ASTRONOMY

The remainder of this blog is about astronomy.

The Universal Angular Momentum Constant

I have noticed a principle about the universe that I have never seen pointed out.

Have you ever wondered why stars and planets rotate and orbit in the geometric planes that they do, and in the directions that they do? The earth, for example, rotates on it's equatorial plane and orbits the sun in roughly the same plane as the other planets. If all of the matter in the universe was thrown out into space evenly in all directions by the Big Bang, which began the universe as we know it, this must be reflected in the rotational and orbital planes across the universe.

When a solar system or galaxy is formed by a coalescing of a vast number of small pieces of matter, these will tend to end up in one plane. There are many examples of this from the rings of Saturn to the orbital plane of the planets around the sun to the plane of the entire galaxy.

In the beginning of the system, the component pieces orbit in all different directions until through continuous collisions and gravitational attraction one plane and direction of revolution is established as predominant. The geometric plane ultimately ends up as that which has at least slightly more matter in orbit than the other planes because having matter orbiting in other planes adjust to the dominant one represents the lowest energy state.

Our galaxy is a spiral one, which is aligned along a flat plane. Not all galaxies have this form, but most of the larger ones do. It seems that a larger galaxy will end up as a flat galaxy, this is why the center of our galaxy is spherical, and so without any such tilt. The central region of our galaxy behaves as a small galaxy unto itself.

I described my view of the formation of the solar system in "The Mars Gap Hypothesis". Matter has coalesced by gravity into stars and their solar systems, into galaxies and groups of galaxies, but the throw pattern of matter in the Big Bang must still be evident.

All spiral and elliptical galaxies, as well as all orbits and rotating bodies, have a particular tilt to their plane of rotation or orbit. So-called globular clusters of stars around the outside of our galaxy are spherical in form, and so have no tilt unto themselves, but their arrangement is tilted with the galaxy as a whole.

The planetary matter of our solar system is a part of two tilts, that of the planetary orbits and that of the galaxy as a whole. The two are not in the same plane, the plane of the planetary orbits in our solar system is tilted about 60 degrees (one-sixth of a circle) relative to the plane of our spiral galaxy. Neither is the earth's rotational plane the same as that of it's orbit around the sun, there is a difference of 23 1/2 degrees between the two, which is why we have seasons. The plane of the moon's orbit around earth is about 5 degrees different from the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun.

Here is my hypothesis: Weighted for mass, the angular momentum mass constant must remain constant for the universe as a whole. This encompasses all planes of spherical galaxies, as well as the rotational planes and directions of all stars and planets and orbital planes and directions of all planets and moons. Every different angle in space must have, across the universe as a whole, the same amount of angular momentum in all of the rotational and orbital planes as every other angle.

If matter was scattered evenly across space by the Big Bang, it cannot be any other way. The coalescing by gravity of matter into stars and the throwing of matter back into space by supernovae would not change this.

Rotation And The Universe

A star is born when enough material, usually from vast clouds of gas and dust in space, gets in close enough proximity to coalesce by gravity into a compact form. When the force of gravity at the center of the mass becomes powerful enough to crush atomic nuclei together into larger nuclei, against the repulsive force of the like-charged protons, the leftover binding energy is released and the star begins to shine. An equilibrium forms between this outward radiation of energy and the inward pull of gravity.

But if all that is required to make a star is enough mass, then why does not all of the matter in the galaxy just form one big star?

Bodies in space invariably undergo rotation. The earth, obviously, rotates in one day. The sun rotates in about a month, and the galaxy in about two hundred million years. This universal rotational tendency is still somewhat mysterious, my string theory on the cosmology blog explains it as the strings in multi-dimensional space wrapping around one another, but that is somewhat beyond the scope of our discussion here.

When a body such as a star rotates, it creates centrifugal force. The larger the rotating body, the more difference there is in velocity between a point on the inside of the body and a point on the outside. The concept is similar to that in a CD player. There is a groove pattern in the tracks of the CD, which varies in wavelength from the beginning of the track to the end. This pattern is called "ATIP", and it tells the motor of the CD how fast to turn. This is because the CD has to turn faster when the outer tracks are being played, and slower for the inner tracks.

The difference in the speed on the surface of a spherical body results in the banding effect that can be seen in the different colors (colours) of the cloud that form at different latitudes on the four large planets of the Solar System; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and, Neptune.

The outward centrifugal force opposes the inward force of gravity. I once read somewhere that if the earth rotated sixteen times as fast as it does now, objects on the equator would be weightless because the resulting centrifugal force would balance that of gravity. Indeed, we can see that the earth's equatorial diameter is greater than it's polar diameter because of this centrifugal force.

This means that within the body of any rotating object, the force of gravity holding the object toether must be stronger than the outward centrifugal force. Any mass in the outer portion of the object for which it is not will be ejected out into space. The conclusion is that there is a certain maximum rotational energy that a rotating body, such as a star, can have. If this limit is exceeded, some of the outer mass of the star, which has the most rotational energy, will be thrown out into space and thus bringing the rotational energy of the star back within the limit.

Exactly the same principle is applied when a governor is installed on a rotating axle, as a safety device to precent the axle from spinning too fast. The governor is simply weights which can move away from the axle on an arm mechanism as it spins faster. When the weights are further from the axle, they require more rotational energy. In drawing rotational energy from the axle itself, the weights force it to rotate more slowly.

Our galaxy, a so-called spiral galaxy shaped like a pinwheel, holds together because individual stars in the spiral arms of the galaxy are free to revolve around the center at their own rates. These rates of rotation vary according to the distance of the star from the galactic center.

This rule that, in a rotating body, the outward centrifugal force cannot exceed the inward force of gravity, limits the sizes of planets as well as stars. But with planets, the scarcity of material is usually a more important factor. But we can definitely say that rotation maintains the universe of multitudes of stars and planets as we know it.

Space And Human Intellectual Development

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered not just about the wonders of the universe, but how it has affected human intellectual development since the beginnings of civilization? Children are given games and puzzles to enhance their intellectual development, and the mysteries of the skyscape has served us in the same way.

The most obvious benefit of the night sky is that the circuit formed by the phases of the moon serves as a timekeeper for the planting and harvesting of crops. But lunar and solar eclipses baffled early people across the world. The explanation would be obvious if there was both a lunar and a solar eclipse every month, but there is actually a difference of about five angular degrees between the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun and that of the moon around the earth. If this had not been the case, it would have been clear that the earth is spherical and that it revolves around the sun, but humanity would have missed the challenging intellectual exercise of making sense of periodic eclipses.

Another clear benefit is the use of stars as fixed reference points for navigation and for large-scale building projects. Very close to the north celestial pole is a star, Polaris or the North Star, which is pointed to by the outer stars on the bowl of the Big Dipper. Both the pyramids and Angkor Wat were built using the stars for alignment. Eventually the stars became the basis for the development of latitude and longitude, latitude is easily determined by measuring the angular altitude of the North Star above a flat horizon.

Humans mapped the stars in the sky long before the earth's surface. It was an exercise in imagination across the world to group the stars into constellations. I wonder how much of a coincidence it is that the map of the world, with it's nations, very closely resembles the map of the sky with it's constellations.

A major early intellectual challenge was the mapping of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the sun over the course of a year across the starscape. The twelve constellations that lie on the ecliptic are known as the zodiac (although I have no belief whatsover in astrology).

How would our mathematics, particularly geometry, have developed without the night sky? Geometry is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, far pre-dating algebra and calculus, and I am certain that trying to figure out the celestial objects, and using them as timekeepers and fixed reference points, is why.

Next, we come to the planets. The word comes from the ancient Greek word for "wanderer", because planets appear to wander along the ecliptic against the fixed backdrop of the stars. Trying to figure this out gave humans a great exercise in dealing with varying rates of motion, which led to such developments as calculus. To complicate things, and make it more of a puzzle, the ecliptic forms a sine wave that crosses the celestial equator at two points six months apart. The reson that the two do not correspond perfectly is that the earth is tilted on it's axis, which also creates the seasons.

How much of a coincidence is it that so many of the machines designed by humans closely resemble the patterns that we have observed for thousands of years in the night sky? To begin with, the simple harmonic motion of a pendulum very much resembles the moon going through it's phases and ending up as it began, and also the earth going through it's seasons.

All machines have two sets of parts, those that are stationary and those that are in motion. This is the same pattern in the sky as the stars remain still as the planets cross, at their varying rates, in motion. In vehicles, of course, the entire machine is in motion but there are parts within that are in relative motion. The rotary motion is very common in machines, and this is the same as the entire celestial sphere revolving around the celestial poles such as the North Star.

What would the world be like now if we did not have the view of the moon, stars and, planets that we do? It would surely be a very different place.

The Surface of The Moon

In my view, to understand the moon as it appears today it is necessary to understand that it was once much closer to the earth than it is now.

The same side of the moon always faces the earth, meaning that it's rotation period is the same as it's orbital period around earth. The far side of the moon is more heavily cratered than the side that faces us, but lacks the dark lava "seas" that we can see on the surface of the moon. But this should not be a surprise at all if we consider that the moon was once much closer to us. These lava "seas" were formed by tidal force exerted by the earth.

If the moon, as far away as it is today, can exert tides in the earth's oceans due to the difference in the moon's gravitational effect between the surface of the ocean, because it is closer to the moon, and the bottom of the ocean which is further from the moon, then what tidal effect do you suppose the earth would have exerted on the moon when it was much closer to us? Considering also that the earth is about 81 times the mass of the moon.

