“This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar…”
From the Stanford Report, March 17, 2014 (h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard) video follows
New evidence from space supports Stanford physicist’s theory of how universe began
The detection of gravitational waves by the BICEP2 experiment at the South Pole supports the cosmic inflation theory of how the universe came to be. The discovery, made in part by Assistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, supports the theoretical work of Stanford’s Andrei Linde.
Almost 14 billion years ago, the universe we inhabit burst into existence in an extraordinary event that initiated the Big Bang. In the first fleeting fraction of a second, the universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of today’s best telescopes. All this, of course, has just been theory.
Researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration today announced the first direct evidence supporting this theory, known as “cosmic inflation.” Their data also represent the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. These waves have been described as the “first tremors of the Big Bang.” Finally, the data confirm a deep connection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.
“This is really exciting. We have made the first direct image of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time across the primordial sky, and verified a theory about the creation of the whole universe,” said Chao-Lin Kuo, an assistant professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and a co-leader of the BICEP2 collaboration.
These groundbreaking results came from observations by the BICEP2 telescope of the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow left over from the Big Bang. Tiny fluctuations in this afterglow provide clues to conditions in the early universe. For example, small differences in temperature across the sky show where parts of the universe were denser, eventually condensing into galaxies and galactic clusters.
Because the cosmic microwave background is a form of light, it exhibits all the properties of light, including polarization. On Earth, sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere and becomes polarized, which is why polarized sunglasses help reduce glare. In space, the cosmic microwave background was scattered by atoms and electrons and became polarized too.
“Our team hunted for a special type of polarization called ‘B-modes,’ which represents a twisting or ‘curl’ pattern in the polarized orientations of the ancient light,” said BICEP2 co-leader Jamie Bock, a professor of physics at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Gravitational waves squeeze space as they travel, and this squeezing produces a distinct pattern in the cosmic microwave background. Gravitational waves have a “handedness,” much like light waves, and can have left- and right-handed polarizations.
“The swirly B-mode pattern is a unique signature of gravitational waves because of their handedness,” Kuo said.
The team examined spatial scales on the sky spanning about 1 to 5 degrees (two to 10 times the width of the full moon). To do this, they set up an experiment at the South Pole to take advantage of its cold, dry, stable air, which allows for crisp detection of faint cosmic light.
“The South Pole is the closest you can get to space and still be on the ground,” said BICEP2 co-principal investigator John Kovac, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the deployment and science operation of the project. “It’s one of the driest and clearest locations on Earth, perfect for observing the faint microwaves from the Big Bang.”
The researchers were surprised to detect a B-mode polarization signal considerably stronger than many cosmologists expected. The team analyzed their data for more than three years in an effort to rule out any errors. They also considered whether dust in our galaxy could produce the observed pattern, but the data suggest this is highly unlikely.
“This has been like looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead we found a crowbar,” said co-leader Clem Pryke, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Minnesota.
Physicist Alan Guth formally proposed inflationary theory in 1980, when he was a postdoctoral scholar at SLAC, as a modification of conventional Big Bang theory. Instead of the universe beginning as a rapidly expanding fireball, Guth theorized that the universe inflated extremely rapidly from a tiny piece of space and became exponentially larger in a fraction of a second. This idea immediately attracted lots of attention because it could provide a unique solution to many difficult problems of the standard Big Bang theory.
However, as Guth, who is now a professor of physics at MIT, immediately realized, certain predictions in his scenario contradicted observational data. In the early 1980s, Russian physicist Andrei Linde modified the model into a concept called “new inflation” and again to “eternal chaotic inflation,” both of which generated predictions that closely matched actual observations of the sky.
Linde, now a professor of physics at Stanford, could not hide his excitement about the news. “These results are a smoking gun for inflation, because alternative theories do not predict such a signal,” he said. “This is something I have been hoping to see for 30 years.”
BICEP2’s measurements of inflationary gravitational waves are an impressive combination of theoretical reasoning and cutting-edge technology. Stanford’s contribution to the discovery extends beyond Kuo, who designed the polarization detectors. Kent Irwin, a professor of physics at Stanford and SLAC, also conducted pioneering work on superconducting sensors and readout systems used in the experiment. The research also involved several researchers, including Kuo, affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), which is supported by Stanford, SLAC and the Kavli Foundation.
