Ah, but mainstream science doesn't think there's a crust. That's just you and Dr. Manuel. (Got those numbers yet?)

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I've even got pretty pictures to go with the math. I'm finishing corporate projects today and possibly tomorrow that allow me to pay my bills. Then I'll be happy to restart that conversation. Since Tim meantioned me by name, I thought I'd at least give him a response. Nereid had also asked me to get into the stellar formation theories, and this seemed like a very timely topic. I appreciated Tim's efforts actually.

What I find most "disturbing" about the notion of hydrogen being the foundation of suns, is that it doesn't seem to deal well with explaining the separation that somehow dumps huge quanties of heavy materials in the inner most planets, and somehow the sun is presumed to be quantitavely different in composition for all the inner planets. That seems illogical IMO. I'm not saying nature is always "logical", but gravity is pretty "predictable" and heavy elements will also be attracted to large gravity wells.

Hydrogen doesn't really seem to "stick" real well to our own sun, so I'm not sure why anyone would think that hydrogen would form a "solid" foundation for something as large as even a moon, let alone a planet, let alone a sun. Only at it's "heaviest" stages is a body likely to hold onto the "lightest" elements in the universe. Our moon for instance doesn't "retain" much hydrogen.

I agree, it is not scientifically credible. But then again, it is also not by a long shot what is actually done, so it is also not a relevant criticism.

The links I provide to the various papers lead to abstract pages which, in most cases (actually all cases, I think), allow you to download the originals as PDF documents. I suggest you do that and see what is actually being done.

The problem that was really brought to the fore by Eddington is that, through physics, one can compute the opacity of various elements & compounds, as a function of temperture. He found that no possible thermal model of the solar interior, that included mostly heavy elements, could be made consistent with the observed brightness & physical size of the sun. That's what started the move away from a mostly heavy element sun, which had been the standard. You can see the same kind of analysis in Stromgren's and Russell's papers.

So the transition of thinking, from a mostly heavy elements sun, to a mostly hydrogen sun, in fact had (and has) little or nothing to do with spectroscopy of the atmosphere. Rather, it comes from severe inconsistencies encountered in the internal physics of such an object.

Excuse me? For one thing you seem to "assume" that at the time Eddington had the technology to fully understand all the solar output, including neutrinos, etc. For another, that whole statement is simply false. You can eliminate "some" configurations, but you could never eliminate "all". IMO, such statements only serve to demonstrate how narrow minded this debate has become. How do you eliminate "all" thermal models again? Suppose you have a zero degree "core" surrounded by a layer of hydrogen and helium that have all the heat? You can eliminate a lot of logical possibilities perhaps, but never "all". This is the kind of thinking that plagues astronomy today IMO. Only in the last 60-100 years has science become so "closed minded" in it's approach.

Such papers are full of "theory" that has not been yet been valideated or falsified by direct observation. Even brown dwarfs seem to create planets around themselves. How is that possible and how do you know that each and every time, the heavy elements will always end up OUTSIDE of the largest gravity well?

What "inconsistencies" specifically are you refering to?

Your whole premise here is based on the concept that a cloud of materials will somehow separate themselves into heavy and light elements, leaving the lightest elements in the largest gravity wells, and the heaviest elements in the smallest gravity wells. You've never explained how that's A) possible, or B) probable, of C) jives with direct observation.

What is the "statification" we see close to the surface of the photosphere?

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0510111

How do you know this stratified layer isn't a "surface" and isn't the transition layer that Trace and SOHO observe in running difference images?

Not at all. As I said before, none of that is relevant to the problem Eddington approached, except the visible brightness of the sun, which he could see. The sun has a size, and it has a brightness, both of which Eddington could see as well as we can. That size & brightness are determined by the interaction between the radiation and the opacity of the internal constituents of the sun. The visible size & brightness constrain the range of possible opacities, which in turn constrains the range of possible elemental abundances which generate the opacity. Ergo, if one actually bothers to deal with the real physics, it becomes evident that the simple appearance of the sun strongly constrains its internal makeup.
Of course you could, if "all" of the heavy element abundances lead to opacities which are inconsistent with observation.
What's "narrow minded" about insisting on a little rigorous thinking? What's "narrow minded" about pointing out that physical problems should be solved physically? If you can't even be bothered to read the papers that you insist cannot be right, who's being "narrow minded"?
It's compositional models, we can & do eliminate all of the models with large heavy element abundances, because they are physically inconsistent. Thermal models are another issue, though one can eliminate a hefty chunk of those too, with similar reasoning.
That's easy to eliminate, how could it be possible? How could the core stay at zero degrees, and not be heated up by the material around it? Even if you could contrive to create a model with such an initial condition, it would very quickly evolve into a hot core, simply be heat transfer from above, and compressional heating.
We aren't talking about logical possibilities, we are talking about physical possibilities, i.e., possibilities that either obey, or do not obey, the laws of physics. Those that do not are eliminated, and their otherwise "logical" characteristics are sublimely irrelevant.
You don't suppose that any of the problem could be your own lack of understanding, do you? Are you really so arrogant as to propose that you, and you alone, are the only human being capable of understanding this problem? You have nothing at all left to learn? It does not occur to you, that when generations of people who devote their lives to studying the sun, and disagree with you, that they might actually be on to something?
Ah, so without bothering to read them, you now know what's in them? Are you psychic too? Actually, they have lots of stuff in them that is verified by observation, but since you will never read them, I guess you will never know.
They don't. Most of the heavy elements of the solar system are in the sun. After all, they constitute about 2% of the suns mass, which amounts to about 3.98x10³¹ grams, which is about 15 times greater than the total planetary mass in the solar system (and about 70% of that is Jupiter). The same, roughly, is likely true elsewhere, assuming some consistency in star & brown dwarf formation mechanisms.

The planets, debris disks & etc., do not have more heavy elements than the stars do, but they are obviuously enriched in relative abundance. But that can be easily explained by fierce stellar winds associated with star formation, which preferentially remove the lighter elements.
Specifically, the observed size & brightness of the sun.
All entirely wrong. In fact, my premise is exactly the opposite. The large majority of the heaviest elements wind up where you would expect, in the gravity well, and in the sun. But one must make note of the fact that when the sun "turns on", the strong stellar wind and radiation field will encourage chemical alteration of the surrounding cloud.
That I do not know.
But that I do know. I know it is not a solid, because sound waves (helioseismology) travel differently through solids than they do gases, so the nature of the discontinuity would make it immediately evident that this is not just a density change or temperature change, but a gas-solid phase change. I also know that it is not a solid because I know that no known material can remain solid at such temperatures. As for whether or not it is a "surface", since you put the word in "" marks, and I don't really know how broadly you intend to interpret the word, I cannot say whether or not it would meet your criteria as a "surface". I can only say that it does not meet mine, for a "solid surface".