There would have been volcanic tides on the moon, which would have formed the "seas" that can be easily seen on the moon. This explains why no such seas are to be seen on the far side of the moon. The close distance of the long-ago time also locked the moon's rotation to that of the earth, so that the same side always faces us. This would not be possible if the moon had not once been much closer to us, because today the gravity of the sun has more than twice the effect on the moon as that of the earth. (To understand why the moon still appears to orbit the earth, see "The Earth, The Moon And, The Sun")

As for the craters, which were formed by meteor impacts on the moon, we see why the far side is more cratered when we consider that the moon was once much closer to the earth. Most meteors would come from the direction in space away from the sun. When the moon was further from the sun than the earth, at full moon, the far side of the moon would be struck with a lot of meteors. But when the moon was between the earth and the sun, at new moon, the side of the moon that faces us would have the earth acting as a shield against meteors.

This is why we see the two sides of the moon as so different. The side facing toward us has the lava "seas", and fewer craters, while the side facing away from us lacks the seas but is more heavily cratered. The craters on the side facing us are also likely newer because this side of the moon would be more exposed as it moved further from earth, while that would not be true for the far side of the moon. The reason that the earth does not have craters like the moon is due to the erosion on earth, but long-ago meteor impacts is why we have deposits of metals in various places.

If The Sun Were Blue

The sun is a star that radiates light most strongly in the yellow-orange-red range. What would it be like if the sun were a hot blue star? There are many such stars that radiate more in the blue range and are considerably hotter than the sun.

The environment on earth very much depends on what type of star the sun is. My hypothesis is that, if the sun were a blue star, the earth would actually be colder than it is even though blue stars are typically hotter than the sun.

The reason for this is the way that the water in the earth's oceans handle light. Water absorbs light, but it absorbs the longer-wavelength red end of the spectrum first, and the shorter-wavelength blue last. The reason that deep water appears blue is that it is only blue light that can pass through enough distance in water to be refracted back to the surface. You may have noticed that, in photographs taken underwater, there is no red to be seen in depths below about 9 meters (30 feet), or so.

The earth's surface is about 72% water, making this a very important factor. The earth is as warm as it is because the water absorbs the sun's yellow-orange-red light before it can be refracted back to the surface. But if much more blue light was coming from the sun instead, much of this would be refracted back to space. The oceans would be a truly brilliant blue, seen both from earth and from space, but the earth would actually be colder.

With colder oceans, there would be less evaporation of water into the atmosphere. This means that there would be less weather, less rainfall, and more area of desert. The reason for the desert in southern Africa, for example, is that the ocean current offshore is cold so that there is less evaporation and thus less rainfall.

With less heating of the water near the equator, there would not be the ocean currents that we have now and which redistribute heat to higher latitudes. This would enlarge the polar ice caps and get a cooling spiral underway since ice and snow reflects much more solar radiation back to space, thus cooling the earth still further.

Land would get hot quickly during the day, but temperatures would plunge at night as in any desert. All in all, we are better off with the sun as it is no matter how brilliantly blue the water would be with a blue sun.

Cryogenics And Planetary Science

A recent posting about cosmology and temperature got me thinking about something else. The science of very low temperatures is known as cryogenics. Strange things take place at temperatures close to absolute zero, -459 degrees Fahrenheit or -273.16 degrees Celsius, at which all of the molecular motion, which we perceive as heat, ceases. A tough and flexible sheet of rubber, for example, will become extremely brittle at such temperatures so that it shatters like glass.

In the posting about temperature and cosmology, I explained how this demonstrates that my version of string theory must be correct. But this extreme brittleness of materials at very low temperatures also has implications for planetary science. The universe in which we live is a very cold place, the average temperature of the universe as a whole is about 3 degrees above absolute zero. In other words, despite the brilliance of stars in the sky, cold is the rule and heat is very much the exception.

Let's consider the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and also the famous systems of rings around the planet Saturn.

Almost all of the asteroids have irregular shapes. The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos which appear to be asteroids that were captured by the planet's gravity, are roughly potato-shaped. This means that many asteroids tend to be held together by structural bonds, rather than primarily by gravity. A body held together by gravity, such as the earth or the moon, will be spherical in shape because this is the shape with the lowest energy state.

You can read the article about asteroids on http://www.wikipedia.org/ if you like.

The asteroids orbit the sun in roughly the same geometric plane as the planets. This arrangment could have only come about by various collisions and mutual gravitation among what is now the asteroids after debris was thrown in all directions by the supernova (exploding star) which preceded the Solar System. One plane eventually became predominant, the one in which the planets and asteroids orbit now.

Let's move out to the ring system around the planet Saturn. There are actually rings around all of the large outer planets; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and, Neptune, but none of the others can compare with the rings of Saturn.

The dynamics of the rings around Saturn have a lot in common with the asteroid belt. The particles making up the rings are very tightly aligned in one geometric plane, so that the rings are invisible when seen edge-on from earth. Like the asteroid belt, this can only have come about by an extended period of collision and mutual gravitation from a primordial cloud of debris in orbit around Saturn.

The major difference between the asteroids and the rings of Saturn is the size and number. Some asteroids, especially Ceres, can almost be considered as planets. Many asteroids are hundreds of kilometers in diameter. Saturn's rings, in contrast, are made up of mere grains with only a relative few bodies up to a few meters across. This is why the rings appear to be a solid surface from a distance.

But how did this come about, in two systems with dynamics that are so similar.

Let's consider cryogenics, and the extreme brittleness that occurs at very low temperatures. The average asteroid is not much more than twice the distance of the earth from the sun. That means that they do receive a considerable degree of warmth. Saturn and it's rings, in contrast, is about nine times as far from the sun as the earth.

What this means is that the matter which makes up the rings of Saturn is extremely cold. The rings of Saturn are so cold that cryogenics apply. The pieces of matter in the rings must have the extreme brittleness that is found at such low temperatures. I find that this explains why the matter composing the rings of Saturn are broken into pieces so that the rings appear as a solid surface.

The particles making up the rings were once something more like the asteroids, but various collisions with one another broke them apart due to this cryogenic brittleness.

The Moon And Earth's Magnetic Field

I have a new idea to introduce concerning the earth's magnetic field. I have come to believe that the gravitational effect of the moon is an important factor in the strength of the field.

We know that planetary magnetic fields are caused by the churning of the molten iron cores at the center of the planet. The resulting magnetic field is greatly strengthened if the planet rotates rapidly, which is why Mercury and Venus have weak magnetic fields because their rotation periods, or days, are so long. Jupiter has a very powerful magnetic field because it rotates in just over 11 hours.

However, I believe that there is a yet undocumented factor in the strength of earth's field. My hypothesis is that there exists a bizzarre kind of weightlessness at the center of a planet because the gravitational pull from all directions is balanced out so that the net gravity is close to zero. Thus, as incredible as it sounds, the pull of the moon's gravity becomes a factor in the earth's molten iron core as it orbits the earth every month and exerts it's pull from different directions.

I realize that the mass of the moon is only one in eighty-one times that of the earth. But if the moon can cause tides in the earth's oceans at the surface of the earth, where the earth's gravity is aligned, why should it not also be a factor in the earth's molten iron core, where gravity from the sorrounding earth has cancelled out? The earth is 8,000 miles in diameter while the moon is 239,000 miles from earth so that the center of the earth is less than 2% further from the moon than the surface of the earth. This causes the iron core to churn more and gives the earth a stronger magnetic field than it would have otherwise.

The Earth, The Moon And, The Sun

It has become clear to me that our concept of the gravitational relationship between the earth, sun and, moon is far from accurate. Conventional wisdom is that the moon orbits the earth while the earth orbits the sun.

But how can the moon possibly orbit the earth? The sun is 400 times as far away from the moon as the earth is but the sun is about 331,950 times the mass of the earth. Since gravitational force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance and the square of 400 is 160,000, the sun exerts 2.07 times the gravitation force on the moon that the earth does.

A smaller body, such as the moon, will logically orbit the larger body that exerts the strongest gravitational force on it. This can only mean that the moon really orbits the sun and not the earth, regardless of how it appears to us. My conclusion is that both the earth and the moon follow the same fundamental orbit around the sun, which I will refer to as the mean orbital path. The moon appears to us to orbit the earth because it interweaves with the earth along the mean orbital path.

If the moon rotated freely, it would seem from there that the earth is orbiting the moon while the moon orbits the sun. Since the same side of the moon always faces the earth because of the earth's tidal force, this is not the case and the earth always remains in the same place in the lunar sky although the earth's phases change in the same way that the moon goes through phases as seen from earth.

Imagine an alternating weave of a thick line and a thin line around a straight line. The straight line represents the mean orbital path, the thick weaving line represents the earth and the thin weaving line represents the moon. The weave of the thin line, the moon follows exactly the same wavelength as the thick line, the earth, but it's weave goes much further from the baseline, the mean orbital path on each cycle.

The earth and moon both weave around the mean orbital path but the mass multiplied by distance from the mean orbital path remains the same. The moon weaves so much further away because it's mass is only 1/81 of the mass of the earth. The moon is 1/4 the earth's diameter and is made of the same type of rock as the earth's mantle but the earth has a heavy iron core that the moon is believed to lack.

The weave of the earth and the moon around the mean orbital path is due to their mutual gravity. It is a dance that has been going on for thousands of millions of years. imagine a donut-shaped (doughnut) concrete platform in space with a hole in the middle of it. Now suppose someone were to throw a ball upward from the platform. The ball would travel upward until the gravity of the platform pulled it back down. But, with no air resistance in space, the momentum of the fall back to the platform would propel the ball an equal distance on the opposite side of the platform as long as it went through the hole. Then it would come to a halt and fall back to the platform again and the cycle would continue indefinitely.

This is what happens in the dance of the earth and the moon as they travel along the mean orbital path around the sun. Both attract each other by gravity from opposite sides of the baseline but then go past the line in opposite directions due to momentum. But then each comes to a halt in their movement away from each other and the mean orbital path and then fall back toward each other again, all the while orbiting the sun.