BICEP2 is the second stage of a coordinated program, the BICEP and Keck Array experiments, which has a co-principal investigator structure. The four PIs are Jamie Bock (Caltech/JPL,) John Kovac (Harvard), Chao-Lin Kuo (Stanford/SLAC) and Clem Pryke (UMN). All have worked together on the present result, along with talented teams of students and scientists. Other major collaborating institutions for BICEP2 include the University of California, San Diego; University of British Columbia; National Institute of Standards and Technology; University of Toronto; Cardiff University; and Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique.
BICEP2 is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF also runs the South Pole Station where BICEP2 and the other telescopes used in this work are located. The Keck Foundation also contributed major funding for the construction of the team’s telescopes. NASA, JPL and the Moore Foundation generously supported the development of the ultra-sensitive detector arrays that made these measurements possible.
Technical details and journal papers can be found on the BICEP2 release website: http://bicepkeck.org
Video by Kurt HickmanAssistant Professor Chao-Lin Kuo, right, delivers news of the discovery to Professor Andrei Linde.
milodonharlani says:
March 17, 2014 at 4:16 pm
…lots of stuff… and…
Whatever its scientific merits, the multiverse hypothesis appeals to atheists because it gets around the various Anthropic Principles which some cosmologists & other physicists find convincing.
___________________________________________________________________
Leave it to the self-described atheist to inject voluminous samples of religious text in a hostile assault on a seemingly kind person, eg Janice Moore.
I say atheist does not describe you at all. I would say anti-theist would be a better noun. An atheist would simply ignore scripture. You went on an over-the-top rant. ggrrrrr you did.
Then… you postulate this multiverse BS as some sort of theoretically falsifiable hypothesis.
Absurd.
No information transits t=o; In the world of science.
As such your atheist-loved and unsubstantiated belief in multiverse is a case of you torturing reality to fit your model so that you can thereby persist in the anti-theist tirade.
Science, a beautiful method to look at the world, does not care whether the user is an atheist or a believer. Case in point, Georges Henri Lemaitre. PhD +. Axe grinders like you, and Fred Hoyle who DENIED the big bang theory up until his death in 2001.. 201!!! just because, in his puny mind, it implied a creator will miss obvious solutions to cosmological problems because you are too preoccupied in appearing NOT religious.
Hoyle held back the big bang theory for 40 years because he had a closed mind.
An idea:
Lief says that one of the reasons we see increasing red shift from very distant (edge of univers type distances) stuff is that the expanding universe is stretching the light and thus lowering the frequency, which makes sense. Others, however, talk about red shift, as if the object making the might is moving away at ever increasing speed. Of course, with an expanding universe stretching that light, the object making the light would indeed be moving away from us, however, part of the red shift we may be seeing might be because the light itself is being stretched. Thus, the object that made the light may not be moving away from us as fast as it’s red shift would seem to indicate. Thus, the universes’ expansion may not be accelerating, and the need for dark energy goes away.
Am I right here, is Lief saying the light itself is being stretched, and thus some of the red shift seen is NOT from the object making the light moving away?
Either way, the universe itself is expanding, only the speed may change.
Janice Moore,
There are people who do not comprehend metaphor. It usually indicates a lesion in or tumor of or incomplete fusiform gyrus in the temporal lobe region of the brain. Were you to ask the question to them: “What does all that glisters in not gold means.” they would give you some technical explanation of reflectivity of many substances that are not gold. It would never occur to them that you were referring to the nasty nature of a outwardly affable person.
These people make fantastic engineers, policemen, or biobots. There are many among us and they get to vote, pay taxes, comment on blogs.
Poetry is a complete loss to these people. Science is all they can achieve.
It is sort of the opposite of synethesia.
There is no amount of explanation that can get around this obstacle to comprehension.
Cast not your pearls before swine for they will trample them, then turn and rend you.
Cheers.
