Part 1:

---OR, WHAT AND WHERE  IS OUR SOLAR SYSTEM AND WHERE IS IT GOING?
 

Or again, should we say, summarise everything in the universe, and make it interesting ?

Learning facts is like learning mathematical tables or spelling by rote, it can get very boring. What really grabs us human beings is controversy. It also helps separate fact from theory,  for generally, if something can be argued with, it can be theory but may not be fact,  so I'm going to teach you what may or may not be the case, Shockwave Astronomy.

This came about by chance when I was writing a science fiction novel a few years ago and needed a somewhat different astronomy for a computer to deduce from our present facts, and for a bunch of aliens to have. I then had to give a series of talks on our Solar System and bringing this in worked, so this book is an updated account of what was in those talks given in Strathclyde University Union, back in autumn 1987.

To concoct it initially, I took a look at present facts, particularly the vast collection of more recent work provided by space satellites, and did my best to figure out what a computer stored with fact but not theory, might deduce from them. Then I looked at astronomical theory as best I could from the point of view of a psychologist, and tried to figure out which theories and beliefs might be more likely the result of vagaries of the human psyche rather than of the evidence.

After weeding this out, it became clear that what the computer would have deduced, fitted with what was left, but differed from usual astronomy as a result mainly of implications arising from the late Sir William McCrae's observations on probable encounters between stellar and galactic arm shockwaves.  Accordingly, I initially called the final fitted together version, "Shockwave Astronomy". To understand it, and reach your own conclusions, you are obviously  going to have to understand something of regular astronomy. In other words, I hope you'll take it in and not be bored, and by the end, you'll have made your own mind up as to what our Solar System is, where it is, where it is going to go - in both space and time, and quite a bit more.

Earth is a planet. moons seem to go round planets, planets round suns, as do asteroids and comets, though they are smaller.  Suns are stars. Our Solar System has one star and nine planets along with lots of moons, asteroids and comets plus some extras such as centaurs and Kuiper-Edgeworth Belt objects. Stars seem to go round centres of galaxies. Galaxies can have around a hundred billion stars or more. Galaxies tend to come in clusters of tens or less, up to thousands, and larger galaxies tend to have smaller groups of stars, such as the Magellan Clouds, orbiting them. Even smaller star groups tend to come in collections called globular and open star clusters.

Now, for the next few pages I'll give what I call the "Cosmic Jigsaw", a selection of major discoveries of regular science with some of the theory, generally indicating how differing streams of thought interpose and affect each other.

The Cosmic Jigsaw
 

1785 The Galaxy Sir  William  Herschel  made calculations demonstrating the existence of our Galaxy. 1826 Olbers' Paradox German  physician,   Heinrich W. M. Olbers, posed the question,  "Why is the  sky  dark  at  night?" Stars do increase in dimness with  distance,  but numbers of stars  in any  particular direction,  increase  in reverse  proportion  with  the same  distance.  This means that the whole sky should be as bright as the Sun. Olbers thought interstellar  dust clouds  might be the answer, but  it was shown that these would absorb  energy and become  white hot,  whereby we should still  receive radiation  equivalent  to 150,000 Suns.  This is Olbers' Paradox. 1893 Star Classification (SC) German physicist, Wilhelm Wein, showed that  the  nature  of light varies with temperature in such a way  that by studying   wavelengths   of  light sources  one  can  deduce the source temperatures. 1913 SC American astronomer, Henry Norris Russell, following a suggestion made by Danish   astronomer, Ejnar Hertzsprung,  drew a graph of temperature and   brightness  of stars,  now known as the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram,  which showed  that most stars fall on a diagonal  called   the "main sequence".   See Box 1.