I know it's not the transition layer because I can see the transition layer, and this boundary layer is, If I am not mistaken, below the photosphere, and hence far below the transition layer.

*WHAT* (and be specific) "real physics" shows that the sun cannot be composed of heavy elements in Eddington's work? I can find nothing there that even remotely suggests he understood enough about how atom radiate back in the 1920's-40's to even REMOTELY come to that conclusion via "real physics". Be specific now Tim and point out the "real physics" you claim supports you case, and show me some 21st century support of these 20th century claims about "opacity".

The sun isn't very "see through" Tim. I fail to see what you are trying to suggest here. It sounds like a lot of handwaving based on early 20th century "guestimates" a few if any verified observations.

Evidently you and I aren't reading the same papers. I don't see anything in his work so far that looked even remotely like "physical evidence" that wasn't all based on pure theory and conjecture and limited understandings of elements and their arrangements on the sun, ect.

This is a weird attitude from my perspective. You guys just got through telling me it didn't even matter what the "black body" was made of, only what its temperature was relevant to determining it's "brightness". Now you are insisting that somehow this isn't so in this Eddington's work. How is that? You mean to tell me that temperature is not relavant to solar output in the visible spectrum now?

None of these arguments preclude a 2000K surface from existing underneath a 6000K photophere. You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. First you wish to claim that light intensity in the visible spectrum is directly related to heat, and now you're eliminating "heavy elements" based on some other notion entirely. This is selective logic at it's worst IMO. The worst part from my perpective, is you take a single individuals work and suggest this eliminate all alternatives. That is just silly IMO. When was this paper you claim defines solar physics written?

But I showed you math and the laws of physics that insist that the coronal loops are hotter than the surrounding materials, only to have it utterly ignored. It seems around here the laws of physics only apply when the NON ATMer's say they should apply.

Yes Tim, I do think Birkeland, Bruce and Manuel were "on to something" alright. Let's turn the tables here a moment Tim. Could it be that maybe, just maybe, you have a hard time hearing an "amateur" only because human ego gets in the way? How do you know I have nothing to teach you Tim?

Evidently you and I are reading two entirely different things Tim. I see a limited set of work about a limited idea that had limited usefulness. You see a single idea that you believe somehow defines all possible atomic configurations of elements in the sun. In the next breath you'll claim that "black body radation" works by temperature regardless of the elements involved. Its a wacky way to do business if you ask me. What I certainly don't see is any way to correlate these two ideas, and no "observational evidence" that supports Eddington's findings. Perhaps you could point out the specific arguement of his that you think I'm missing because frankly I just don't see it.

All of this math is based on the notion that Jupiter is not made of heavy metals and that the sun is as described as well. None of that has been proven or demonstrated. It is all "theory". When you can use this theory go explain the observations on my website, then talk to me about percentages of heavy elements and what makes up that stratification layer.

It seems that planets form around brown drarfs, so wouldn't "stellar winds" simply blow off the thin atmosphere at worst case? It seems we are right back to special pleading and special circumstances where light elements somehow end up in the middle and heavy elements even up in the planets. You have no significant mechanism to explain this in brown drafts, but you assume similar percentages anyway?

Didn't you folks just argue that brightness was only related to temperature?

Again, we are back to special pleading IMO since no guarantee of "quiet conditions" exist prior to the solar ignition. There seems to be an "assumption" of quiet conditions, when in fact the inflow of material would itself "dislodge" any lighter elements, and any sort of "Cosmic wind" would also disturb the lightest elements most dramatically.

It's just conveniently where my model predicts a stratification layer, but you you're somehow sure I'm wrong even though you can't explain what it is?

Where did they eliminate that possibility in that paper?

What temperatures? We see temperatures of less than 3800K in sunspots. Are you saying that no solids can form at these temperatures? Have you read any of Dr. Bruce's work by the way?

But you don't KNOW this to be so Tim, you ASSUME it. You haven't of course dealt with any of the images on my website that clearly do show a "surface" that rotates uniformly and has all sorts of "features" in it.

The transition layer that Lockheed images with the Trace satellite is in fact under, not above the photosphere, so in fact you are mistaken.

Try this Tim:

Start with that brown drawf with a planet around it. What makes you think that brown drarf is mostly hydrogen?

So as not to become over-extended, I prefer to try one topic at a time. I'll get around to everything eventually. But keep in mind that I started this thread with the specific notion of discsussing alleged flaws or weaknesses in the standard solar models, and to avoid any discussion of the details of alternative models. And so I shall, there are other threads (or others can be started) for that.

I see two very major problems here, and want to say something about both, even though the first is really more general, rather than sun specific.

You seem to have this notion that 80 years ago, scientists were just too ignorant to pay attention to by today's standards. But remember that newton invented calculus and classical mechanics over 300 years ago, and both of those disciplines aree still the subject of ongoing research. Maxwell's electromagnetism is over 100 years old, but certainly does not seem to show any weakness with age. When Eddington wrote his book in the 1920's, Einstein had already put forth both special & general relativity, and quantum mechanics was 20 years old. It really is preposterously arrogant to simply dismiss all of them out of hand. While it is certainly true that we know a lot more now than they did then, you should not understimated either the knowledge of talent of the people who set the groundwork for modern physics, and Eddington was surely one of them. Have you read his book? Can you tell me the page & chapter where he discusses the opacity discrepancy? Or did you just decide to believe he must be woefully ignorant for some random reason? The fact is, despite your complaint to the contrary, Eddington knew quite enough about physics to quantify the problem. You would have known this yourself, if ever you bothered to actually learn the subject matter at hand, instead of pontificating about it from afar.

I will satisy part of the request for specificity, although I have already done so more than once, only to be ignored. But I will insist that you, or anyone else who is interested in the details, must consult the proper original sources. This is a discussion board, not a physics text book, and there is a great deal of material to cover. I can't write it all here. Eddington's book (The Internal Constitution of the Stars, 1926) is still widely available despite its age, as a Dover paperback, and should be easy to find. Likewise, Chandrasekhar's later book (An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure, 1939) is equally available for the same reason. And, of course, the more modern, current texts are also not so hard to find, though they might be hard to read.

Physics is not something you can pick apart and examine piece by piece. It exists as a whole, all of its parts have to be considered, and how they interact to form & support a theory. The following passage, from page 1 of Edington's book is as valid today as it was then.

Now, the physical matter at hand is something I have already described. In a nutshell, it goes like this. A star is a balancing act, between the force of gravity that pulls it together, and the force of radiation tearing it apart, along with the internal gas pressure, which stops it from collapsing altogether. The opacity of the material is what determines how strongly the radiation will push outward on the material stucture as it flows through. The mass determines how strrongly gravity will pull back against the outward pressure of the radiation. There is nothing about this simple picture which requires "21st century", or even "20th century" physics to understand. It is quite enough to apply "19th century" (Maxwell & Boltzmann), and even "17th century" (Newton) physics to determine that this must be the case. And today in the 21st century that judgement is not altered.