[The mods will pick up any pearls left on the floor by Janice after Janice’s random casting of pearls before pigs. 8<) Mod]
[The mods will NOT pick up after any pigs cast after the pearls have been cast. Mod]
lsvalgaard says:
March 17, 2014 at 6:21 pm
Ben D says:
March 17, 2014 at 6:17 pm
ok, but that would not mean infinite space is expanding, rather that there is a finite bubble of some sort within the finer infinite spacial underlying background that is expanding.
It is that ‘spacial underlying background’ that is expanding. The objects within that are essentially sitting still.
==================================
The way I see it, your “spatial underlying background” is actually time, and it is the passage of time that gives us the appearance that the Universe is expanding.
Our view of everything we can observe in the cosmos is constrained by the speed of light, and while we (understandably) think of the speed of light as being extremely fast, on a cosmic scale it is actually painfully slow. Because of this, I believe the TRUE nature of the Universe, as opposed to our perception of it, remains a complete and utter mystery….
Mr Lynn says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:00 pm
A quasar of high redshift is in front of a galaxy of lower redshift. Observations of many other such instances have been documented by the (now unfortunately late) astronomer Halton Arp, including objects of different redshifts connected to each other.
Those were just coincidental alignments. We now have observed orders of magnitudes as many galaxies as Arp have and his claim has turned out to be spurious.
Legatus says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:40 pm
stuff is that the expanding universe is stretching the light and thus lowering the frequency, which makes sense. Others, however, talk about red shift, as if the object making the might is moving away at ever increasing speed.
The objects are not moving away from us. Space is simply stretched between objects.
Yay, gravity waves! more unfalsifiable nonsense! give yourselves a great big prize!
Mr Lynn says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:00 pm
A quasar of high redshift is in front of a galaxy of lower redshift. Observations of many other such instances have been documented by the (now unfortunately late) astronomer Halton Arp, including objects of different redshifts connected to each other.
More on this: http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.2641v2
lsvalgaard says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:55 pm
“The objects are not moving away from us. Space is simply stretched between objects.”
Andromeda galaxy is observable and moving toward [our] galaxy, older galaxies are moving away from each other. lets all jump to conclusions and proclaim to be correct! we’ll call it a ‘job well done’ and have a big official reward ceremony!
Legatus says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:18 pm
Thank you for the excellent and detailed commentary.
but let me (politely) disagree with the first few verses though.
These ancient itinerant shepherds – unable to count well and completely lacking the zero, powers-of-ten and logarithms – actually got all of the nucler physics and interstellar astronomy and paleo-geology and plate tectonics and amospheric chemistry and biology right.
Well before we (modern so-called scientists) got any of those topics right.
As you noted, “First, everything was created.”
Depending on your translation, “in a great wind” or “with a great disturbance” or the like.
Only then, AFTER this energy cooled, was “light” formed
Then, a little later, that “light” cooled into “matter”.
And, only after “matter” (the leptons and electrons and thus the solid matter we know now) was formed from the cooling light, could that light form shadows – which of course, separate the light from the dark as you noted.
SO, we are left with separating the”waters above” from “waters below” ..
Again, look carefully at the translations. For example, several versions use “dome” to describe this. Others, a “vault”. (In Roman and Medieval architectural, a vault was the dome (a rounded ceiling) arched structure creating a room within a building.) Or, as you look “up” at the hemisphere of the visible sky, a “dome” separating the waters (er, fluids, gasses, dust, plasma, and stars) above from the “waters” below (water, gasses, fluids, gasses, and vapors that we know and live within.) Again, these shepherds got their algebra and geology and astronomy right.
As you noted, the earth’s water was gathered into one “sea” (around the single continent obviously) despite the visible and practical evidence that 5 or 6 “seas” were actually surrounded their actual physical homeland. Plate tectonics of course broke this single continent up into the seven we recognize in today’s world. Funny that “science” viciously fought this idea only 60 years ago.
The “rest of the story” is well presented, though I have used different examples in the past.
May I borrow your knowledge and examples as well?
Sparks says:
March 17, 2014 at 8:13 pm
Andromeda galaxy is observable and moving toward or galaxy, older galaxies are moving away from each other. lets all jump to conclusions and proclaim to be correct!
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. At short distances [e.g. within groups of galaxies] galaxies move around in space at random due to gravity from neighboring ones. On large distances, those local movements average out and the uniform expansion of space becomes important.