The earth and moon cross the mean orbital path at the same time but not at the same point. Both earth and moon actually vary in their velocity in orbit around the sun, the moon a lot more than the earth due to it's relatively smaller mass. The moon moves around the sun due to the pull of the sun's gravity on it. But sometimes the moon is between the earth and the sun in it's interweaving with the earth. During this time the earth's gravity is on the opposite side to the sun in that it is pulling on the moon from the opposite direction as well, this causes the moon to speed up. At other times, the moon is on the other side of the earth from the sun so that the earth's and sun's gravity are both pulling on it from the same direction, this causes the moon to slow down. As we would expect, the moon moves faster when it is closest to the sun, demonstrating that the moon does actually orbit the sun.

The moon is on the mean orbital baseline, as is the earth, when we see the moon exactly half illuminated by the sun. It is moving more quickly so that it moves ahead of the earth when it's phase is less than half and it is moving more slowly so that it falls behind the earth in the orbit when it's phase is more than half illuminated, such as at full moon. Thus the moon alternates between pulling ahead of and falling behind the earth in the orbit around the sun, while maintaining roughly the same distance from earth. This causes the appearance of it orbiting the earth. We know that this scenario must be true, and not the reverse, because the moon orbits the earth going eastward.

If astronauts had lived on the moon for a period of time, they would have surely noticed this variation in speed every 29 earth days as it orbits the sun. The earth also moves faster when the moon is on the same side of it as the sun and vice versa but this variation has apparently been too slight for us to notice. However, this must be the way it is. The moon cannot possibly behave the same when the relative alignment of the earth and sun change. But since there is no visible change to us, the only possible change must be in velocity that causes us to perceive the moon orbiting the earth.

Once again, that is impossible if the sun exerts more than twice the gravitational force on the moon that the earth does. One full cycle in this dance is 46,394,937 miles (79,229,479 km) along the mean orbital path, or 29 days. So, the weaving of the earth and moon along this line would appear to an outside observer as very flattened versions of sine waves. This seems to have never been noticed before because it causes the earth's distance from the sun to vary by less than the earth's diameter and during the course of a year, the earth's distance from the sun varies by more than three million miles (4,800,000 km) anyway.

In "The Surface of The Moon", I described how the earth's tidal force on the moon caused the lava flows that produced the dark areas that we see on the moon and in doing so redistributed the moon's mass to reach a fine balance and stop the moon from rotating so that the same side of it always faces the earth. You may be wondering how the earth can have such a tidal effect on the moon while the sun apparently does not if the gravitational force of the sun on the moon is more than twice that of the earth.

Let me explain. This tidal effect is the result, not only of gravity but of a difference in gravity. If the force of gravity exerted on the earth's oceans by the sun and moon was exactly the same as the force they exerted on the rock layers under the ocean, there would be no tides. But the surface of the ocean is a few miles closer to the moon than the underlying earth.

This is what causes the tides, not the gravity but the difference in gravity. The tidal force is proportional to the gravitational force from the moon or sun divided by it's distance. The sun exerts 168 times the gravitational force on earth that the moon does but the sun is also 400 times as far away as the moon.

The result is that the tides in the earth's oceans by the moon are more than twice as high as those produced by the sun. This also means that on the moon, the tidal force produced by the earth is about 200 times that produced by the sun, even though the total gravitational force of the sun on the moon is more than twice that of the earth.

Imagine yourself on the moon. What would it be like? How would the sky look different than it does on earth?

It would depend which side of the moon you were on. The same side of the moon always faces earth, so that if you were on the far side of the moon you would never see the earth. From the far side of the moon, it would seem to be rotating to provide night and day, just as earth does. But, instead of 24 hours, a lunar day would last 29 earth days. Half would be dark, and half of that time would be light.

From the far side of the moon, the moon would not seem to rotate around it's center of mass, as the earth does, it would seem to be rotating around a point in space hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, which is where the earth is located. From the near side of the moon, the moon would seem to be rotating around it's center of mass.

It would not appear, from the moon, that the moon is revolving around the earth, as it appears to us from earth. It would appear that the moon is revolving around the sun, but with the moon's distance to the sun varying by nearly half a million miles, about 700,000 km, during the course of the month.

This variation in distance would not be apparent with the naked eye, but would be measured if there were astronomers on the moon. The variation in distance from the sun is caused by the gravitational influence of the nearby earth, but it would not appear that the moon is in orbit around the earth.

From the side of the moon facing earth, there would be the same lunar day equal to 29 earth days with half of the time being light and the other half dark. The difference, of course, would be the earth. The earth would not appear to move at all in the sky. No matter where an observer was, on the side of the moon facing earth, the earth would always be in the same place in the sky.

There is a photo taken from the moon by astronauts titled "earthrise", as opposed to sunrise. However, this cannot be technically correct because since the moon does not rotate, relative to the earth, the earth cannot "rise" or "set" in the lunar sky.

The location of the earth in the sky would be determined by the observer's latitude and longitude on the moon. An observer at the moon's north pole would see the earth at the southern horizon, and vice versa. The same for the eastern and western limits of the half of the lunar surface that is visible from earth.

The position of the earth in the lunar sky would be even more valuable for surface navigation than is the North Star (Polaris). A lunar traveler could readily tell both his latitude and longitude by taking a sighting on the position of the earth in the sky. As the traveler headed northward, the earth would appear further south, as the traveller moved westward, the earth would appear further east. Travelers on the far side of the moon would have no such advantage.

The earth would always be visible from the near side of the moon, whether it was day or night there. The earth would appear with about four times the angular diameter that the full moon appears to us on earth. The moon from earth occupies about half an angular degree, the earth from the moon would occupy about two angular degrees.

From the earth, the sun and moon appear as about the same size in the sky because, while the sun is about 400 times the diameter of the moon, it is also about 400 times as far away. But the earth would appear as four times the diameter in the lunar sky, and periodically lunar day would become night as the earth blocked out the sun in what we see as a lunar eclipse, but the moon would experience as we do a solar eclipse.

It would not be entirely dark, but would be reddish because the earth's atmosphere would refract some long-wavelength red light around and onto the moon. We can see this red shade on the moon during a lunar eclipse.

An observer on the near side of the moon would see the earth going through phases similar to the phases of the moon as seen from earth. The rotation of the earth would be easily visible, and thus an earth day could be used on the near side of the moon as a unit of time. The lights of cities could probably be seen as a faint and eerie glow on the earth's night side.

There is a rule that I have noticed concerning the phase relationship between the earth and moon. At any given time, the phase of the moon as seen from the earth, and the phase of the earth as seen from the moon, expressed as a proportion of the full disc, must add up to one full disc.

For example, when we see a full moon an observer on the moon would not see the earth illuminated by the sun at all. In other words, the lunar observer would see a "new" earth. When we cannot see the moon, because the moon is between the earth and the sun, we refer to it as the new moon. At that time, an observer on the near side of the moon would see a full earth. When we see a half moon, and observer on the moon would see a half earth.

An observer on the moon would definitely consider the moon as in orbit around the sun, and not the earth as we see it. The fact is that, from the moon, the gravitational influence of the sun is more than twice that of the earth. I find that just the fact that there are eclipses are proof of this. The plane of the moon's apparent orbit around the earth is tilted about 5 degrees relative to the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun. But yet periodically, the three end up in the same plane or else there would not be eclipses.

If the gravitational influence of the earth on the moon were greater than that of the sun, there would be no reason for the planes of the two to coincide. The earth would be able to hold the moon in an orbit, the plane of which would not at all need to be the same as that of the earth around the sun.

But due to the fact that it is the gravity of the sun which is stronger at the moon, the plane of the apparent path of the moon around the earth still diverges from that of the earth around the sun, but it must change so that while it may be above or below the orbit of the earth around the sun at any given time, it must average out to be the in the same plane as the orbit of the earth around the sun.

This is why there are eclipses, because periodically the plane of the two are the same. But if the plane of the two were always the same, there would be both a lunar and a solar eclipse every month.

The Effective Center Of Gravity

I wonder if our view of gravity requires some modification. According to all that I can see in science texts and on the internet, the strength of a gravitational force is subject to the inverse square law. In other words if an object is twice as far away, the gravitational force it exerts will be 1/4, if three times as far away, it will be 1/9. Also, the gravity of a spherical body such as a moon, planet or, star behaves as if it were coming from the center of mass of the body.

Yet, I find that this cannot be completely correct. These principles are not wrong in themselves but this neglects to take into account the geometric nature of spheres. Since essentially all sources of significant gravitational forces in the universe will be spherical in shape, it is vital that our view of the nature of gravity be amended to include this.

Our present concept of gravity which I described in the first paragraph would only be complete if the mass of a gravitational source was concentrated in an infinitesimal point or was at an infinite distance.

Suppose we have a satellite or spacecraft at a certain distance from a planet. Imagine a geometric plane that divides the planet into two equal hemispheres and is perpendicular to a straight line from the spacecraft through the center of the planet. For the sake of simplicity, we will assume that the planet is of uniform density.

Our present concept of gravity considers that the center of mass of the planet and it's center of gravity is one and the same and that it's gravitational force acts as if it is originating from this point. My reasoning is that this would only be the case if the perpendicular bisector plane divided the planet's mass so that all of the mass in the forward hemisphere was closer to the spacecraft than all of the mass in the further hemisphere.

Since a line of equal distance from the spacecraft will form a circle or sphere, this can only be true if the planet was at an infinite distance from the spacecraft so that the arc of a circle centered on the spacecraft that passed through the planet would be a straight line or that all the mass of the planet was concentrated in an infinitesimal point.