Eddington spends an entire chapter (IX) on the study of computing the coefficient of opacity, using theory that is as standard today as it was then. Near the end of the chapter, section 168 (page 243 in my Dover paperback), is entitled Effect of Chemical Constitution. It is here that Eddington reviews the previous derivations, to show that the "astronomical" opacity, and the"'physical" (or "laboratory") opacities are not the same, and that the difference is too large to be accomodated by normal uncertainty. In the passages that follows, k_a is the astronomical opacity, and k_t is the theoretical opacity (arrived at using Kramer's law, 1923, which is valid throughout stars up to about the mass of the sun, for more massive stars, electron scattering opacity has to be included below the outermost layers). Both comments are found in section 169, pages 243-244.

Eddington did not like the idea that large amounts of hydrogen were necessary to remove the discordance, so hed decided that the physical model had to be wrong, and that the true cause of the discordance was in that unknown error. But Chandrasekhar demonstrated in 1939 that Eddington was wrong on that count. The physical theory of opacity has been shown to be correct, and it was now unavoidable that hydrogen had to dominate the mix (see chapter VII, section 6, page 278 in my Dover paperback edition). Chandrasekhar relied on the work of Stromgren, along with his own results. So by 1939, it had become clear that stars were made mostly of hydrogen.

Now, in relating this story, I have been specific in identifying the sources, and specific pages & sections therein, so anyone who cares to make the effort, can easily trace all of my comments back to the source. The physics & math is there for anyone to see, in these books, or in any current textbook, of which there are several at least.

I guess I failed to appreciate how little you actually understand about the relevant physics. The brightness is a function of the temperature. The temperature is a function of the thermal balance in the stellar interior. If you had a star with the same internal energy as the sun, but a smaller surface area, it would have a higher surface temperature. So in this case, brightness & temperature are essentially synonymous, because the temperature (and brightness) of the surface are fixed by the internal physics of the stars.

Enough for now.

I'm assuming that means you wish to avoid that double-structure layer centered at .99R. Evidently real world heliosiesmology findings aren't in alignment with the "standard model" I presume?

Now you are putting words in my mouth. That isn't nice. I said no such thing. We have however learned a thing or two over the past 50 years wouldn't you say?

Great, but we are not debating these issues at the moment, and I have no problem with either calculus or electromagnetism.

Have we learned anything scientifically since his books (plural) were written?

Don't you dismiss Dr. Birkeland's work and Dr. Manuel's work out of hand? How about Bruce?

First of all, I'm NOT dimissing them out of hand, but no person's work is a "closed case" and incapable of being scrutinized scientifically. I am not obligated to agree with all your historical science figures any more than you are obligated to agree with mine.

Book? I thought were were closer a bakers dozen of them, and lots of papers as well. I can't say I've read his whole body of work. That is why I asked you for a specifics.

Do you always use this tactic? Have we learned something new about science since your superhero walked the earth? Is his work more or less relevant that Birkeland or Manuel? Why? Where is the direct observational support that validates his THEORIES?

All I asked you to do Tim was to BE SPECIFIC about what aspect of his work that you figure eliminates any and all posibility that no heavier elements exist under the photosphere. All you've done so far is preach from afar and IMO you are essentially hiding behind an appeal to authority unless you can specify exactly WHICH bit of his presentation you figure supports your claim that no heavy elements can be involved. I'm still waiting.

You are handwaving a book when I asked you for a specific arguement. Why? How about picking a SPECIFIC issue, page or FORMULA you insist supports your case. We can go from there. I can't tell you how tiresome it is to have you folks toss out names and books and start parading a false sense of superiority. Its getting old. I asked you for SPECIFIC PHYSICS AND MATH, not an appeal to authority fallacy. Did you ever tell me where the problem was in Dr. Manuel's life's work by the way?

Excuse me? Come on. We have 21st century images of the sun to consider now. 20th century theory has to jive with 21st century observation or it means very little. His analysis was fraught with a host of serious assumption problems form the start IMO. If and only if you can use his work to the explain these images, then I'll consider his work useful. Until then I consider it VERY theoretical and fraught with too many assumptions about composition to be NEARLY as definitive as you make it sound. His work is no more relevant than Bruce or Birkeland or Manuel.

All you might be able to demonstrate in this case is that the SURROUNDING ATMOSPHERE, (the part that isn't in the transitional layer) is probably made of lighter elements. This tells us nothing about what is underneath the surface. You are again appealing to Eddington as a definitive authority, when in fact his work is THEORETICAL in nature. This is what is wrong with astronomy today. You take as "gospel' something that is actually "theoretical" in nature, and you are refusing to consider *ANY* alternatives based on one individuals work. That is no better than me relying exclusively on Manuel to PROVE the sun is made mostly of iron.

Here is the assumption problem in a nutshell. Eddington may have PROVEN that the ATMOSPHERE from the photosphere on out had a lot of hydrogen, but he did NOT "prove" that the sun is mostly hydrogen as you are claiming. Even if he believed this to be true, he was wrong. It's just that simple. We are right back to equating photon output with composition, which you first agreed was a logical fallacy. Now you are asserting it as "gospel". No one is denying that the atmosphere has a lot of hydrogen. That does not mean the sun is mostly hydrogen, anymore than it earth is mostly made of air and water, as you might think if you only had a few spectal views of earth from a distance.

I'm going to ask you to get very specific on what precludes us from having a mostly hydrogen outer layer and a mostly iron inner layer at two different temperatures based on Eddington's work. When you get specific, so will I.

Nothing like cheap and underhanded and FALSE shot to prop up an otherwise poor arguement! I expected better from you Tim.

How does any of that help your case? The bottom line is we have a sun with so much energy at such and such a size. Come again how you know it isn't mostly iron with a hydrogen rich atmosphere?

Indeed.

I have nothing to say about it at the moment, because it does not present any kind of difficulty for standard solar models.

Not at all. Birkeland's work was sound, and now mostly standard science. I examined Manuel's work in detail, and found that it stands already falsified. And I have no idea who Bruce is or what he did, but that is all irrelevant to this particular thread, which I have intended from the beginning to concentrate on flaws, or perceived flaws, in the standard solar models, and not to discuss details of alternative models.

I have already done exactly that. I have demonstrated & explained the physics in detail, and I have shown you the formula that Eddington used. Since you say that his work is full of unwarranted assumptions, I can only assume that you have read it, and are prepared to point out those invalid assumptions. If you are no prepared to discuss what is actually wrong with the standard solar model, then I guess we have nothing more to say.

