CHAPTER FIVE
The original Super Sun, prior to its nova, was accumulating electrons from the Galaxy consistent with the demands of the environment through which it was passing. As we have explained earlier, the Super Sun became too electro-negative and expelled material violently into its surrounding space. This material could not escape; its expulsion was opposed both by the post-nova Sun and by the Galaxy. It thus formed and filled a sac surrounding the newly created Solaria Binaria.
In the sac was the whole system of Solaria Binaria; the Sun, Super Uranus, the primitive planets, and the plenum (of gases and solids) of solar origin that nurtured the planets.
As the binary widens, the sac becomes conical in shape, narrowing from the size of the Sun at one end to about the size of Super Uranus at the other. A system of similar appearance has been postulated for the binary AM Herculis (Liller, p352). Wickramasinghe and Bessell describe gas flow patterns in X-ray- emitting binary systems. There, one may note a similarity in the shape of their pattern of maximum obscuration to the cone of gases proposed in this work.
Viewed from the outside the ancient plenum would have been opaque to light. Not so with the gas of the Earth's atmosphere today, which is eight kilometers thick if the atmosphere is considered as a column of gas of constant density [32] . This atmospheric layer is of trivial thickness compared to the radius of the Earth, yet its importance to the environment is unquestionable. Even this negligible atmospheric layer removes 18.4 per cent of the incoming sunlight, mostly by diverting it from its original direction of travel.
Some of this scattered light returns to space, but most of it is redirected several times to produce the blue sky so familiar to us. Atmospheric scatter is enhanced near sunset when the incoming light traverses an atmospheric column tens of times longer than near noon. The setting Sun is notably fainter and its color redder because of the increased scatter. If the atmospheric column were as little as 1280 kilometers thick (at the present surface air density) all of the sunlight would be deflected from its incoming direction. Light would still be seen but only after scattering several times; no discernible source could be identified with the light. So it was in the days of Solaria Binaria. To be precise, if, in the last days of Super Uranus, this body were about thirty gigameters from Earth and if Super Uranus was then as bright per square centimeter of surface as today's Sun, it would not have been directly visible unless the gas density in the plenum was close to that deduced today for the Earth's atmosphere at an altitude of eighty kilometers. To see the more distant Sun this density would have to be decreased another fourfold [33] .
In the Age of Urania, Super Uranus was located about as far from the Sun as the orbit of the planet Venus today. This would provide the plenum with a volume of about 10 20 cubic kilometers. If the plenum contained as much as one per cent of the atoms in the present Sun, the gas density would be several times that found at the base of the Earth's atmosphere today. Neither star would be seen directly, and only a dim diffused light could reach the planetary surfaces.
As the binary evolved, the plenum came to contain an increased electrical charge; it expanded, leaving less and less gas in the space between the principals. Thus it became gradually more transparent.
Astronomers see diluting plenum gases elsewhere in evolving binary systems. Batten (1973a, p10), discussing matter flow within binary systems, favors gas densities of the order of 10 13 particles per cubic centimeter. Warner and Nather propose a much higher density for one system (U Geminorum-a dwarf nova system) where they postulate a gas disc with 6 x 10 17 electrons per cubic centimeter. Unless all the gas is ionized, the neutral gas density would be higher than the calculated electron density. The gas densities that they mention are comparable to those necessary to allow the early humans to discern the first celestial orbits.
In the earlier stages of Solaria Binaria the plenum was impenetrable to an outside observer; all detected radiation came from the surface layers of the cone-shaped sac, an area up to fifty-five times the surface of the Sun. The luminosity of the sac would arise from the transaction between in flowing galactic electrons and the gases on the perimeter of the sac.
The plenum, at formation, was electron-rich relative to the stars and the planetary nuclei centered within it. These latter electron-deficient bodies promptly initiated a transaction to obtain more electrons by expelling electron-deficient atoms into the volume of the plenum. The charge differences within the sac were modulated with time. In other words, the plenum was losing electrons from its perimeter to its center. In response, the size of the sac collapsed under cosmic pressure. In time this charge-redistribution might have diminished the volume of the sac by as much as tenfold, compressing the cone of gases into a cylinder or column of smaller diameter.
Running along the axis between the Sun and Super Uranus was an electrical discharge joining the two principals. Moving with this electrical flow was matter from the Sun that was bound for Super Uranus. Some of this matter would be intercepted by and incorporated into the primitive planets.
Induced by the electrical flow a magnetic field was generated which encircled the axis and radially pinched the gases. The pinch effect is self-limiting in that the more the current, the more the pinch. An infinite current in theory pinches the current carriers into an infinitesimal volume, extinguishing it (Blevin, 1964a, p214). Material would be extruded at both ends of the pinched flow by the pressure induced in the pinch.
This circular magnetic field, a magnetic tube, would induce randomly moving ions of the plenum to circulate along the field direction. The circulating motion of the ions eventually would be transferred by collision to the neutral gases. The result would be that in the outer regions flow would be dominated by revolution around the circumference of the tube. Everything here would eventually revolve uniformly. The innermost regions of the column were dominated by flow along the axis. Considerable transaction occurred at the junction of these two separately moving regions of the column, the central and the peripheral.
