Michiana Astronomical Society Meeting - August

Come to the Thursday, August 21st Meeting!

The meeting starts at 7:00PM and is held in the TRC Community Flex Space at the South Bend Tech Resource Center at 1165 Franklin St. #100 South Bend, IN 46601.

This will be an in-person / Webex hybrid meeting! A Webex link will be sent to recent members on our list. If you don't get one by Wednesday night and wish to attend remotely, please contact me.

This month, Dr. Kirk T. Korista, Professor of Astronomy and Graduate Programs Advisor, Department of Physics, Western Michigan University, will do a presentation titled Stars without nuclear fusion -- much of the physics without all of the confusion.

Abstract:
The phenomenon of nuclear fusion influences the structure and evolution of stars in many ways, but several key physical processes in and behaviors of stars are ubiquitously mis-attributed to nuclear fusion. These serve as major misconceptions that lead to widespread confusion about how stars work:

1. Nuclear fusion does not support stars against the force of gravity and gravitational collapse, nor does it generate significant radiation pressure to do so as is mysteriously invoked. In fact radiation pressure rarely contributes significantly to supporting stars at all.
2. Nuclear fusion is not the reason stars are hot.
3. Nuclear fusion is not the reason stars are luminous, nor does it control directly the star's luminosity.

None of this is new physics. We do not have a problem with our models; we have a major problem in how we translate them into the English language and communicate them to humans. Worse, some of the misconceptions are spreading into the peer-reviewed literature.

In point of fact, stars do not require nuclear fusion in order to exist as hot, luminous objects that are in force balance against gravity. In order to illuminate their fundamental natures, we explore stars without nuclear processes and compare their evolutionary behavior to stars with nuclear fusion.

We meet on the third Thursday of each month.
Please pay your 2025 dues at the meeting or here via PayPal: http://michiana-astro.org/index.php/About/

Here's a link to the club's website:
http://www.michiana-astro.org/

Here's a link to the Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/194314860621232/