Sure it does! You have a "surface" sitting just under the photosphere. It's like finding an ocean floor and claiming it poses no problem for a water world theory. Not only do they "hear" the top of the crust, but the can even measure the thickness of the crust, and measure changes in both the top and bottom of the crust.

His work suggested the sun was mostly electromagnetic in nature and suggested it has a "crust" that emitted electrical arcs. You figure that is standard science? I agree, but I don't see how that helps your case.

How so? Be specific.

Dr. Charles Bruce demonstrated that the sun's atmosphere exhibits electrical discharges. Does his work count as "less relevant" than Eddington? If so, why? How does his work corroborate the gas model?

What you did is handwave an arguement and you failed to address any of the serious question I asked you about this idea. I asked you why it couldn't be that Eddington measured the ATMOSPHERE around the crust and why his work precludes the sun being composed of heavy elements. I asked you for specifics about what was "falsified" in Dr. Manuel's work as well. I have not heard answers to either of these questions. The fact Eddington may have been right about the OUTER ATMOSPHERE being composed of predomenantly hydrogen and light elements is not evidence that heavier elements at cooler temperatures cannot exist under that outer layer. You are CLAIMING something with a handwave of an arguement. You will have to be specific since Manuel suggests the sun is mostly made of iron, and I see nothing about Eddington that makes me think he was a "better" scientists than Dr. Manuel.

I already did that Tim. As I said, even if Eddington was right about the outer most layers being hydrogen, this is not evidence that a crust cannot exist at .99R. I have already pointed out, and you have presumably agree that photon count does not equal composition. Now however you are claiming exactly this. A few weeks ago, you and Baloo were arguing that it didn't even matter what a black body was made of, it would radiate stictly by temperature. Now however you are throwing that whole arguement out the window and claiming something entirely different. Which is it? Does temperature affect emissions, or does the elemental composition determine emissions? You can't play both sides of this arguement. What was the cause of sunspots again? How did that relate to black body output again?

The big problem in Eddington's work is the same problem we discussed with counting photons and trying to equate them with composition. That is exactly what you are trying to do with Eddington's work.

Focus on this issue specifically Tim.....

Let's assume that Kramer's law arguements apply and Eddington was absolutely correct about the composition of the ATMOSPHERE of the sun. How does this "prove" that there is not a "crust" underneath that "atmosphere"?

Mass and composition determine temperature; temperature determine emission spectra and intensity.

A blackbody will radiate strictly by temperature; however its temperature depend on its composition.

By the way, you're off topic.

Hi Baloo!

I don't think I'm "off topic" since this seems to be the core of Tim's arguement. Mass and composition do determine temperature, but would Tim agree that it will radiate "strictly" by temperature? In other words, do you BOTH AGREE that regardless of the ratio of iron present at a given temperature, the output will be exactly the same? I'm not sure Tim or Kramer agrees with you on that point.

Mike, where do you get this from? Did you read my comments on the thread where you first brought this paper to our attention? The researchers make NO such claims, nor do they discuss any type of "crust". They are describing a very small slice of the photoshere where their study of F-mode seismic data suggests to them that there might be a previously unseen layer between the top of the photosphere and the leptocline. This new "layer" might or might not exist and they suggest using higher frequency F-mode studies of the photosphere to determine if a layer is actually there.

This layer, if it actually exists, would be as transluscent as the rest of the photosphere, at least in visible light. This is nothing like you are trying to describe.

Further, the finding is irrellevent to this discussion. That there might be a very thin transition zone in the photosphere, which is not shown but only hypothesized, does nothing to change the fact that the seismic F-mode wave data shows the photosphere to be relatively uniform and opaque.

Of course Birklande's work is standard science, although his hypothesis that there is an iron crust that emits or conducts electrical energy was shown in later work to be incorrect. That does not take anything away from his accomplishments, not the least of which was to explain how Earthly and other planetary aurora work. That is what Tim meant by saying his work is part of standard science.

Further, your reliance on his work "suggesting" an iron crust is misplaced, and IMO a logical fallacy--a red herring. He was working from the idea that the Sun was made up of mostly heavy elements, and his suggestion of a crust was based on that belief. He was trying to explain how the brightness of the sun might be caused. He died before Eddington's groundbreaking 1926 work and long before Chandrakesar's later work identifying the constituants of the Sun as proved through his use of the physical reality (ie physics) of the Sun.

Really Mike, you really should read those two books. Tim is not supplying the "specific" calculations because there are several dozen of them, and they are laid out by the authors. The books are probably available in your local library, if you are not interested in purchasing them.

I have previously linked you to the Iron Sun discussion in this very forum. Dr Manuel's hypothesis was falsified on a number of different fronts, and it was a several months long debate covering a large number of different ideas and observations. In the end, it became clear that Dr Manual could not explain how his hypothesis could work in the face of actual observations of the sun.

Well, yes actually it is. This has to do with equations (laws) articulated by Maxwell especially, although others have added to that body of work. The Maxwell-Boltzman kenetic theroy of gases, in particular, helps to explain why a body surrounded by a hotter sphere cannot remain cooler, even if you could somehow create such an intial circumstance.

Define "better". I personally think that Eddington was a better communicator of his ideas, and was also better at linking theory to observation. Does that make him a better scientist? I don't know what such an ad hominum statement can add to this conversation.

A logical fallacy-an argumentum ad ignorantiam. You are trying to support that your position (that the sun has a crust) is true simply because Eddington's work doesn't show it to be false. Doesn't work that way Mike.

Further, as can be seen in Maxwell's quations, among others, if the outer surface is hot, then then inner (under) regions must be as hot or hotter. So the argument lacks both logical progresson and physical ties to reality.

And I, among others, have pointed out that your comments suggest that you do not understand what a "black body" is, nor do you understand what "black body radiation" is.

There is no claim of something entirely different. Frankly you lost me here Mike, because the claims by the various posters that have replied here and in other threads have been entirely consistant throughout. Where do you see a switch?

Michael, it appears to me that you are attemting to change this thread from a discussion about the [supposed] deficiencies in the Standard Solar Model to a discussion on specific ideas from an ATM theory. The threads discussing your specific theory have been closed because you have been unable to provide any quantitative support for the ideas. That you continue to try and argue them in this thread is aggrevating, especially when you have been asked by the topic starter to remain true to the topic as he set it out.

It is expected that you will ask questions about the SSM that can be specifically answered by Tim. A question that does not contain a logical fallacy such as a strawman or complex question. In other words, it is ok to ask "How was the internal temperature of the sun's core deduced", but it is not ok to ask "No one has seen the temerature of the sun's core, so how can you say it is 15MK?"

Stay on topic please.

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

They talk about "subsurface layers" and talk about its changes both above the .99R point and below it. One side of the layer changes IN PHASE with the solar cycle and one changes in antiphase with the solar cycle. They talk in terms of "stratification", "compression" and "relaxation" of this layer. They call it a "physical structure that could be described as a very thin layer".