In the case of a satellite or spacecraft a finite distance from a spherical body such as a planet, a perpendicular bisector plane as described above cannot divide the planet into two equal hemispheres so that all of the mass in the forward hemisphere is closer to the spacecraft than all of the mass in the further hemisphere. The perpendicular bisector plane must pass through the center of the planet and since the line a given distance from the spacecraft forms a sphere or circle, that means that some of the mass in the forward hemisphere of the planet, around the outside of the planet, will be further from the spacecraft than some of the mass in the further hemisphere, around the center of the planet, and thus it's gravitational influence on the spacecraft will be greater.

This means that the effective center of gravity of the earth is different for all objects at different places on the earth's surface or in the space above the earth because a circle drawn from any given outside point that divides the earth in half will have a different arc for each outside point. The effective center of gravity of a planet relative to a spacecraft or other object approaching the planet is the planet's actual center of mass when the spacecraft is at an infinite distance away and moves along the same axis toward the spacecraft as it approaches the planet. This is because when there is less distance to the planet, there is a greater proportional difference between the gravitational effects of it's near and far sides.

A circle centered on the spacecraft and dividing the planet in half is what we must use to determine the center of gravity relative to the spacecraft. But it cannot be such a simple circle because then the relative center of gravity of the planet will be further away from the spacecraft than the planet's center of mass, and this makes no sense since the closer hemisphere of the planet to the spacecraft must have more of a gravitational effect on the spacecraft than the further half. The relative center of gravity of the planet must be closer to the spacecraft than the planet's center of mass, since the gravitational effect of mass falls off with distance.

The model that I have come up with to determine the relative center of gravity for the planet with regard to a Spacecraft A is to create an imaginary Spacecraft B at an altitude above the planet equal to that of Spacecraft A, but on the diametrically opposite side of the planet. Draw a circle centered on Spacecraft B which divides the planet exactly in half. The point on this circle directly between the mass center of the planet and Spacecraft A will be the relative center of gravity of the planet with regard to Spacecraft A.

This may throw off our understanding of the strength of gravity because since practically all sources of significant gravity are spheres, it has been acting over lesser distances than had been previously thought. I have been unable to find any reference to this anywhere.

This means that the effective center of gravity of a body orbiting the earth, such as the moon continuously changes, tracing a circle around the earth's actual center of mass on the plane of the moon's apparent orbit. This acts to churn the earth's liquid iron core and strengthen it's magnetic field as I described in the posting "The Moon And Earth's Magnetic Field" on this blog.

You may notice that this concept is similar to that of tides. Tidal forces occur whenever there is a difference between the actual center of mass and the effective center of gravity. This is why the tidal effect of the moon on the earth is more than twice that of the sun, even though the sun's gravitational pull on the earth is about 168 times that of the moon. The moon is 400 times as close to us as the sun so that the difference between the center of mass and the effective center of gravity is far greater.

The Mars Gap Hypothesis

I have thought of a way to estimate the amount of matter that must have been in the Asteroid Belt at one time.

Our Solar System was formed from a star that exploded into a supernova. Most of the debris from the explosion condensed into our sun. Most of the rest, composed mostly of heavier elements that had been cooked up in the star from the original lighter elements of the universe by fusion, condensed into the planets. Matter that was thrown in all directions by the explosion began orbiting the sun in orbits that were perpendicular to each other gradually came together by collision and gravitational capture until the planets were formed and one general plane of planetary rotation around the sun became predominant.

Logic tells us that it would be a small planet that would form closest to the sun. This is because this closest planet would experience a stronger pull of gravity from the sun than more distant planets. The distance from the center of the planet at which the pull of the sun's gravity would be less than that of the planet's gravity would be shorter than it would be for the other planets. Thus, much matter in space that would have become part of the planet if it were further from the sun would be prevented from doing so by the gravity of the sun.

This means that planets should increase in size as we move outward from the sun because the gravity of the sun will be less competition and also because the outer planets sweep over a wider area of space in their orbits, enabling them to come in contact with more matter that can be captured by gravity. On the other hand, debris will become more and more scarce as we move away from the site of the supernova explosion so that planets should become larger going away from the sun before reaching a certain peak and then diminishing in size.

Indeed this is exactly what we observe in the Solar System.

Moving outward from the sun, the planets get progressively larger in size until we reach Jupiter. Then, they get progressively smaller. Notice that the size ratio of Venus to Earth before the peak is almost identical to that of Uranus and Neptune after the peak. Keep in mind that we must count planets and their moons together and that the outer planets would not be so large if they were closer to the sun because their vast oceans of liquid methane and ammonia would boil away in the heat of the sun. You may notice that our Solar System fits this model perfectly with the exception of one planet, that of Mars.

The Kuiper Belt, debris in the outer reaches of the Solar System, exists because the lack of gravity there slows down formation. In a similar way, the Asteroid Belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, represent the early Solar System frozen in time by Jupiter's gravity. Most asteroids are much closer to Mars than to Jupiter.

I see a different origin for the icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, in the outer reaches of the Solar System, as we saw in the posting on this blog "New Thinking About The Origin Of Comets And Water". The ice of the outer reaches of the Solar System originated from a nova, the blasting off of the outer layers of the star which preceded the sun, before the entire star exploded from the center as a supernova and scattered it's matter across space. Much of the mass came back together by gravity to form the sun, which we know is such a second-generation star, and the Solar System. But the icy matter of the outer reaches of the Solar System originated with the lighter molecules, such as water and salt, that were scattered from the higher starting point of the nova which preceded the supernova.

In the model of the Solar System that I am presenting here, the asteroids must be considered as the matter which would have been a part of Mars, if not for the gravity of Jupiter preventing it from coalescing. Mars should have actually been larger than the Earth-Moon System and it's two small irregularly-shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos, must be asteroids that were captured by Mars' gravity.

Mars is composed of those asteroids which were far enough from Jupiter that it's gravity did not prevent them from coalescing into a planet. The asteroids are far enough from Jupiter that they are not pulled in by it's gravity but close enough that it's gravity can prevent them from coalescing into a planet. Mars is further from Jupiter than the asteroids and is far enough that it's component fragments were not prevented from coalescing into a planet by the gravity of Jupiter.

This is exactly the same pattern that can be seen in the rings of Saturn. There is an imaginary line around Saturn called the Roche Limit. Outside this limit debris coalesced into Saturn's moons. But inside this limit, pieces of ice and other matter was prevented from coalescence by the planet's gravity and was gradually lined up in the same plane by mutual collision. The result is the spectacular rings of Saturn. The three other largest planets all have much fainter rings for the same reason.

The Asteroid Belt is not permanent. the orbits of asteroids can be destabilized by Jupiter's gravity when they are ahead of Jupiter in the orbital trek around the sun. Many former asteroids have struck the Earth or Moon after their orbits have been destabilized in such a way.

This hypothesis gives us a way to estimate how much matter must have been in the Asteroid Belt originally. According to my calculations, if Mars were as much bigger than the Earth-Moon System as the Earth-Moon System is bigger than Venus, Mars would be 7.8 times it's present volume. I take this to mean that the amount of matter that was once in the Asteroid belt could be estimated to be about 6.8 times the present volume of Mars.

The Maturity Hypothesis

All of the recent controversy about whether Pluto should have the status of a planet opens up a new way of thinking about the Solar System.

We know that a star, such as the sun, in the process of formation undergoes coalescence by gravity. Matter outside the star but within it's field of gravity also undergoes coalescence of it's own, gradually forming into planets by gravitational attraction. The speed of coalescence depends upon getting matter to meet up with other matter. The process will be faster if there is more matter or if matter is moving faster in a given zone so that it becomes more likely to meet up with other matter and join by gravitational attraction. The result is concentric gravitational nodes around the sun or star that form what we know as planets.

Near the sun there is a sparse zone of matter because the sun's strong gravity can pull it in. This is reflected in the fact that Mercury is a small planet. Further out, there is a denser zone which gradually thins out as we get further from the sun and it's gravity thus becomes weaker. Thus, we find the largest planets in the Solar System outside the inner sparse zone but inside the outer sparse zone.

Of course, heat is another factor in planet size. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and, Neptune, the largest planets, exist in a zone where gases on earth such as methane are liquid or solid. You may notice that these four large planets get progressively smaller as we get further from the sun.

In deciding on Pluto's right to planethood, who says that the Solar System is finished? My hypothesis is that there is a "Zone of Maturity" that over billions of years moves outward from the sun. I will define the concept of maturity as the incorporation of all matter in a concentric zone from the sun into the main gravitational node in that concentric zone, namely a planet.

This, however, takes time. In fact, lots of time. It may go on for long after the sun ceases to shine. Since the planets closest to the sun move fastest and have the least orbital path distance, they will scoop up all the loose matter that they are ever going to in much less time than the outer planets.

A planet is a manifestation of a concentric gravitational node around a star or the sun. Not until maturity are the two one and the same. Pluto is maturing much slower than the earth did because it moves through space only about one sixth as fast as earth does and thus will take much longer to collect all of the matter that it ever will.

The Kuiper Belt, debris around and beyond the orbit of Pluto, is a sparse cold version of what the inner Solar System was once like. All planets are still growing due to the reception of materials from space but Pluto has a lot more growth to go than earth does because it moves so slow through space. In the outer reaches of the Solar System, planets orbit slowly over vast distances, matter is sparse and maturity is late.

It is well know that Pluto has not yet cleared all of the matter in it's path. This is, in fact, one of the reasons that many astronomers want to deny it planetary status. But that matter represents future growth for Pluto. This Solar System is only about five billion (5,000 million) years old. Pluto might need another ten or thirty billion to reach full maturity.