1798 Black Holes French astronomer, Marquis Pierre Simon de  Laplace, suggested  that there may be stars so gigantic in mass, that   their gravitational fields  would   have  escape velocities greater than that of  light,  whereby nothing, not even light itself, could get out of them. The idea of black holes was born. 1838 White Dwarfs German astronomer, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, detected  gravitational  perturbations  in the  movements of the stars Sirius and Procyon, indicating possible invisible companion stars Sirius B and Procyon B. 1862 White Dwarfs American astronomer, Alvan Clark, discovered that Sirius B and Procyon B were visible but very dim. 1905 Special Relativity Swiss patent officer, Albert Einstein, produced his "Special Theory of Relativity", which  predicted antimatter, time travel,  elasticity  of space  and time,  equivalence  of  mass   and energy,  and  the creation and   annihilation of matter. 1915 White Dwarfs American chemist, William D. Adams, managed to pass light from Sirius B through a spectroscope and to study its wavelengths. It was as hot as our Sun despite its dimness. He assumed it was small and dense, hence 'White  Dwarf' stars.

1916 General Relativity Einstein produced his "General Theory of Relativity" showing how black holes could be formed, how light passing intense gravity is red shifted, and predicting  space and  time  would be curved.

 

Box 1:  1913 Star Classification Russell's Main Sequence star types  W O B A F G K M R N S "Wow, Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me Right Now Sweety!"  though "W"  or Wolf Rayet stars  are very odd  and it is thought, may not be main sequence stars  at  all.  There are also doubts about R, N, and S.  Numbers indicate further division, whereby a sector of the main sequence might read: F7, F8, F9, G0, G1, G2, G3, etc.  Our Sun is generally thought to be a G2 star.

1917 Expanding Universe Dutch astronomer,  Willem de Sitter, suggested  that apart  from  the static universe  Einstein considered, one where over-all density  constantly decreased through time, might  do, i.e. if  our universe was expanding.

1925 Stellar Motion Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, showed that in our Galaxy, stars orbit the centre, and said they do so faster the closer in  they are.

1925 White Dwarfs Adams discovered Sirius B's light's shift towards the red end of the spectrum was exactly as Einstein had predicted for  objects of such density.

1927 Quantum Theory American physicists Clinton Joseph Davisson and Lester Halbert Germer, conducted experiments to prove Quantum Theory, which while not known then, indicates, among other things, that all we  conceive  of as our "Universe",  may be  but one of a multiplicity of `multiverses'. See Box 2.

1927 Big Bang Belgian astronomer, Georges Edouard Lemaitre said the common shift towards red meant all matter was once in one place, starting the Big Bang Theory. 1929 Red Shift American astronomer, Edwin Hubble, said that the further away any Galaxy was, the faster its  recession would be and the bigger a red shift  it  would have.

1928 Red Shift American astronomers, Milton L. Humason and Vesto Melvin Slipher said all  galaxies in other clusters were red shifted.   1934 Neutron Stars (NS) Swiss-Bulgarian astronomer, Fritz Zwicky, proposed the existence of stars made of tightly packed neutrons, a sphere 10 miles in diameter with the mass of a star!

1938 Energy American physicist Hans Albrecht Bethe, said that fusion must be the source of stars' energy as fission    would need regular injections of  new mass,  and there was  no evidence of this.

1939 NS American physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer,    said neutron   stars would initially emit x rays.

1948 Steady State Hermann Bondi,  Thomas  Gold and Fred Hoyle  proposed, following  Einstein, that galaxies going faster than light    leave our universe and  that  new  matter was being created  all the time.

1950 Comets Oort proposed there   was  a vast  cloud of comets forming a shell around our solar system, about two light  years across.

Box 2:  According to the Oxford Dictionary the word 'Universe' means "All existing things". The word 'Universe' can therefore have no plural, and the word 'universes' is meaningless. To get around this for a talk mentioning the quantum 'Many Worlds Theory', in December 1960, I coined the word 'multiverse' as "An apparent universe, an infinity of which go to make up the whole universe." This was first used in public in late January or early February of 1961, at a meeting of the then Scottish Branch of the British Interplanetary Society. Since that time the word has been taken up by science fiction, science writers, and journalists, and widely misused by being given the opposite meaning, whereby they talk about a multiverse made up of universes. As this is sheer nonsense, the word 'multiverse' will be used with its original meaning throughout this book. For the word 'Universe' however, I shall substitute Michio Kaku's excellent redefinition, "All that there can be".

