, do have momentum (mv) ..and the photon continually moves perpendicularly to the direction of its propagation, a property called amplitude ...Accordingly, photons possess an amount of angular momentum ..’.
He bases this on his review of eC angular momentum in chapter 3, where angular momentum is ascribed to the matter jets from the neutron star since although: ‘Relative to the system their angular momentum is zero ..in their own plane, relative to their origin, they do possess an tremendous amount of angular momentum’ (italics added]. However bipolar jets do not define a plane and they originate on the neutron star, relative to which each has linear, not angular momentum. If these linear momentums are equal, moreover, the jets exert a compressive but no net disturbing force on the neutron star. Bontes may have meant relative to the common centre of mass rather than relative to their origin but that contradicts his underlined statement. His claim that the amplitude of a photon confers angular momentum must therefore remain open to question.
This is a pity, as Bontes not only derives (using dimensional analysis) a relationship between the redshift as a function of distance travelled by a photon with a specified initial frequency but goes on inter alia to argue for a steady state universe, to criticise the Big Bang hypothesis and to cast doubt on Einstein’s General theory of relativity. His concept of photons which tire the farther they travel is most appealing: one must hope he can provide better proof than chapter 3 provides – perhaps a diagram or two would help.
Having taken issue with one major argument in MSAG, let me do so over a few minor ones. On p. 163 it asks whether:
‘an original, large, innermost planet in an eccentric orbit around the Sun may .. have collided with another large planet, the pieces reassembling themselves into the small inner planets’.
This idea, similar to one fostered by Hoyle in the 1940s, has always appealed to me but how can it be reconciled with the statement (p. 115). ‘We know now that the planets formed by accretion from the remnant of the gas and dust cloud that formed the Sun’? What are we to make of this on p. 82: ‘The magnetic force is (10exp36) times stronger than the magnetic force.’? I think the last two words should be ‘gravitational force’ [DB: correct] but as the paragraph does not mention gravity this is uncertain. Specialists may find interest in chap. 23 ‘Mars’ and chap. 24 ‘Magnetic polarity reversals and the ends of the ice ages’ but to me they give little sense of geology. I feel MSAG would be improved if they were removed and retitled ‘Making sense of astronomy’.
In a publication of this type and length there are, inevitably, many typographical errors. There are also some repetitive quaintnesses in translation from the Dutch – ‘implicates’ for ‘implies’; ‘labour’ for ‘work’ (as something measured in joules); ‘condensators’ for the much more usual ‘capacitors’; and ‘the law of Lenz’ for ‘Lenz’s law’. None of them leads to any ambiguity .
Although MSAG is not an easy read, it is pregnant with bold ideas. If even a quarter are correct, Bontes deserves great credit. If he needs a proof-reader for the English version of The Nature of Reality I would happily volunteer – assuming that anno domini do not deny me the privilege.
David Salkeld