Another factor is moons. Under my hypothesis, a moon around a planet is a part of the gravitational node also. In perfect maturity, moons would not exist. But in practice, a moon is a part of a planet's "metropolitan area" and counts as a part of the gravitational node. Pluto's moon, Charon, is very large and adds a lot to the total mass of Pluto's gravitational node. Moons actually accelerate maturity because they spread the gravitational "net" over a wider area.

Under this hypothesis, not only Pluto but also Xena and Sedna are considered as planets. The factor that blinds us on earth to the concept of maturity is the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroids are prevented from coalescing into a planet, maturing, by the powerful gravity of Jupiter. This leaves debris floating around the inner Solar System.

When Jupiter disrupts the orbits of some asteroids, some of which lands on earth. If not for these asteroids, we would see the relatively pure maturity of the Solar System and the Zone of Maturity moving slowly outward. We would see that the zone had not yet passed Pluto and would not be so quick to revoke it's planetary status.

The Mystery Of Salt

Here is another one of those unanswered questions about the world around us that no one ever really seems to ask. The oceans contain a vast amount of salt dissolved in the water. Where on earth did all of this salt come from?

Salt is a simple molecule consisting of one atom of sodium and one of chlorine. This forms sodium chloride, common table salt and which also fills the oceans. Has anyone ever wondered where all the sodium and all the chlorine that it would take to make all of this salt came from and how the two managed to get together? Both elements are practically unknown on earth except in salt. (By the way, salt is a chemical term for a product of an acid-base reaction and there are many different salts but here I am referring only to sodium chloride.)

It is easy to believe that the salt comes from comes from water running over and dissolving rocks in rivers on it's way to the sea. But this cannot be the case. Rock can be pulverised, but it forms sand and not salt. Sand is heavier than water and sinks to the bottom while salt is light enough to dissolve in water in large quantities.

Furthermore, igneous rocks like granite and basalt consist of silicon and oxygen in their chemical structure, and not sodium or chlorine. Sand is basically impure silica. Essentially all the sodium and chlorine we obtain is made by breaking down salt by electrolysis. The sodium and chlorine that makes the salt in the oceans could not possibly have been washed there by water flowing over land.

Salt is found on land, there are salt deserts and salt mines as well as places where salt has been compressed to form rock salt. But this is on land that was formerly part of a sea floor that has raised up. When the water evaporated, the salt was left behind.

I am certain that the sodium and chlorine in salt must have reacted together before being dissolved in water. We know that the water on earth almost certainly came from comets, which some astronomers have described as "dirty snowballs". There seems to me to be no doubt that the salt in the oceans must have come from space too, in the comets or an asteroid that hit earth.

It is well-known that the sun is a second generation star. A former star exploded that already contained heavy elements that can only be cooked up in stars by nuclear fusion from the primordial hydrogen and helium in the universe. That is why we have rocks and metals today. Stars fuse lighter elements from previous reactions into heavier elements.

Notice that, considering all elements, sodium and chlorine are relatively close in atomic number. Sodium has 11 protons in it's nucleus and chlorine has 17. My hypothesis is that when the former star exploded in a supernova, a chunk of it's outer layers of lighter elements was hurled into space and became the comet or asteroid that added the salt to the earth's oceans. Note also that lesser amounts of other elements around this range are often found with salt such as magnesium (12), potassium (19) and, calcium (20).

Thus, I would like to announce today that all of the salt in the earth's oceans must have come fom outer space and that this seems to prove the popular theory that water on earth must have come from comets. For more information, see the posting on this blog "New Thinking About The Origin Of Comets And Water", on this blog.

The Mystery Of Exploding Stars

Stars operate on nuclear fusion. The tremendous heat and pressure in the centers of stars crunch smaller atoms into larger ones, and the leftover binding energy is released as heat and light. Ordinarily, the electrons in atomic orbitals are not even considered as a factor in such nuclear reactions. However, I have concluded that it is actually electron repulsion that drives what takes place within stars.

A star is born when a vast amount of matter in space coalesces by gravity into a compact mass. The matter is usually dust and gas, but does not have to be of any particular elements. The difference between a star and a planet is that stars have enough mass so that the gravitational pressure at the center is enough to overcome the electron repulsion between atoms so that it crunches smaller atoms together into larger ones.

There is less nuclear binding energy in the nucleus of the one larger atom then there was in the two smaller atoms and the kinetic energy in the gravitational  mass of the star which fused them together so that the excess energy is released. It is this released excess energy that makes the star shine. A star reaches an equilibrium in which the inward force of gravity is balanced by the outward energy from the nuclear fusion at it's core.

Remember that the universe, at it's most fundamental level, is composed of electric charges. There are two such charges, negative and positive. The rules are that opposite charges attract, while like charges repel. Nuclear binding energy is the energy which overcomes the mutual repulsion of the like-charged positive protons in the nucleus to hold the nucleus together. This is accomplished by the presence in the nucleus of neutrons, which have a neutral electric charge. An element is defined by the number of protons in the nucleus, but the heavier elements get the more neutrons there are in the nucleus relative to the number of protons.

Electron repulsion is what keeps atoms from merging in to one another, since atoms are mostly empty space. The atoms in orbitals around the nucleus in adjacent atoms are all negatively-charged so that the like-charge repulsion prevents atoms from merging together.

In the posting on this blog, "The Chemical-Nuclear-Astronomical Relationship" , we saw how the difference in magnitude between the energy released in a chemical reaction as compared with a nuclear reaction is the same as the difference in magnitude between the mass where a sphere forms in space by gravitation and the mass at which nuclear fusion ignites to form a star.

What I would like to explain today is my conclusion of how it is the electron repulsion between atoms that actually governs the processes within stars. The largest stars tend to eventually explode in a supernova, scattering it's component matter across space so that planets and second-generation stars might form from it. But why should a star shine for billions of years, with no significant changes in matter added or subtracted to it, and then suddenly explode?

Exploding stars are not at all arcane to us because you would not be reading this without such a supernova, as every atom in your body as well as in our solar system, was once part of a star which exploded. The gravitational collection of matter to form the star is relatively simple so, with no new information added, the life cycles of stars must also be relatively simple. It is my finding that the operation of stars, as well as the explosions as nova and supernova, and also the binding energy curve of atomic elements, can be explained by simple geometry and electron repulsion even though electrons do not usually even count in nuclear reactions.

In the posting on this blog, "Electron Repulsion And Density", I gave my version of why all matter is not of the same density. The analogy that I used was the filling of a box with ball bearings. A ball bearing is a small solid metal sphere, usually made of steel, and used in the construction of various machines which have rotating axles.

The box should end up weighing the same no matter what size of ball bearings it is filled with, as long as the ball bearings are of the same density and fit neatly into the box and are all in each box are of the same size. I did not fill boxes with ball bearings to test this, but I did calculate it mathematically.

The implication of this is that all materials should be of the same density, at least those of the same state of matter such as solid or liquid. Yet this is most certainly not the case, materials made of smaller atoms tend to be of lower density than those made of larger atoms. The only way to explain this is the electron repulsion between atoms. The same mass in smaller atoms would have more total surface area than the mass in larger atoms, and this would mean that there would be more total surface area with the smaller atoms and thus more total electron repulsion between atoms, bringing about more space between atoms and thus lower density.

(Another result of electron repulsion is weight. As we saw in "The Weight Hypothesis", on the physics and astronomy blog, weight is a manifestation of a hindering of gravitational attraction on matter by the electron repulsion between atoms).

Electron repulsion between atoms is the very definition of a star. The fusion that takes place would not make sense except that fewer larger atoms take up less space, and so relieves the tremendous gravitational pressure, than more smaller atoms. This is due to electron repulsion because of the principle that a box of ball bearings will weight about the same, containing the same amount of mass, regardless of the size of the bearings. Heat energy assists the process, but gravity must get it started. More atoms fuse with the addition of heat, accelerating the process, than would have fused by gravitational pressure alone.

We could describe the equilibrium of a star in the form of an equation: STAR = GRAVITY + RELEASED BINDING ENERGY > ELECTROMAGNETISM. This defines a star in terms of the basic forces of physics, with electromagnetism representing the electron repulsion between atoms. A star exists when the inward force of gravity of the mass, plus the released binding energy from fusion, is greater then the force of electromagnetism in the form of electron repulsion. Basically, a star shines when there is enough mass pulled together by gravity to overcome the electron repulsion between atoms and crunch small atoms together into larger ones, which releases the excess binding energy.

There is a limited zone in the center of a star where fusion takes place, it does not occur throughout the star. The heavier atoms naturally tend to move toward the center of the star, although the heat at the center forms upward convection currents, and it is in the center where heavier elements are formed from the lighter ones by fusion. Heavier elements in a second-generation star, which is one that has collected back together by gravity from the debris of a supernova, have a cooling and life-lengthening effect on the star because it takes more energy to move these heavier atoms. Astronomers often refer to heavier elements as "metals", even though not all are technically metals.

The so-called "binding energy curve" of atoms is a chart of the phenomenon of how the binding energy per nucleon in atoms increases sharply until we reach the element iron, then is slowly decreases as we move to heavier elements. A nucleon refers to either a proton or a neutron in the nucleus of an atom. Atoms up to iron and nickel are formed by the usual crunching together of lighter atoms into heavier ones by fusion within the core of the star. Elements heavier than this are formed only during the brief time that the star is actually exploding as a supernova, because some of the energy of the explosion goes into binding the heavy nuclei together.

This is why the heavier elements are much more rare than those up to iron. The nuclei of some heavier elements, having been put together by the sudden burst of energy in a supernova, are not entirely stable and give off radiation or may gradually break down. This is known as radioactivity. The usual crunching process is referred to as the s-process (for slow) and the fusing of heavier nuclei during the actual supernova explosion as the r-process (for rapid).

