Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 1/14/2010

Question
Hi Jayandra
Jayandra, some time back i read a web page that was claiming that the sun could be a ball of electric like ball lightning. I’ve no way of understanding how crazy this claim is, but i have to ask just in case, because  I’ve seen two objects that people might refer to as ball lightning, and I actually did my own research on them. The research simply involved dissecting as much information from the objects as I could and then involved looking for those same details in other reports. Over the years I built up patterns that lead me to conclude that these objects might of been generated by the earths magnetic field as the earth’s equivalent of flare activity, causing flashes in the atmosphere and sky and/or earth tremors. Of course, I’m not able to get my head totally around the mechanics of this stuff and can’t really say if there’s a serious flaw in it, so i continue to ask experts, but regardless of this, my point is; I’ve trawled through tons of this stuff and I’m aware that I have read of the same characteristics i saw, in other objects, some of which were truly massive objects. Hence, my questioning,  I can’t help but think, If hundreds or thousands of people are seeing these objects around the globe each year, and massive objects have been documented in a mere past hundred years, couldn’t it be possible that truly massive objects could have evolved somewhere in the vastness of space in the past billions, and stars could be electric?
I would also like to ask. If stars were spheres of electricity, wouldn’t it be possible that the magnetic fields could be responsible for the build up of its mass, and it could even be possible for a star to turn off with the small mass it had gained and therefore become a planet? Sorry if this all sounds crazy. I like to think to much...
Thanks for reading this
Kind regards
David


Answer
David!
You are confused!!
Too much pseudo science is doing the rounds in the USA.
There was this site that claimed the sun was made of all ferrite.
I asked the gentleman if a ball 1 million miles in diameter is all ferrite, will it not be much more massive than the sun? In fact such a ball will collapse as a black hole!

He promised to get back and has not been heard of till now.

The physics of the sun was worked out in the 60s by George Gamov...read his "Birth and death of the sun" if  you  can.

The neutron gamma chain reaction powering the sun was so well understood, they even predicted the steady flow of neutrinos from the solar core. That has been proven to be true (The solar neutrino problem, see it on Wikipedia).

So scrap all the fog of doubt and read up on the sun on Wikipedia.

The sun is 99 % Hydrogen & Helium, the solids we see on Earth did not come from the sun, but from the supernova that triggered the formation of the sun in some distant stellar nursery.
So even if the sun suddenly went cold, it would not become a solid planet, but a huge Jovian gas giant!
regards
Jayen