What leptocline, or are you just "assuming" the presense of a leptocline? Where is this leptocline in relationship to the "physical structure that could be described as a very thin layer"?

How does something that might not even exists change in size and get deeper under .99R and more shallow above it, or visa versa?

Because you say so, or because translucent layers somehow reverse the sign of certain wavelengths?

This is certainly not "irrelevant" to our discussion. Heliosiesmology suggests that the transitional region that Trace images is not above the photosphere but below it. This work suggests that the same transition layer that is heard in heliosiesmology is visible in Trace images. Your assertion that this layer is opaque hardly makes much sense since some of the sound waves get reversed in sign in this "opaque" layer as you refer to it.

No, that was never SHOWN. That was "alledged". There is a big difference between these two statements.

Birkeland's work on the crust of the sun was also right on the money. Today we have observational evidence to support his theories. It does show that even in the early 1900's, there were "scientists" that didn't believe in the gas model, and had OTHER ideas about how the sun works.

Eddington's writings do not, and did not invalidate or disprove Birkeland's work in any way. You guys keep suggesting this, but no one has dealt with the significant problems with Eddington's logic, specifically that nothing "cooler" could exist under the photosphere. The fact we SEE lower temperatures in the photosphere during sunspot activity shoots Eddington's assumptions in the foot.

I'm definitinely not into purchasing something that directly disagrees with real life observations. We have both satellite *AND* heliosiesmic evidence that supports the notion that a stratificed LAYER exists under the photosphere.

I've read the threads in question. IMO, there was nothing "falsified" at all. There were no attempts to disprove his isotope analysis, and few if any legitimate objections in fact. It seemed to me like Dr. Manuel just got tired of repeating himself, and tired of repeating all his papers in these forums. I saw no scientific "falsification" of his work as you claim.

You have never established that the sun *IS* gas in the first place! This is much like claiming we can't have air that is hotter than the surface of the earth. It is "impossible". I don't buy it for a moment. We have evidence of cooler temps under the photopshere in sunspot activity.

More scientifically able to be validated by direct observation.

I am simply noting that science is not homogeneous, and other scientists have had other ideas about the composition of the sun. Birkeland was every bit as bright and educated and Eddington. Edddington did not prove by direct observation that the sun is made of gas and has no solid surface. He did not prove what Tim and you believe he demonstrated. In fact, the most he could hope to demonstrate is what the outer atmosphere was made of since he did not have access to all the nuclear chemical data that Dr. Manuel has access to today. Eddington didn't have multimillion dollar satellites to "see" Birkeland's crust. Eddington didn't have Dr. Kosovichev's data on this stratified layer under the photosphere. Birkeland predicted these satellite images in real lab tests. His lab tests look remarkably similar to Yohkoh's view of the sun, and remarkably similar to Trace's views as well. Eddington's work doesn't change the fact that satellite images agree with Birkeland's models.

No. Actually I am not accepting TIM's (maybe your) assertion that Eddington's work falsifies my model. It does not. In fact his results would not surprise me one bit since at the time would could not "see" the surface of the sun, but only the surface of the photopshere.

Actually, this is another of those "assumptions" you latched onto as "fact". It is not fact. There is no proof that nothing cooler can exists beneath the photosphere and direct evidence that something DOES exist that is cooler than the photosphere. We see lower temps in the photosphere during sunspot activity. What does that cool material come from? Why is it "upwelling" from below the photophere?

Quite the contrary. I simply did not and do not believe that "black Body radiation" is the primary cause for sunspot activity. I think it pretty clear from our conversation to date that you folks only accept the concepts of black body radiation when it suits you. Other times you ignore the implication of black body radiation entirely, like with those million degree areas of the sun that you claim are cooler than the areas that are dark to both Yohkoh and Trace.

I see a "switch" from the notion that any black body at 6000K is going to emit this light we see, to a notion that only a "specfiic chemical composition" could be responsible for that black body.

I am not trying to change the thread. Tim started a topic on solar development and meantioned me by name.

Let's keep this straight: You closed my threads not because I gave *no* quantitive support for the idea, but because you wanted MORE quantative support for the idea. None of you dealt with the reality that the sun outputs energy as a black body at 6000K, not as a black body in the millions of degrees as Lockheed tried to suggest. Instead you asked for MORE proof and ignored the proof I offered you. I'll eventually ask to have the thread reopened so I can post some additional math and pictures, but probably not till I get back from Philadelphia on Friday. I have some nice pictures now to show you that demonstrate Lockheeds' error pretty effectivly IMO, but then I thought the solar output calculation of a 1 million degree black body was a pretty effective arguement too.

That is specifically why I asked Tim to falsify my specific model with a low temp crust under a higher temp photopshere, using Eddington's methods. I've not seen such a model "falsified" by Eddington's work, at least not so far, and certainly not to my liking. Until I do, I can't simply take a handwave of an arguement for "gospel". This is about various theories, and like all theories, Eddington's theories remain open to scrutiny and "interpretation".

I am trying to do that. I've tried specifically to focus on the key issues of the solar formation theories that don't add up from my perspective. For instance, the makeup of the inner planets is mostly NOT hydrogen. Why then should we "assume" the sun is mostly hydrogen and completely different in relative composition to all it's closest neighbors? If the moon and the earth don't really "hold onto" much of the hydrogen flowing through our solar system based on overall weight, why would I believe that hydrogen is likely to be the primary component of a forming sun?

I also asked Tim a very specific question about how Eddington's work eliminates my model, since Tim claimed that Eddington's work elminated ALL heavy element models. I disagreed with a very specific part of what Tim presented in a very specfic way.