The heaviest element that occurs naturally is uranium, with 92 protons, but heavier elements can be formed in nuclear reactors. When atoms of plutonium or the U-235 isotope of uranium are split by nuclear fission, in a nuclear reactor or bomb, we get back the energy of the long-ago supernova which put the atoms together in the first place. The upper limit to the elements is because even the energy released by a supernova, which can fuse nuclei, has it's limits.

The crunching process peaks at iron, which has the greatest binding energy per nucleon of any atom. The reason for the binding energy curve, the increase in binding energy per nucleon up to iron, is simple. As atoms are crunched together step by step, the binding energy is still in the nucleus from the step before.

Hydrogen, the simplest atom with only one proton and one electron, is crunched together to form helium which has two protons and two neutrons. Most of the energy in sunshine is from the leftover binding energy when four hydrogen atoms are crunched together to form one helium atom. Two of the electrons in the hydrogen atoms are also crunched into protons to form neutrons.

Then three helium atoms can be crunched together to form a carbon atom, or four helium atoms to form an oxygen atom. Each step also includes the added binding energy from the step before so that the more steps there have been to form an atom by crunching, the more binding energy per nucleon there will be, and this peaks at iron. The energy that is transformed into binding energy comes from the gravitational pressure on the atoms, which causes them to fuse, and which came from the previous supernova if it is a second-generation star, or from the Big Bang itself.

However, there is a consequence of crunching smaller atoms together into larger ones. Larger atoms have more electrons, and thus it would take more force to overcome the electron repulsion of these larger atoms in order to fuse them together into still larger ones. This explains why most stars simply burn out eventually, it is only the largest stars which explode into a supernova.

Although the star fuses lighter atoms into heavier, no new mass is ordinarily being added and the star eventually reaches a point where there is not enough gravitational pressure to fuse the heavier atoms which it has created together. The star goes dim and then ceases to shine altogether. This should happen around when the fusion process has already created a lot of iron.

But what if the star is large enough, with enough gravitational pressure on the center, to continue crunching smaller atoms into larger ones past the point where smaller stars would have been unable to and would have burned out? There turns out to be a different consequence.

The larger the atoms get, the more rapidly they can be crunched together, per nucleon, in the center of the star. This must mean that more energy is being released as the star progresses to crunching heavier elements together. Also, there actually is more binding energy per nucleon, as per the binding energy curve, which would be released as the star progressed to fusing heavier elements together as long, of course, as the star was large enough to have the gravitational pressure necessary to fuse the larger atoms together.

This increase in energy output from the core upsets the equilibrium of the star because it is a balance between the inward pressure of gravitation and the outward pressure of the binding energy being released by fusion in the center of the star. The outward pressure is no longer balanced by the inward pressure of gravity and this creates an explosion. The star attempts to regain equilibrium by blasting away it's outer layers in order to reduce still further the pressure on the core which is generating the fusion. This blasting away of the outer layers of a star is what we refer to as a nova.

If the nova does not succeed in slowing the release of energy at the center then the imbalance between inward and outward pressure becomes still greater because of the mass that is now removed from the star.. The star explodes from the center in the grand finale known as a supernova. It scatters it's mass across space, which may coalesce back together by gravity into a second-generation star such as the sun, which already contains heavy elements and which can have a system of planets around it which also require heavy elements to form a compact and solid structure.

The internal processes do vary somewhat from one star to another, but the processes do have a basic similarity and I think that this model of those processes actually being governed by electron repulsion holds true for all stars.

The Supernova Energy Hypothesis And The Most Accessible Star

To begin with, let's briefly review the nature of energy, kinetic energy in particular. It is well-established that energy can never be created or destroyed but only changed in form. Kinetic energy is the energy stored in a body, such as a ball or a stone, due to it's position or velocity. A brick on the roof of a building would cause an impact on the ground below if it fell, thus it has kinetic energy. This kinetic energy is not an innate property gravity or of the brick itself, it is the result of the work done, the energy expended, to get the brick to the roof in the first place.

Now, let me ask you a question. You are familiar with the tides in the oceans. Where does the energy come from to move the endless thousands of millions of tons of water every day to make high and low tides?

Every astronomy book that I have ever read claims that it is "gravitational energy" that causes the tides. Sure enough, the tides are caused by the gravity of the moon and to a lesser extent, the sun. The problem is that any physics class can prove that there is no energy at all in gravity, not even a bit. If you throw a ball in the air, the ball will come back down with force. But it is only the force that you put into it in the first place being redirected by gravity. It is impossible for the ball to come down with more kinetic energy than you imparted to it with your throw.

If there was any energy in gravity itself, the ball could gain kinetic energy by being thrown into the air. But gravity is nothing more than a force of nature containing no energy at all. So, that still leaves us with our unanswered question of where the energy comes from to create the tides every day.

The energy may be transmitted by the gravity of the moon, as the books say. But since there is absolutely no energy in gravity itself, it must come from somewhere and I have never seen this question answered.

I have decided that there is a great gap in the field of astronomy. We have tended to take orbits and rotations in space for a given without delving into the great story behind these phenomena. If we see a man-made satellite in orbit, we would logically conclude that it must have required a considerable expenditure of energy to put it there. Yet, astronomy books tend to simply state that the moon orbits the earth while it rotates and the earth orbits the sun without explaining where the energy came from to make it so.

If a satellite requires energy to get into orbit around the earth, then where did the earth get the energy to orbit around the sun? We can easily prove that there is energy in orbits, that must have gotten put there somehow, by the fact that the earth's rotation and the moon's orbit creates tides. We cannot say that the energy came directly from the Big Bang that began the universe because the earth and moon are made of heavy elements that were not created in the Big Bang.

My answer to this mystery is the supernova, the exploding star that must have preceded the formation of the Solar System. Large stars go on creating energy by the process of nuclear fusion. This is done by fusing two or more lighter atoms, such as hydrogen, into a heavier atom. When this is done, the binding energy in the nuclei of the light atoms is released and some of it goes to bind the nucleus of the new atom of a heavier element. But a little bit is left over and released.

This is why the sun shines, at this stage of it's life it is creating energy by fusing four hydrogen atoms into one helium atom. What this means is that the star gradually creates heavy elements from light elements. A supernova, a massive explosion of the star, occurs when it gets to the point where it runs out of fuel because there is not enough lighter atoms left. When the supernova occurs, the component heavy matter in the star; iron , copper, oxygen, aluminum, etc. is thrown out into space.

Of course, when this happens the remaining hydrogen in the giant star (only very large stars explode in supernovas) may come back together again to form what we could call a "second-generation star". We know that the sun is a second-generation star because it contains a significant amount of heavy elements, even though it is only at the stage of fusing hydrogen into helium, the two lightest elements.

There are other theories around about how the solar system formed. Some claim that the matter that formed the planets was pulled from the sun by a passing star but there is no evidence at all for this and the planets contain too much angular momentum to have formed out of matter from the sun or from a cloud of gas and dust at the same time as the sun. We can be fairly sure that it was an exploding star that threw it's component matter across space and some of it condensed into the solar system that we have today. This is fairly well-established.

My claim is that the tremendous energy released by this exploding star more than five thousand million years ago, which is the approximate age of the Solar System, is where energy such as tidal and nuclear comes from. (Note-I try to avoid using the word "billion" because it has different meanings in different countries) It is the left-over kinetic energy of this titanic explosion of long ago that explains so much about the way the Solar System is today.

The supernova had an escape velocity, just as a planet does. Some of the matter strewn across space by the explosion was no doubt moving fast enough to be gone forever. But much of the rest of the matter began to be affected by the gravity of the other expelled matter so that it formed a vast cloud of debris from the inside of the star. This debris cloud is what formed our Solar System.

We know that the orbits of the planets around the sun form a plane. The orbit of Pluto is about 30 degrees out of alignment but the rest of the planetaryorbits are remarkably close to being in the same plane. There is not an eclipse every time the moon orbits the earth because the moon's orbit around the earth because there is a difference of about five degrees between it and the orbit of the earth around the sun.

But we can easily see that this geometric orbital plane is a relatively recent development. The moon and the planet Mercury are covered with craters from thousands of meteorite impacts. Yet the craters are all over the surface. There seems to be no concentration whatsoever along the equators or ecliptics (the plane of it's orbit) of either body. In fact, the largest known impact crater in the solar system is the Aiken Crater at the moon's south pole.

This gives us a view into the earlier days of our Solar System where chunks of matter was strewn in all directions. As the matter came back together by gravity, it was only then that the orbital plane we have today began to form. The same happened on the other planets, but the moon and Mercury are the only ones that preserve craters for millions of years because there is little or no erosion. On earth, we can see on a resource map that deposits of metals like iron, copper, gold and, aluminum tend to be found in limited areas, unlike coal and oil, and are haphazardly strewn all over the planet. These deposits were clearly formed by impacts from space from the metallic elements cooked up in the star that exploded. (Which, by the way, means that there must be gold and other resources on the moon.)

In a cloud of matter like the debris from the exploded star, random collisions and gravitational attraction occurs until one geometric plane dominates and matter becomes concentrated there. The kinetic energy of the moving chunks of matter from the explosion are pulled sideways by gravity from other such pieces of matter until the direction of movement forms a vector between the outward thrust and sideways pull to cause the cloud to rotate. As with the geometric plane, collisions and gravitational attractions occur until, by random chance, one direction of motion dominates.

As with the impact craters on the moon and Mercury, today we can see evidence of this stage in the rotation of the planet Uranus, which is opposite that of the other planets. More evidence of the time before the present geometric orbital plane became established is seen in the orbits of comets, many of which are nowhere near the same plane as the planets.

Remember that energy cannot just disappear. The fantastic amount of energy released by the supernova of so long ago had to go somewhere. This is one fact that astronomers seem to have neglected and I see it as explaining how the Solar System is today.