@Lsvalgaard – Re: “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
No, in this case it is a frustrating thing. But at least we can learn.
What they never seem to discuss is the opposite and equal reaction to the expansion that most likely fills the so called vacuum with quantum particles of gravity.
The only problem with seeing the gravity waves in the past is that in doing so they’ve perturbed the future, because they looked at it.
mod.. see search vilaynur ramachandran ted
time stamp 20:00 to 24:00 especially.
Seems your fusiform gyrus is fully functional.
lsvalgaard says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:55 pm Legatus says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:40 pm
stuff is that the expanding universe is stretching the light and thus lowering the frequency, which makes sense. Others, however, talk about red shift, as if the object making the might is moving away at ever increasing speed.
The objects are not moving away from us. Space is simply stretched between objects.
I am aware of that, that is not what I am talking about.
Thought experiment:
Say that the object, a star, quasar, something, is creating light. It is a very long way away, further than we can measure by any means other than redshift. It is slinging around a large gravitational object, say a black hole. It is thus moving toward us. The speed it is moving toward us is exactly the same as the amount it is appearing to move away from us (even though it is not) due to the expansion of the universe, of space itself. Thus, if it were possible to stretch a really long string from here to there, it would stay taught, not stretching more or less, or going slack. The distance between us and it would remain the same (for a while, anyway).
Now, it emits light toward us. During the very long time the light travels from it to us, the space it travels through expands, that is, the universe expands “out from under” the light. Does this make the light appear to be of lower frequency because it is “stretched”? If it does, might the object appear to be increasing it’s distance from us due to observed redshift, even though the object is maintaining a constant distance from us due to it’s actually moving toward us while the universe expands it away from us.?
I also wonder if the age of light might be effecting things. That is, when that light was created , near the time of the birth of the universe, were the natural laws as we now know them exactly the same, or have they changed slowly over time as the universe expands? Might that effect redshift? I ask this be cause we infer that the object is either moving away from us, or is being stretched away from us, due to observed redshift, however, we cannot directly measure very distant (edge of universe) objects to verify that the redshift we observe is measuring increasing distance. All we can say for certain is, very distant object have increased redshift compared to closer ones.
Legatus says:
March 17, 2014 at 8:50 pm
It is slinging around a large gravitational object, say a black hole. It is thus moving toward us. The speed it is moving toward us is exactly the same as the amount it is appearing to move away from us (even though it is not) due to the expansion of the universe, of space itself.
First such an object will not move at the enormous speed of the expansion, so you cannot find such an object, and even if you could it wouldn’t matter because there are billions of other objects that do not fit your thought experiment..
Second: an object moving in space is not the same as space stretching. The first give rise to a Doppler shift, the second to a frequency change due to the stretching. These two effects are completely different.
Third, the ‘tired light’ hypothesis has been debunked many times, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tired_light
Fourth, we can measure the distance of very far away objects using gravitational lensing, e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9611229
Are they space time gravity waves or are they Graviton gravity waves? What is gravity anyways?? I cant wait for LIGO to actually detect something instead of just setting upper bounds..
lsvalgaard says:
March 17, 2014 at 8:21 pm
At short distances [e.g. within groups of galaxies] galaxies move around in space at random due to gravity from neighboring ones.
Don’t force an assumption on me. Lets diagnostically look at the flaws in your assumption! flaw number 1, galaxies are formed in their current state, i.e releasing energy! Number 2. galaxies are random. According to what law states that young galaxies are paired and older galaxies are not? considering the length of time the light from a galaxy reaches us, all of your assumptions are null and void.
Belief?
Janice Moore says (March 17, 2014 at 5:55 pm): “Here’s question for you: Do you know where you are going when you die? Religion (mine, anyway) answers that question.”
Let me guess…Elysium? Valhalla? A new body? 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_underworld#Elysium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valhalla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation
“Pretty important. Where your soul will spend eternity… .”
That reminds me of a question raised in the first Star Trek novel, Spock Must Die!, which I read back in 1970:
Dr. McCoy: “Does the man who comes out of the other end of a journey by transporter have an immortal soul or not?”