1.When a "free" neutron decays to a proton, electron, and an electron-type antineutrino...energy is released. 2.When a "free" proton is converted to a neutron, in the reverse process, energy must be supplied on the left side of the equation...knocking out a positron, and releasing an electron-type neutrino. (This may be viewed more completely in terms of quarks...and weak currents, but the above analog hopefully will simplify things).
Now, if the interior of a star is entirely hydrogen....and is sufficiently hot to ionize it....Process 2. may occur. The positron is short-lived, and annihilates to gamma rays with an electron. The neutron sticks to a proton to make a deuteron...and the binding energy released exceeds the energy required to make the neutron in the first place. The quantities are calculable, and the neutrino flux expected is calculable also. The SSM actually calls for 4 protons to form a helium nucleus, in known physics...two of the protons are "promoted" to neutrons, two positrons are released and annihilate in a flurry of gammas, and two neutrinos are emitted...all simultaneously...along with the binding energy. (For most nuclides, the rough measure is about 8-10 Mev...million electron volts...per nucleon bound). Typical chemical reactions release a few electron volts per atom...so the nuclear way produces roughly a million times as much energy per atom....hence atomic bombs rather than chemical ones to make big booms.
But, when scientists tried to measure the estimated solar neutrino flux due to the fusion chain in the sun's interior,at the Homestake Mine in South Dakota ( chlorinated hydrocarbons will slowly react to produce argon gas...a measure of neutrino flux)...they came up short...the famous Solar Neutrino Deficit..IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH OUR SOLAR MODEL? John Bahcall saw it as a major problem..he was right. Eventually the Russians: Mikheyev, Smirnoff, Wolfenstein proposed a solution. The neutrinos might be switching flavors...mixing...oscillating between types..electron, muon, tauon...on their way out of the solar interior to our detector in Dakota. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory confirmed that that is exactly what is happening, and that the Standard Solar Model is quite correct with regards to energy production as elucidated by Hans Bethe circa 1939, the number of neutrinos matching hydrogen fusing to helium, both qualitatively, and quantitatively....leading to known nucleosynthesis branchings Li, Be, B...etc.
The issue of heavier than iron nuclides found in the inner planets of the solar system...Ag, Pt, Au, in your jewelry stores,the iron in your blood,.. is unquestionably due to the sun being a second generation star....the first went supernova a long time ago. Those elements' abundances are most consistent with us being leftovers from that event. They were not Big Bang nucleosynthesis products. They are not produced in substantive quantities in a G type star's solar wind. The SSM lives. Ciao. Pete

Tim,

I would appreciate a little more information about helioseismology and why we can trust it so much. Earthbound geophysicists have been frustrated several times using seismology to determine transition layers, particularly the moho. However, more than once detailed seismological surveys have been done only to find no confirmation when drilling down to the appropriate depth. A recent drilling has been done to 1400 meters that was supposed to find a moho transition at 750 meters. The Kola peninsula drilling also did not match seismological predictions. Now if geophysicists can't get reliable information at less than 10 miles what makes you believe that helioseismoligists are good for 430,000 miles of depth?

A physical structure which could be described as a very thin layer indeed! So it could be a very thin layer in the already very thin photosphere. So how does that lead you to the conclusion that this is a crust? certainly nothing said by the authors would lead to that conclusion.

Presense? I think you mean presence. No, the leptocline is transition area between the photosphere and the convective zone. It is the clear demarcation between those two zones as revealed and confirmed by helioseismic studies. It would be below the proposed new layer.

Sorry, you lost me with this comment. The authors suggest a transition layer may exist between 0.96 and ~0.99R because the f-mode frequencies they were utilizing suggested the photopshere at the leptocline was in phase with the solar cycle whereas the top of the photoshere exibited occilations that were in antiphase to the solar cycle. They did not discuss any changes in depth, except to note that the in phase occilations rose as much as 28Km, and the antiphase occilations were no more than about 2Km.

Because the photosphere, while opague, is still translucent enough to allow visible light instruments to see to a certain depth (memory check here, I think its about 100KM, or roughly 0.95R) at which point the opacity becomes so great you cannot see further. This uniformity of translucence extends past the area where their proposed layer would be situated.

Helioseismology has identified a number of different layers in the solar interior. As TRACE uses specific wavelengths to measure the area extending from the photosphere to the outer corona, please explain how you think it was able to see through the opacity of the photosphere.

What do sound waves have to do with opacity/translucence? What do you mean by "reversed in sign"?

Well, I guess there is a difference between what you think is "alledged" versus what scientists view as "shown". The Eddington Limit for stellar luminousity versus mass is well established observationally and experimentally, and his study of Cepheid's and the resulting finding of how their variability is caused both lead to the inescapable conclusion that the mass of a star cannot arise mostly through heavy metals.

Remember context in this discussion. Birkeland was operating from the premise that the sun was made of heavy metals, mostly iron, and he was looking for a way to explain how the sun's luminousity could derive from processes in this heavy metal makeup of the sun. Eddington was working from the same initial premise, and through study and experimentation discovered that the sun could not be made up that way. His book is still a very interesting and informative read, especially if you like math formulas. (Heavy going, BTW, and an excellent remedy to help you sleep!! )

No Mike, it was not "right on the money". There is no observational data to support his theory, period. As in none, zero.

Even the work of Manuel and Bruce, whom you so dearly love, do not support his idea of how solar luminousity arises.

Oh, and a bit of history (even though this has been said several times) in the 1900's it was accepted that the sun was made of heavy metals. It wasn't until about 1926 that the observational and experimental evidence introduced by Eddington, Jeans, Einstein and deSitter (among others) proved that such a makeup could not be correct.

This is not Eddington's logic, per se, it is Maxwells. While part of his proof relied on Maxwell's equations, he only took them to the next logical step.

As for sunspots, the foot of the emerging magnetic loop is what causes the area of the sunspot to be lower in temperature than the surrounding photosphere. It does not show a "deeper cooler" region as you keep insisting.


A stratified photosphere is possible, in that it may consist of 2 layers. That is the only stratification seen Michael. With even finer measurements arising from f-mode helioseismic studies, it may one day even be found that there are more layers, meaning the photosphere is more stratified than anyone would have guessed. So what? Further, the stratification is within the photosphere, not under it. Well, to a point, in that the whole sun is stratified.

It has been known for decades that the sun in stratified--that is, it is made up of a number of layers. How does that change the Eddington Limit in any way???????

Then you didn't read the thread very carefully. His isotope analysis was correct, for the day. Studies since then have offered a whole plethora of evidence supporting multiple injection events in the solar nebula, from before, during and after the ignition of fusion within the core. His neutrino argument has been totally disproven. His ideas for the source of power for the sun have been entirely disproven, or at least shown to be contrary to physics as we understand them. These were the three main legs of his "theory" with everything else flowing from those. How much more falsified does a theory have to be?

Oh, I'm sorry, when exactly were "we" attempting to prove the sun is gas? There is no comparing the Earth's atmosphere to the solar atmoshpere, they are heated by two entirely different means. It is a logical fallacy Mike. I do wish you would stop using fallacies in your arguments.

Oh, so then you accept the findings of Eddington, Hoyle, Chandrakhsar, Bachall etc etc, all of whom based their findings on observational and experimental evidence. I guess we don't need to carry any further then!

Um, no, Maxwell's equations are fact. Maybe you should read up on them?

Enough for now, my head hurts from beating it against a wall.

Tim, a couple of questions for you.

Can you explain how deep we can see into the sun, as well as the methods used to reach these depths?

Can you explain how photon absorbtion/emmision can give us an understanding of the material that makes up the sun?

What does spectroscopy actually tell us about the internal companants of the sun, and how does that study provide information on the make up of the deeper layers within the sun?