As we can see by man-made satellites in orbit around earth, an orbit is evidence of energy. Whenever we see one body orbiting another, it shows that energy must have been expended to put it there. The orbit is the continuation of the kinetic energy that it took to get the body into the orbital position.

In the case of the planets, formed from agglomerations of the matter thrown out by the supernova, their orbits around the sun can only be explained as vectors between the outward force of the explosion and the lateral gravitational attraction with other such chunks of matter. Rotation of a planet is a form of orbit. The energy that started a planet such as the earth rotating is also leftover kinetic energy from the supernova explosion that began the Solar System.

The magnetic fields that earth and other planets have is caused by the churning of the molten iron core of the planet and this requires an input of energy. This energy had to come from somewhere. When a spaceship is sent on an interplanetary mission, it's trajectory is often planned to pick up momentum by using the gravity of a planet is passes. This is known as the "slingshot effect". But it clearly consists of transferring energy from the orbit of the planet to the spacecraft.

So obviously there is a lot of energy in the orbit of a planet around the sun. Since it is established that there is absolutely no energy in gravity, this energy had to come from somewhere. It is the kinetic energy of position consisting of leftover energy from the supernova explosion.

The orbits of the planets around the sun and the rotations of these planets should no more be taken for a given requiring no further explanation. The tremendous energy to place these bodies in such positions of high kinetic energy had to come from somewhere and it came from this exploding star more than five thousand million years ago. The tides, the magnetic fields of planets and, the slingshot effect used to propel space craft also use this tremendous reservoir of leftover kinetic energy.

This scenario also throws a light on other cosmic processes. This explosion and then reforming into a somewhat smaller star, our sun, and it's family of planets can be considered as a form of stellar reproduction. When a star large enough to explode into a supernova runs out of light element fuel for it's fusion process, it does so and throws out it's heavier elements into space so that it regroups into a smaller star which goes on with the fusion process with the remaining nuclear fuel. Whenever we see planets orbiting stars in the universe, we can be sure that this is the process which took place.

I would like to offer a related idea concerning the development of life on earth. We can see how the earth and other planets were continuously bombarded by large meteorites earlier in their history. As most of the loose matter within the gravitational domain of the solar system became incorporated into one or another of the large bodies, the moons and planets, this bombardment diminished until today when large meteors are rare.

In the development of life on earth, living things were at first quite simple in form. This changed in what is known as the "Cambrian Explosion". The Cambrian Period in the earth's history was from roughly six hundred million years ago until five hundred million years ago. In this period, the life forms on earth greatly increased both in number and complexity. Most of the basic life forms that we have today originated in this period.

My hypothesis is that the Cambrian Explosion of life on earth was made possible by the reduction in large meteorite impacts on earth as most of the loose matter in nearby space was absorbed by the planets and moons. How could complex, higher forms of life exist with the earth under such a bombardment? It makes sense to me that the great diminishing of this bombardment resulted in the great increase in life on earth known as the Cambrian Explosion.

We are always trying to find out more about what goes on inside of stars. The two lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, were formed following the beginning of the universe. The elements that are heavier than those two were cooked up inside stars by nuclear fusion, crunching smaller atoms together into larger ones, and scattered across space when the star eventually exploded. (You can read "The Mystery Of Exploding Stars" if you wish).

It may seem that the sun is the most accessible star to us for study. The next closest star, the Alpha Centauri system, is about four light-years away. Today, I would like to give my opinion on which is the most accessible star to piece together the internal processes that took place, and it is not the sun.

The sun is actually what is known as a second-generation star. This is because it already contains heavy elements that it could not yet have fused itself. There was a large star that exploded long ago, more than five billion (5,000 million) years ago. Virtually every atom in the Solar System, including every atom in your body, was once a part of this star. As far as I know, the star does not have a name.

To see what happened inside this star of long ago, prior to it's destruction, we only have to look all around us. We can tell by the composition of the Solar System that a lot of iron, silicon and, oxygen were scattered by the explosion of that star. Silicon and oxygen compose most non-biological rocks, such as chalks and limestone, which is calcium carbonate. The earth has a heavy iron core, and Mercury contains so much iron that it is known as the "Iron Planet".

Deposits of minerals on earth, such as iron, lead, copper, silver, gold, etc. come from meteorites which are fragments of the original star that have been floating around in space since the star exploded in a supernova. As the remnants of the star were thrown across space, there was enough mutual gravity to hold much of the matter together, which is today the sun and the rest of the Solar System.

Such minerals are usually found separately one earth. This means that the meteors, chunks of the former star, tend to be composed mostly of a single element or at least they were originally. However, stony meteorites are made of silicon and oxygen atoms, which got together to form molecules following the explosion of the star, long before crashing into the earth. We could say that, in nature, atoms form inside stars and molecules outside. (See "The Mystery Of Salt", sodium and chlorine must have combined to form salt before landing on earth).

Elements which tend to be found together in molecules, like silicon and oxygen or sodium and chlorine, are because of their relative positions in the factor tree of nuclear fusion, as well as their affinity for one another due to the number of electrons in their outer electron shells.

Recent news articles concern the global market for the so-called "rare earth" elements. These elements are basically the rare elements that are the highest elements in atomic number (the number of protons in the nucleus), from 90 on up, on the periodic table of the elements. This does not include plutonium, which is man-made and does not occur in nature. What is different about the rare earth elements is that, much unlike the lighter and more abundant elements, they tend to be found together under the ground.

This caught my attention as I believe it to be an issue of astronomy, rather than of geology, as it gives us a clue as to what went on inside the previous star before it exploded in a supernova.

In the center (centre) of a star, atoms are crunched together by the tremendous heat and pressure, fusing lighter elements into heavier ones. The excess binding energy from the nuclei is released as heat and light, which is why stars shine. The process is far from neat and orderly. When the newest and heaviest elements begin to form, they tend to be close to one another inside the star. When a large amount of an element has formed, it will have a layer or large section of the star to itself.

As a general rule, the lighter elements are fused first even when heavier elements are present simply because it requires less energy to do so. When the star exploded, there was not yet enough of the rare earth elements for them to have settled into their separate zones inside the star, unlike the more common elements. If the star had lasted longer, there would today be less hydrogen and more of the rare earth elements, and those elements would be found separately in mines instead of together.

The heaviest elements are all radioactive. This means that their atoms give off either alpha particles, basically helium nuclei, beta particles, basically electrons, or gamma radiation. The reason for radioactivity is that the structures of the nuclei are less than stable and these emissions are an attempt to gain stability. The process of fusion that formed these elements inside the star before it exploded could not seal their nuclei tightly enough to prevent the nuclei from eventually decaying.

As unlikely as it may seem, one of the best ways to study what happens inside stars is to look in the opposite direction, under the ground.

New Thinking About The Origin Of Comets And Water

COMETS

Comets have always been both fascinating and mysterious. I was really interested in space in my youth but in all honesty, I never really paid that much attention to comets. There was one by the name of Kohoutek, but it was not easily visible. I read a book about it, but never actually saw it. I remember when Halley's Comet, the most famous one of all, came by. But by that time, I was preoccupied with other interests and I did not see it either.

The only one that I actually saw was Hale-Bopp. I was staying in the middle of London at the time, and the comet was brilliant even with all of the light of the city. I watched it night after night and can only imagine how impressive it must have appeared from far out in the rural areas.

But now, I think I can add some insight into the mystery of comets.

We know that the planets formed from a vast cloud of debris that was thrown out into space by a star that exploded in a supernova. Our sun also formed from the material which was left over from that star. The pieces of debris orbited the sun from all different directions. Eventually, through collision and mutual gravity, one orbital plane predominated. This is the orbital plane of the planets around the sun that we see today.

However, most comets originate from far outside the Solar System. They tend to have highly eccentric orbits with orbital planes that may be nowhere near that of the planetary orbits.

Comets have been described as "dirty snowballs", meaning that they are composed of various ices with other debris attached. The usual composition of comets are ices of lighter elements, particularly hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and, nitrogen. Heavier elements seem to be scarce in comets, those that are present could have been collected during previous orbits to the inner Solar System.

As the comet comes close to the sun, a "tail" becomes visible which always points away from the sun. This results from vaporization (vapourisation) of some of the ice, and pressure by the "solar wind" of charged particles from the sun.

Now, we know that the sun must be a "second-generation" star because it already contains heavy elements that it is not yet at the point of creating by nuclear fusion. In other words, the sun formed by matter from the previous star, which exploded, falling back together by gravity to form a new star.

This star exploded in what is known as a supernova. I take a supernova to be an explosion of the entire star from near it's center. But a star may also blast away it's outer layers while leaving the rest of the star intact. This is a nova, rather than a supernova.

By the way, you can read my concept of exploding stars in "The Mystery Of Exploding Stars", about the energy that drives so many processes such as tides in "The Supernova Energy Hypothesis" and the formation of the Solar System from the primordial cloud of debris in "The Planetary Formation Curve" and "The Mars Gap Hypothesis".

The question that I want to ask is: What if the exploding star underwent first a nova, which threw off it's outer layers, and then a supernova, which exploded from the center? The first material ejected, which would be the lighter elements near the outside of the star, would be hurled much further away, because it started at a much higher level, relative to the center of gravity of the star. This material was thrown too far out into space to be pulled into joining the orbital plane of the planets and Kuiper Belt, the small rocky and icy bodies around and beyond the orbit of the outermost planet, Pluto.

This makes sense because the momentum per mass would be higher for material ejected by the nova, than for that ejected by the supernova. This is especially true since the material ejected by the nova gets a higher start.