Some luminosity would arise from the transaction of electrons and ions deep within the magnetic tube. The ions electrically accelerated towards Super Uranus were neutralized at some point along their trajectory. At neutralization X-rays were produced. Some of the ions would be neutralized upon collision within the magnetic tube, most upon reaching Super Uranus; but, because of the pinch phenomenon noted above, some ions would be extruded and neutralized near the perimeter of the sac behind Super Uranus. Despite the high gas density in the original plenum, X-ray emission would be observable from the outside. That such is the case elsewhere is indicated by Brennan.
As the plenum diluted with time (in a manner to be discussed in Chapter Eleven) the outside observer would see deeper and deeper into the system, and eventually all of the X-ray emission would come from the interface between the magnetic tube and the surface of Super Uranus. As in other binary systems, a partial eclipse of the main X-ray source would then be seen as the dumb-bell revolved (see Tananbaum and Hutchings for data on other binaries).
Matsuoka notes a positive correlation between X-ray and optical emission in binaries. Radio-emitting regions surround many binary systems (Wickramasinghe and Bessell). Spangler and his colleagues claim that radio emission from binary stars is noted for stars that are over-luminous. The radio emission is generated by electrons transacting with the magnetic field associated with the inter-star axis. That this emission is enhanced when a stronger transaction occurs between the stars causing the over-luminosity is understandable, using our model.
At the perimeter of the plenum, optical effects would show to an outside observer an apparent absorption shell associated with the hidden binary within. Like many of the close-binary systems, the stars of Solaria Binaria would not be resolvable in a distant telescope, but the binary nature of the system could be known because observable differences would be produced as the dumb-bell revolved.
Gas-containing binary systems as described here, and elsewhere (Batten, 1973b, pp157ff, pp176ff), represent the stake of Solaria Binaria at various epochs, and especially in its last days. As the binary system collapsed, the plenum thinned, allowing direct observation of light produced by sources inside the sac. The gas disc, theoretically implied to surround the stars of other binaries, is waning in the late translucent plenum. The gas streams detected flowing between certain binary components are present in Solaria Binaria along what we call the electrical arc. The gas clouds, whose absorption spectrum leads us to believe that they envelop entire binary systems, correspond to the perimeter of the early opaque plenum. As Solaria Binaria evolved, each of the classes of circumstellar matter noted by astronomers became observable in their turn.
Inferable from the above is the degree of visibility from the Earth's surface, or from any point of the planetary belt within the plenum. Overall there is a translucence. Objects near at hand might be distinguished, certainly after the half-way mark in the million-year history of Solaria Binaria was past. Sky bodies were indistinguishable from Earth.
With passing time, the level of light would increase. In the beginning, the light is scattered and the sky is a dim white. As the plenum thinned electrically, the sky bodies would emerge as diffuse reddish patches. During this process, the sky would brighten and become more blue. Thus, as they emerge, Super Uranus and the Sun brighten and whiten while the sky becomes darker and bluer.
At a time related to the changes soon to be discussed, around fourteen thousand years ago, the Earth is suddenly peopled by humans, and one may investigate whether any memories remain of the plenum. There seem to be several legendary themes that correlate with our deductions about visibility.
Seemingly, aboriginal legends describe the heavens as hard, heavy, marble-like and luminous. Earliest humans were seeing a vault, a dome [34] . Probably in retrospect, to the heaven was ascribed the human qualities of a robe or covering, and, by extension, part of an anthropomorphic god. Thus, the Romans saw Coelus, the Chinese T'ien, the Hindus Varuna, and the Greeks Ouranos. Vail (1905/ 1972) presents ample evidence that day and night were uncertain and that the heavens were continuously translucent. When Hindu myth says that "the World was dark and asleep until the Great => Demiurge appeared", we construe the word "dark" as non-bright relative to the sunlit sky that came later. Heaven and Earth were close together, were spouses, according to Greek and other legends. The global climate of the Earth in the plenum was wet; all is born from the insemination of the fecund Earth by the Sky, said some legends. There was so much moisture in the plenum that, although the ocean basins were not yet structured, the first proto-humans might confuse the waters of the firmament above with the earth-waters. In some legendary beginnings, a supreme deity had dispatched a diver to bring out Earth from the great primordial waters of chaos (Long, 1963).
The earliest condition was referred to as a chaos, not in the present sense of turbulent clouds, disorder, and disaster, but in the sense of lacking precise indicators of order, such as a cycle that would let time be measured. T'ien is the Chinese Heaven, universally present chaos without form. The gods who later give men time, such as Kronos, are specifically celebrated therefore (Plato).
Sky bodies were invisible. Legends of creation do not begin with a bright sky filled with beings, but speak of a time before this. When the first sky-body observations are reported, they are of falling bodies. The earliest fixed heavenly body in legend is not the Sun, the Moon, the planets, nor the stars, but Super Uranus, as will be described later on.
Nor was the radiant perimeter of the sac visible. It lay far beyond discernment as such, and was in any case practically indistinguishable from its luminescence. The electrical arc would have been visible directly only in its decaying days, being likewise sheathed from sight by the dense atmosphere of the tube. That the arc or axis appeared along with the sky bodies before its radiance expired is to be determined in the next chapter, where its composition and operation are discussed.
Notes on Chapter 5