Spock: “I do not know. I can only suggest, Doctor, that if someone were to give me an answer to that question, I would not know how to test the answer. By operational standards, therefore, such a question is meaningless.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spock_Must_Die!
A nice thing about “answers” like the Big Bang is that they can be tested. 🙂
You cant debunk tired light. Only the version of tired light discussed. Just like the Aether. The only thing ever disproved was the version of aether discussed… The Big Bang itself is an illogical construct. Creation from a seed or from nothing depending on which version you believe… It was invented by a priest…
One of the greatest signs that the big bang is wrong is the high red shift quasar in front of a low redshift galaxy. As well as the many low red/high red shift object associations.
As for the CMB, the model is in the calibration files which can reflect anything they want….
I think there is much more proof for something like a steady state but nobody has given a great red shift model for SS..
@ur momisugly Brant Ra, re your 12.19am 18 March, sorry to contradict you, but Einstein’s theory said that Michelson-Morley did NOT disprove the Aether. His theory stated that the reason they failed to detect drift is because their entire apparatus was in motion in respect to the light they were using, and because of relativistic effects canceling out the drift, they didn’t detect any.
QED, Aether has not been proven to not exist. Honest. It was, in fact, this experiment, coupled with some questions already surfaced by other scientists as early as the 1870s which led him to his Theory of Relativity. In fact, I have heard from others that he was a “fraud”, in that the theory didn’t originate with him. I do believe—though I cannot surface a quote on memory and will not search for one now—that Einstein subscribed to the same philosophy as Isaac Newton, who wrote to Robert Hooke, “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
“Euclid” is credited with many theorems in Geometry. And while most scholars agree that Euclid was a single individual, few believe he came up with all those theorems on his own—especially given that many surfaced “independently” in places like India, thought it’s well documented that there was traffic between the two regions in antiquity. What many scholars believe was the individual know as Euclid’s great gift to posterity was not the theorems, but his organization of those into givens, axioms, and proofs, newer proofs usually built on earlier proofs, establishing a logical, self-supporting whole. This presentation of the theories is a single organization, and could be the magnum opus of a single individual. That all the separate theorems came from a single person? Very unlikely.
Not to get too far afield, but sorry to dispute your point, but no, Aether wasn’t disproven by Michelson-Morely, and Einstein proved why their experiment was doomed to failure. While I don’t believe his theory actually proves Aether… To say it doesn’t exist? We have no direct proof of that.
The question is simple:
Either something was there, or something was not.
If something was there already, then you have something before and we need to study that something before.
The big bang would thus only be an arbitrary and moot point in time since one would have to look long before that point in time.
The simple issue is either the universe existed in some form before the big bang, or it did not. A bang thus is not important if the claim is something before existed.
The problem is science lost the concept and general science belief of a static universe by the 1920’s.
By the way the idea of a static or always existing universe was a science consensus for 100’s of years and yet shown to be wrong.
The logic is simple:
If you walk into a room and observe a candle burning, then by logic we know that this candle could not have always been burning and since it has a limited fuel supply and thus has limited life span.
And when we discovered fusion we thus realized that stars are like tanks of fuel being “burned” up. Thus they could not have been burning forever. And we all know basic physics has NEVER shown that rocks move uphill by themselves.
There is no science in the universe that shows the universe can create fuel but only CONSUME such fuel.
So it was thus high time to “dump” the concept of an enteral or a universe that always existed. The science community thus had to (grudgingly) adopt the view of a caused universe. The problem is there is no such thing as any event without a cause.
And a cause by definition means intention. And worse the science community hated having to adopt this position since it also what the Christians taught (the universe is caused, and does not have to exist and did not always exist). In other words the universe was not enteral and did not always exist. The concept thus requires a creator that is separate from the universe. There not a need to ask who created the creator since that is assumed to be eternal and by definition means without a start.
As noted, we used to think of the universe that way and if science could show the universe is always existed then no need for a creator. However that darn pesky thing science and physics proved that the universe is caused and not eternal.
The basic pretext of the big bang is a universe from nothing.
Many of recent have attempted to modify the big bang and claim there was something. But then it means the universe was already there! So we then back to the cause of this bang and for what reason it occurred, but that did not create the universe if one reasons something was already there! And worse, we now have to explain how rocks move up-hill on their own?