I theorize that the material composing the bodies of the Oort Cloud, ices of the lighter elements as described above, originated with the material thrown off the previous star by a nova. The material which now makes up the sun and the vast majority of the planetary mass was ejected by a later supernova, when the star finally exploded from it's center.

This scenario ideally explains the present structure of the Solar System, and the Oort Cloud sorrounding it but far beyond it. If the ices of lighter elements composing the Oort Cloud was thrown outward by the same supernova as the planetary material, then why was it thrown so far past the rest of the material that formed the Solar System? I find that the Solar System and the Oort Cloud far beyond, as it exists today, is actually a model of the supernova, and earlier nova, that took place in the previous star.

There is a vast distance gap between the practical outer limits of the Solar System, the Kuiper Belt of small icy and rocky objects, and the Oort Cloud, small icy bodies of the lighter elements from which most comets originate. Although short-term comets can come from the much-closer Kuiper Belt, around the orbit of Pluto, the majority of comets originate in the Oort Cloud and can have orbits around the sun of millions of years.

My contention is that the distance gap between the Kuiper Belt, at the edge of the Solar System, is congruent to the gap in the previous star of matter thrown outward from the outer layers during the nova which took place, and matter thrown outward by the later supernova, which was the explosion of the entire star. Had there not been a nova before the supernova that destroyed the previous star, there would not be the Oort Cloud that originates most comets today.

You can read more about the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt on http://www.wikipedia.org/ if you wish, and also the details of nova and supernova. More about the previous star which exploded is on "The Supernova Energy Hypothesis" on this blog.

I would also like to speculate that the previous star which exploded was a diffuse red giant type of star, in it's final stages. It threw off it's outer layers in the nova, in an attempt to regain stability. This would also mean that the matter thrown off the star in the initial nova would get a very high start, which would explain why it went so far out into space to form the Oort Cloud of today.

Since we are on the subject of comets, what about the earth's atmosphere? The atmosphere mainly consists of nitrogen, oxygen and, the carbon in carbon dioxide. It just so happens that these elements also compose many of the bodies that make up the Oort Cloud. It is fairly certain that the water on earth came from one or more comets, I think that the atmosphere can be explained this way also.

Within the last twenty years, the planet Jupiter has been struck by two major comets. What about the last five billion years ( five milliard or five thousand million ) or so that Jupiter has existed? Jupiter, as well as the other outer planets, have atmospheres of methane and ammonia, which are often found also in comets. Could it be that comets are the source of these atmospheres also? I think so.

WATER

It has become apparent to me that the origin of water can be explained in terms of astrophysics. I have never seen this pointed out.

There is a general rule concerning energy that the way in which the energy within a material can be released depends on how that energy was first put in. Energy that is incorporated into the molecular structure by sunlight can be released by ordinary burning. This typically involves the very complex molecular structures of carbon atoms that can be built within plants, such as oil and wood.

But if the energy originated with the supernova which took place before the sun and the rest of the Solar System formed from the debris falling back together, that energy is nuclear in nature and thus can only be released by a nuclear process such as fission. This is because the energy from the supernova went to bind smaller atoms into larger ones, and that binding energy can be released, but the energy from sunlight does not involve the nuclei and is stored in the electron orbitals of the atoms.

A star is believed to only bind smaller atoms together to create atoms up to nickel and iron in the periodic table, which is why iron is so abundant in the inner Solar System, Mercury is sometimes referred to as the "Iron Planet". Atoms heavier than this are created, not by the usual crunching together process of the star, but by the energy of the supernova explosion itself, but that involves only a brief period of time which is why these elements are much more rare then the lighter ones.

Let me just define my understanding of the difference between a nova and a supernova. Some large stars are prone to ultimately explode, and scatter their matter across space. Some of this matter comes back together by gravity to form what is known as a second-generation star. The sun is such a star because it originated with an earlier star which exploded. Second-generation stars contain more heavier elements that were cooked up in the previous star by crunching atoms together to make heavier elements from lighter ones, in the tremendous heat and pressure in the center of a star.

Some of the heavier elements that are scattered by the explosion may coalesce by gravity to form planets around the second-generation star. If the loosed matter does not coalesce, it forms the clouds of dust and gas in space. This is what happens when the entire star explodes, and is what I understand as a supernova. A nova is when the outer layers of the star are blasted away, but the star does not explode from the core as it does in a supernova.

The word "nova" means new. The Canadian province of Nova Scotia means "New Scotland". Ancient sky observers thought that they were seeing a new star when one lit up as a nova. In the 1980s, there was a wildly popular car by Chevrolet that was called the Nova. But it was not completely a success because, in Spanish-speaking countries, no va means "it doesn't go", which probably isn't a good name for a car.

The idea that came to me is that a nova, the blasting away of the outer layers of a star which typically contain lighter atoms, can also input chemical energy that can later be released. Remember that chemical energy is that in the bonds between atoms in molecules, and does not involve the nucleus of the atom.

Here is a question to ponder: We know that hydrogen can be burned as fuel, in fact, there is growing interest in it. But where does the energy come from? It cannot be from the nucleus of the atom because that cannot be released by ordinary burning, and in any case there is only a single proton in a hydrogen nucleus and so no binding energy to be released.

The energy in hydrogen comes from the fact that it is diatomic. This means that pairs of hydrogen atoms group together in a molecular bond, and there is energy in this bond that is released when it is burned as fuel. This energy cannot be from the sun, because there is no receptor mechanism like the leaves of plants.

The only other possible source of energy, which could have bound hydrogen atoms together in pairs so that they can be used as fuel because there is energy in the bond, is the exploding star that preceded the Solar System. This bonding could not have been done in the center of the star, that would have crunched the entire atoms together into heavier atoms. My hypothesis is that a nova, a blasting away of the outer layers of a star but not the explosion of the star from the core, can impart chemical energy rather than nuclear.

In the section about comets above, I explained my theory of the origin of the comets in the Oort Cloud, which is basically a vast ring of frozen ice in orbit around the sun but well outside the orbits of the planets. The Kuiper Belt, a zone of small icy planetoids, is also composed largely of water ice, is closer to the sun than the Oort Cloud but more distant than the planets.

In my theory, the former star which exploded in a supernova to form the Solar System actually exploded as a nova first. The outer layers of lighter atoms was first blasted away. The nova debris traveled far out into space, because it had a higher starting level, and remained in orbit around the sun outside the rest of the heavier debris from the supernova, which coalesced to form the planets and the sun.

The Oort Cloud is from where comets originate. These are composed mostly of ice, which begins to vaporize (vapourize) when the comets comes near to the sun. Sunlight reflecting and refracting from this vapor (vapour) causes us to see a tail on the comet. The so-called solar wind, the stream of particles from the sun, pushes the tail of the comet so that it always points away from the sun.

My hypothesis is that it was the input of energy during the nova, the blasting away of the star's outer layers, before it later exploded in a supernova, which went to form the molecular bonds of water. There would have been lighter atoms in the outer layers of the star, and that input of energy formed the bonds between two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen to form H2O, or water. This is congruent to the way elements heavier than nickel and iron are formed by the input of energy when the supernova explosion takes place.

Water does not form naturally if hydrogen is released into the air to mix with oxygen. This is because both are diatomic. It requires combustion of the hydrogen to get it to combine with oxygen to form water. The released energy of the hydrogen-hydrogen and oxygen-oxygen diatomic bonds provides the energy to go into the H2O molecular bonds. We can see how much energy there is in the inter-atomic bonds of the water molecule in that it takes energy to break molecules of water back into component hydrogen and oxygen. It can be done by electrolysis, passing an electric current through water so that hydrogen bubbles will emerge at one electrode and hydrogen at the other.

By the way, have you ever thought about how fortunate we are that hydrogen peroxide is not stable over long periods of time, and ultimately breaks down into water? Hydrogen peroxide is H2O2, it is like water except that it has an extra oxygen atom. If this were stable, we would have oceans of hydrogen peroxide, instead of water, and there would be little or no oxygen in the air.

Where else could the energy in the molecular bonds of water come from? It would not have come from the interior of the star or the supernova explosion, these would have crunched the entire atoms together. It could only have come from a nova prior to the supernova, and this explains why there is so much ice in the far reaches of the Solar System.

This brings us to another posting on this blog, "The Mystery Of Salt". It is generally believed as certain that the water on earth came from one or more comets. But what about the salt in the oceans? I explained in that posting why water and salt must have gotten together before they arrived on earth.

Salt, like water, is a molecular union of two small atoms, sodium and chlorine. On earth today, essentially all of the sodium and all of the chlorine are combined together as salt in, or from, the oceans. This leads me to conclude that salt was also put together by the energy of the nova in the same way as water, before it arrived on earth.

What this means is that, while water is common in our Solar System, that may not be true of other solar systems. All solar systems form from supernova debris around second-generation stars, but if the star which exploded as a supernova did not have it's outer layers of light atoms first blasted away as a nova, water may not exist.

I have my ideas about the nature of water in "Water Made Really Simple" on the meteorology and biology blog, www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com . The thing that is really special about water is that it is polar. One side of the molecule is more positively-charged and the other side more negatively-charged. This causes water molecules to line up negative-to-positive so that it can form liquid water and solid ice.

But maybe this provides a view of it's origin. Imagine a vast field of oxygen and hydrogen atoms in the outer layer of the star just as those layers are being blasted away in the nova. The pressure from below could have pressed the hydrogen and oxygen, against the layers above, into lining up in this configuration before being blasted out into space.

When water molecules line up negative-to-positive, in the configuration known as hydrogen bonding that makes liquid water possible, they are re-creating this bonding configuration which took place moments before the molecules were blasted out into space. Some of the oxygen atoms were forced together with other oxygen, and some hydrogen with hydrogen. This is why there are these diatomic molecules in our atmosphere today, as well as water.