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

You are the one making unwarranted assumptions. The existence of a "surface" is only a problem if you assume, a-priori that the feature is a solid surface. But there is no reason to believe that, as any number of kinds of discontinuity will produce a seismological feature. This is no more a problem for standard solar theory, than is the tropopause a problem for standard theory of the atmosphere, or the thermocline a problem for the standard theory of oceans. Indeed, one would expect the sun to show similar features on some scale.
Indeed, your description here is a very good description of just the kind of layering I described above. I see no problem here for standard solar theory.
Actually, I was talking about his work regarding terrestrial electricity & magnetism, aurorae & the solar wind. I was unaware of his thoughts about the sun having a solid surface or crust. Obviously, that is not now considered standard science.
No. I will not discuss him or his hypothesis on this thread, for which it is an irrelevant distraction. I have discussed this in great detail already in the threads devoted to that topic. Read my discussions there, and either re-open a closed thread, or start a new one.
Nothing you have described is in conflict with standard theory, at least not as presented here. So I see no problem. As for Bruce, I know nothing about him or his hypotheses, which are also irrelevant to this particular discussion.
Absolutely not true. What I did was to provide specific explanations and answers to specific questions, and I told you exactly which pages to look at, so you would not waste time looking for the relevant material. Your own obstinate refusal to pick up a book and read is your problrm, not mine.
You really never read a word I write, did you? It shows. For one thing, who ever mentioned any "measurements" made by Eddington? And I made it as clear as possible that Eddington's physical argument refers to the entire body of the star. Indeed, if you would set aside your obstinance for a moment and actually look at Eddington's book, you would discover that what you are talking about and what Eddington is talking about are not even the same thing! You are still hung up on the spectroscopic observations of the stellar atmosphere, which in fact do not enter into Eddington's analysis at all. Rather, his is a general argument, based on fundamental physics, that is relevant to the entire body of the star. So stop talking about irrelevant observations of the solar (stellar) atmosphere, and try talking about the relevant physics of the solar/stellar interior.

In fact, you could try staying on topic, and actually point out some flaw in the standard model, which is after all, the main point. Where is the physics of the standard model wrong? The helioseismology bit was on topic, though easily refuted. Try finding something else equally on topic.

An issue which is once again simply not relevant to the topic. You constantly try to deflect any discussion away from the central theme of flaws in the standard model, and towards the theme of proving or disproving your model. Aside from the fact that you erroneously talk about the composition of the atmosphere (which is not a point of Eddington's work anyway (hint: the title of the book is "Internal Constitution of the stars")), I have already explained elsewhere that thermodynamics excludes such a situation in any case. You were never able to respond, and deflected the discussion in other directions. If you want to talk about that, do it in an other thread.

I have an even better idea. The central theme of this thread is flaws in the standard model. So, why don't you pick out the one thing about the standard model, which obviously must be wrong, explain what it is and why you think it is a failure of the standard model, or an inconsistency in the standard model.

Enquiring readers want to know.

How does that work? The footprint of a loop is a million degrees.
The photosphere has a temperature of just 6000 K.

http://trace.lmsal.com/POD/images/trace_SXT009.gif
"A solar flare observed at different wavelengths: (left) the 171Å image shows plasma at about 1 million degrees; (center) the 195Å image shows plasma at about 1.5 million degrees but also shows very hot flare material through Fe XXIV lines; (right) the YOHKOH/SXT image (with substantially poorer angular resolution) shows the hot flare plasma with temperatures exceeding about 3 million degrees. This flare was observed around 18:30UT on 27 June 1999. Courtesy: Kathy Reeves, SAO."



So if the footprint is emerging from the sun spot it must be from an area below the visible 400km thick photosphere, and not the 70km thick transition region above the 2500 km thick chromosphere.

High-resolution infrared observations of carbon monoxide molecules at the limb of the sun provide a new minimum temperature of 3500 K which, furthermore, seems to occur at a higher altitude, 1100 km.

Just below the tops of magnetic arcades. The red shows where the arcade interacts with the photosphere.
http://trace.lmsal.com/POD/images/Ba...linky3band.jpg
"The X5.7 flare occurred at 10:03UT on 14 July 2000, in Active Region 9077, and was observed by TRACE in three colors: the red image shows the ultraviolet continuum, generally characteristic of cool, dense gas; the blue image shows the 171Å pass band, characteristic of material around 1 million degrees; the green channel shows material hotter than about 1.5 million degrees up to approximately 10 million degrees."
Here is the movie.
http://trace.lmsal.com/POD/movies/BastilleSlinky.mov

__________________
"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible." - M. C. Escher

"Freedom is popular." -Ron Paul

upriver, I am quoting astrophysicist George Fisher of the University of California:

A further explanation from Dr David Dearborn at Livermore is available here.

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Photons generated at the core of the sun can take about 1,000,000 years to get from there, to the surface. That's because of the extreme density, and the fact that they scatter off of protons & electrons so continuously that they bounce backwards as often as the go forward. The process turns into a statistical random walk, one that takes a long time. Sound waves, on the other hand, are coherent motions of those charged particles, and move through them easily. So sound waves generated in the core, will make the same journey in a matter of hours. We can use helioseismology to see all the way down to the core of the sun.

The process in general is to look at the coherent vibrations that are manifest at the "visible surface" of the sun (the photosphere). The global properties of these vibrations show that they are not local phenomena, but are coherent across the face of the sun. They are readily recognized as the surface expression of acoustic waves that travel through the body of the sun. Waves of different wavelength are sensitive to the physics at work at different depths within the sun. Since millions of different wave modes are expressed simultaneousy at the solar surface, one must solve millions of simultaneous equations to separate them (it's essentially the same thing you learn in high school algebra for solving 2 or 3 simultaneous equations, just scaled up a lot). Until fairly recently the computational ability to do that did not exist. But the advent of high speed, multi processor systems has brought this kind of problem into the mainstream, with much success. The mathematics is intense & complicated, primarily by the scope of the problem. See Helioseismology, by J. Christensen-Dalsgaard, which appeared in Reviews of Modern Physics in 2003. For applications, see for instance, Are Standard Solar Models Reliable?, Bahcall et al., 1996-1997; Status of Solar Models, Bahcall et al., 1996; How much do helioseismological inferences depend upon the assumed reference model?, Basu et al., 1999-2000; How Accurately Can We Calculate the Depth of the Solar Convective Zone?, Bahcall et al., 2004.

There are some more enlightening webpages for those not up to the full treatment of the technical papers: Helioseismology, from Stanford, Solar Music - Helioseismology from the National Optical Astronomy Observtories, Surface Waves and Helioseismology from Marshall Space Flight Center, and several Helioseismology tours, again from Stanford University.