1958 Van Allen Belts US physicist, James Van Allen, discovered Earth had radiation belts.

1964 Red Giants Red Giants were found, and have recently been shown to    be cold enough for water  to exist in them.

1965 3K Radiation US astronomers, Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson discovered radiation coming from all directions at 3o Kelvin.

1968 Pulsars UK student Jocelyn Bell, and her Professor, Anthony Hewish, found 4 microwave pulsars and Gold said these were neutron stars and that they ought also to pulse in other wave lengths.

1969 Pulsars It was found that the Crab Nebula Pulsar flashes in light  waves as well as  microwaves.

1974 Bok Globules Bart & Priscilla Bok     proposed that  a  certain type   of   dust cloud  in  space, now known as Bok Globules,  was a star forming cloud.

1975 Comets William McCrae proposed that Comets are formed out of dust  captured and compressed by our Solar System's travel through dust  clouds and the   standing shockwaves  of the   galactic arms.

COMETS & DUST DENSITIES
 

Between galactic arms and in normal space, dust seems to be only one or two hydrogen molecule sized particles per cubic centimetre. In dust clouds this is expected to go up to around 30,000 per cc. In clouds in spiral arms, up to between 100,000 and 10 million particles per cc.

Our Sun's shockwave is presently known, due to Voyager 1, to be at least 73 AUs (See Box 3)  out, and because it travels at 217 kms per second as it orbits the galactic centre, it will sweep from around 650 billion to 217 trillion particles for every square centimetre of the front of this shockwave, each second, while in either a galactic arm or a dense dust cloud. This material will flow backwards along the shockwave, and due to the Sun's gravity, inwards towards the rear, where it will tend to flow off in a narrower tail stretching out behind the Sun. Interstellar space should therefore have lots of rivers of dust floating around.

On encountering another star's shockwave, the dust-river might flow round it gaining further mass, or penetrate it, according to the mass and relative velocity it had at impact. If it penetrated, it will either go right through the system or take up orbit around the star or stars concerned, depending on the interactions of the velocities and masses of both the system and the dust river concerned.
 

Box 3:   In February 1999, Voyager 1 was reported to be beyond 73 AU out, an AU or "Astronomical Unit" is the distance of Earth from our Sun, on average about 93 million miles or 149.6 million kms. 73 AU would be 73 times this distance.

If it approached a star within such a system, either in its orbit or just passing through, elements and compounds would disseminate out from it in the following order, as temperature
increased :  hydrogen, carbon, water ices, silicates, sulphides, potassium compounds, phosphides, and metals. Little particles spreading out would tend to form diffuse rings of tiny bits of the materials concerned at appropriate melt-temperature distances from the star. Collisions within such rings might tend to assist accretion.
 

ACCRETION IN ORBIT
 

Objects in orbit round a star will accrete this material from 3 main directions:

          1) Particles travelling inwards,

          2) Particles travelling outwards,

          3) Particles swept up from the orbital direction.

Due to effects of gravity, (1) will usually exceed (2). (3) Will slow orbital motion over time even if each individual impact effect is tiny, permitting solar gravity to have increased effect so causing a lower orbit where increased gravity will speed up orbital motion again. The net over all effect should be that all objects in any star's system should gradually spiral inwards.

At an educated guess, our Sun takes about 3 million years to pass through a galactic arm. It also passes through the plane of our Galaxy every so many million years or so.