Something cannot occur without a cause.
There is no such thing as a caused universe without a cause!
Yet the big bang is an admittance of a caused universe. If the theory says something was there already, then this is just a convenient kicking of the can and the basic question down the street. However entropy and those darn “tanks of fuel” running out of gas presents a problem since rocks don’t go up hill by themselves. Nor do atoms or electrons.
So exactly what is the claim of things before the big bang then if the theory assumes something was already there?
And if something was there then what was it doing and how long did it take to wake up and what occurred to cause this? If it was already there then how long did this previous universe exist before this “cause” took effect? In other words this view means the big bang is quite much a moot point or we back to that of a caused universe.
Sparks says:
March 17, 2014 at 9:15 pm
all of your assumptions are null and void
Nonsense, your statement is based on ignorance. No need for me to elaborate. Go educate yourself, before you embarrass yourself further.
Start with this one: http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-origin-of-the-universe.html
Google ‘books on the origin of the universe’ and find much more. Read some of them. Learn.
@ur momisugly Paul Westhaver says:
March 18, 2014 at 7:05 pm
…
dbstealey,
I have no quarrel with you at all and neither do I have a quarrel with Lief beyond his poor communication and uninvited acerbity. The fact that you feel it necessary to think for him and explain what he actually meant, is making my only point.
If he was clear, and not in error by virtue of his poorly chosen words, he likely wouldn’t have to explain it a multitude of of times. I suspect the ole codger was exploiting boundary language to evoke intellectual shock and awe or maybe he thought he WAS being clear.
_____________________________________________________________
Mr Westhaver, you DO realize who you’re calling an ‘ole codger’? I humbly suggest that if you think he is in error, it would be the better part of wisdom to double check your own theories for inaccuracy first. Dr Lief doesn’t have to bandy about words to evoke shock or awe, and no doubt has bigger fish to fry than to bother with trying to impress folks who are essentially nobody to him.
Just sayin’. When I find myself disagreeing with an expert in his own field of expertise, outside MY field of expertise, it’s usually right before i find out I’m wrong.
Brant Ra says:
March 17, 2014 at 9:19 pm
You cant debunk tired light.
Well, there are climate-change deniers, big- bang deniers, evolution deniers, moon-landing deniers, all sorts of ignorance-based deniers. You seem to have joined one or more of those. Be happy with your choice, don’t let me rock your boat.
albertkallal says:
March 17, 2014 at 9:25 pm
The basic pretext of the big bang is a universe from nothing.
Educate yourself: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html
[svalrgaard] theory that spacetime is quantized, so countable…
Someone mentioned the rabbit hole … Can you point me to to a serious explication of quantum theory implying countability of the “points” in space time. No need for these kinds of arguments (http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html), which have their place as thought experiments, but I’m talking about a rigorous treatment leading from quantum theory to countability. I really am curious.
All it takes is 1 quasar in front of a low redshift galaxy to disprove red shift equals distance…
albertkallal says:
“And when we discovered fusion we thus realized that stars are like tanks of fuel being “burned” up. Thus they could not have been burning forever. And we all know basic physics has NEVER shown that rocks move uphill by themselves.”
And that is the model that you use. A different power source like electricity or Aether( even though we believe right now its fusion) would not put the time clock on the universe…. You wouldnt even know how old it was… I think the sun is trillions of years old.
There are problems with The HR diagram. metallicity, etc.. As the say The devil is in the details.
Here they proclaiming we know stars lifetime when they dont even know how the corona is hotter than the photosphere of our own sun…
They only way that is strictly solved is by using an electrical cathode model. It reproduces all observable phenomena… If you dont think so you haven’t studied the sun closely enough.
The problem is that you need a new model of gravity… Oh wait, that isnt a problem since the current one is broken.
The sun is a real time converter of energy not a storage unit that releases it over time…
Of course it always comes back to the question of what the prime mover is…
What causes to go from its highest state to the back ground state.
I believe that fresh matter is created in quasars and the like, as a “stream of aether(energy)” that cools to matter – E = Mc^2. 🙂
Whether its charge separation or gravity or aether flow or singularity space gnomes or God, nobody has truly answered that question.