The speed of sound, at a given location, is a function of the temperature and density, at that give location. But since those quantities vary with depth, one has to probe the same depth zone with multiple sound waves of different wavelengths. It is an application of a technical science known as tomography, which has seen many successful applications in medicine. It is well established, both as a fundamental science, and as an applied technology. Helioseismology amounts to seismic tomography of the sun.

It's not just emission & absorption, but also scattering, any interaction between photons & chaged particles counts. The interior of the sun will be made up of a sea of ionized, or nearly ionized nuclei, and free electrons. The number of free electrons depends on the chemical composition, because the neutral atoms of heavier elements have more electrons, and so will increase the population of free electrons. And likewise, the heavier nuclei interact differently with photons. The opacity of the bulk material is derived from all of these effects. The opacity determines the outward pressure of the photons, balanced by the gravity of the star. The equilibrium between these two forces is set by the mass & density of the star (the density controlled by the molecular weight, which is controlled by the chemical composition).

Once we realize that the size & surface temperature (and therefore brightness) of the star is fixed by its internal opacity, we no longer need to observe the chemical composition of the star directly, in order to derive its general properties. We only need to see it's size, brightness & mass, and from that we can derive the internal opacity required to maintain the observed equilibrium. And that derived opacity constrains the chemical composition of the star. All chemical compositions which do not generate the required opacity are impossible. Eddington properly understood this, but improperly decided that the theory of opacity was wrong, because he was unwilling to accpet the large relative abundance of hydrogen required. As Russell, Stromgren & Chandrasekhar, amogst others, later showed, Eddington was wrong on that point. The laboratory theory was verified, and the mostly hydrogen composition became the accepted standard.

Eddington's derivation is correct today, as it was then, but we now recognize that his simpler approach works only for main sequence stars up to about a solar mass. For heavier stars, electron scattering opacity becomes increasingly important. But the change is not sufficient to avoid the conclusion that even supermassive stars are dominated by hydrogen

Spectroscopy does not directly tell us anything about the internal composition of the sun, and is not involved in Eddington's work in any case. However, the combination of the two studies packs a persuasive punch. We know from direct observation of the photosphere that the visible atmosphere of the sun is dominated by hydrogen. We know from the application of basic physics to the structure of stars, that the interior of the star must be dominated by hydrogen as well. And all of that ties together nicely with what we know about convective & diffusive transport, which imply that the sun should have essentially the same composition globally.

My webpages, Solar Fusion & Neutrinos and Hertzsprung Russell Diagram And Stellar Evolution talk more about stellar science & stellar evolution, with copious references, and links to other pages. I recommend them (naturally, I wrote them) for further reading & research. Aside from Christensen-Daalsgard's 2003 review of helioseismology, linked above, his Lecture Notes on Stellar Oscillations can downloaded from his webpage; it amounts to a several hundred page text book on asteroseismology, as it is applied to stars other than the sun, but these note are not for the mathematically faint hearted. Also note that the late John Bahcall's webpage is still maintained, and has a "popular articles" link that involves mostly neutrinos, but there is some helioseismology material too.
Hopefully, what I have posted above will go a long wayh towards answering you as well. I am not familiar with the specific problems you relate, but I can proivde a general answer. As paradoxical as it may seem, the sun is actually a much simpler thing to understand than Earth. That's because its fluid nature, and lack of phase boundaries (like Earth's core-mantle boundary) make it easier to understand & study. But even in the case of earth, seismic tomography has revealed internal stuctures in the same way as helioseismology has done for the sun (see, i.e., GLOBAL MANTLE TOMOGRAPHY: Progress Status in the Past 10 Years, Annual Review of Earth & Plantary Science 31: 303-328, 2003, the link will show you the abstract, but you have to buy the paper of find it in a library). The Mohorovi?i? discontinuity, for instance, is not se easy to find or define globally; it's more obvious in some palces than in others, and varies widely in depth from place to place.

That's all I can say for now.

Duane's comment should have said "chromosphere" instead of "photosphere". TRACE cannot see the photosphere, it is too cold. Think of the chromosphere as a tub of hot water, with a fire under it that keeps it at an approximately constant temperature. The magnetic loop is like an open spigot, which allows plasma to flow up out of the chromosphere, and cool by radiation. The foot of the loop is below the "surface" of the chromosphere, as it is seen by TRACE.

Duane's later comments about magnetic cooling in the photosphere & sunspots is all correct. It's just that we are seeing something else in the TRACE images.

No, it is only your own arbitrary assumption, with no basis in fact or reason, that the "surface" found in the helioseismology study to which you refer, is the "transition layer". In fact, the transition region is easily visible, above both the photosphere and the chromosphere. But the feature detected in the helioseismology study is either below the photosphere, or at least deep within it. In any case, we know that the photosphere is the deepest part of the solar atmosphere that we can see. So, obviously, anything that is below the deepest layer we can see, is obviously not the transition layer (which I would define as the base of the transition region, at the top of the chromosphere, and I use it in that fashion).

Michael, the mere fact that helioseismology tells us anything at all is evidence that the standard solar model is correct for determining the density and composition of the sun. The millions of calculations required have to have the correct data about the sun's density in order to track a soundwave from origin to exit accurately.

If the sun were mostly heavier elements, it would have a vastly different density, and sound waves would travel differently. If it had a solid crust somewhere, it would change the rate at which the sound waves travel and scatter them into ways that our computer programs couldn't detect.

Since you trust the findings when you can twist the meaning into your own model, then you must accept that the scientists who designed the programs that do the calculations knew what they were doing when they designed the test in the first place. They used the standard solar model to decide which sound wave/pattern/speed/transmission rate to base their calculations on, and they come up with meaningful data.

There's no way they'd come up with any data at all if the standard solar model were even a little bit wrong about the density of the sun. The data would return as utter gibberish and the scientists that designed the study would be out of a job.

__________________
My son is my universe.

Neither does anybody else. So what are you talking about?

So, since you have never actually read Eddington's work, how do you know that it has any "significant problems". Indeed, you keep talking about "significant problems", but don't seem to have been able to come up with any specific problem. So what is/are the specific problem(s) with Eddington's work? Perhaps, like me, you can give us page numbers and chapter?

Thanks Tim! BTW I have read your webpages a couple of times now, and find them both informative and easy to read, and your links to be excellent resources. Now if only you would update it again... (j/k)

Ok, on to neutrinoes. It has been suggested that there are other ways that neutrinoes may be created over and above the ones arising from the p-p reactions. (I'm not discussing the CNO reactions here, I mean other than fusion). Mozina has suggested nuclear fission may create them, and Manuel has suggested a breakdown in neutrons escaping from a neutron star remnant.

Ignoring the physics which would seem to preclude such scenerios, can you talk about these other methods, including any I haven't mentioned, and discuss how they (neutrinos) could or could not be formed by these other methods in the sun or any other star. How would we detect them, and how would they be different (if at all) than the neutrinoes we currently detect?

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~