35 Million kgs of meteorites land daily on Earth  (apart from a recent spaceflight discovery of a more or less permanent rain of micro comets, estimated at 1 billion tonnes a year). Since the oldest surface rocks were formed, approximately 2 x 100,000th of Earth's mass has accumulated from such meteorites. To form our whole Earth this way would take 450 trillion years. But a billion tonnes of micro comets a year is 2.7 billion kgs a day, in addition to the 35 million kgs of harder material, which is 79 times the infall that had previously been supposed. Taking these micro comets into account, the accretion period necessary does go down from 450 trillion, but we're still talking about 5.7 trillion years.

Regular astronomers who say our Sun and planets were created by a collapsing gas ball,  say our whole Universe is only about 15 billion years old, 30 billion at most!

Smaller bodies having less gravity accrete slower which, in a way, ties in with astronaut evidence that surface rocks of our Moon are up to a 1000 million years older than those of Earth. Jupiter has lots of water.   It is just leaving the water ice melt distance from our Sun. Saturn, just entering the water ice melt area, has virtually none. Venus in the middle of the sulphide ring has dense sulphuric acid clouds. Earth, just entering this area has acid rain.
 

STELLAR FORMATION BY ACCRETION
 

It would take at least 1.8 quintillions of years for a star of the size of our Sun to accumulate from accretion only.  Assuming an average rate of infall like ours on Earth (including the micro comets); it would take over 100 septillion years for the 6 million Sun mass "Thing" at the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy to accrete; and at least octillions for the rest of our universe to have been created purely by similar accretion.

However, there is another creation-mechanism that would speed things up greatly. Apart altogether from collisions between stellar systems and shockwaves, all stars, indeed all objects of any size which travel in space, will leave a trail of tiny dust particles behind them.

If our Solar System has a radius to the heliosheath - the outermost part of our Sun's shockwave - of only 73 AU rather than the 100 to 150 AU, astronomers seem to think it has, and if the average density of interstellar space is only 1 proton-mass (1.67252 x 10²⁴ grams) per cubic centimetre, then our Solar System travelling at 217 kps will sweep up the number of square centimetres in a circle of 73 AU radius, squared, times pi (the area of a circle being pi x r²) times 1.67252 x 10²⁴ grams times the number of centimetres in 217 kilometres, every second. This works out to over 13 and a third thousand trillion tonnes, or 13.472 x 10¹⁵ tonnes a year.
 

The Back of my Envelope There are 100,000 cms in a km, and 149,598,000 kms in an AU, and pi = 3.14159265 (approx), so:- (100,000 x 149,598,000 x 73 x 3.14159265)2 = pi x r2 = 1.177055766898 x 1031 according to my calculator, x 1.67252 x 10-24 = 19,686,493.11253 x 217 x 100,000 = 4.271969005419 x 1014  grams per second, /1,000,000 (grams per tonne) = 427,196,900.5419 tonnes per second x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365 (approx seconds in a year) = 1.347208145549 x 1016  or 13,472 trillion tonnes per year

All this will flow over the shockwave and trail along behind with a little added energy gained from its encounter with our Sun and every year a further 13.4 x 10¹⁵ tonnes or thereabouts, will add itself to this lengthening tail. All stars in our Galaxy will do this, whether in galactic arms or not, though the quantity of particles of gas or dust in any particular tail will depend on the density in the area through which each star is passing. The average will depend also on the size of the shockwave of the star creating the tail. Larger more massive stars would be expected to have larger shockwaves, and thereby to beget larger tails. Our Galaxy, indeed all galaxies, must have  seething masses of rivers of gas and dust in their interstellar space.

If the average distance between stars in our Galaxy is 3 light years, as has been suggested, it is possible that another star will break a dust river, by its own movement crossing it, at about 3 light years from the star whose tail it is. When that happens, the forward part of the tail will continue on its merry way, but what happens to the rear part of the tail will depend on the mass of the star cutting it, its angle and velocity of doing so, and probably the length of that rearward part of the tail. It may stretch for another half dozen light years or more.

If, as may happen often, the motion of the crossing star combined with the obstruction of its tail, causes particles at the forward end of that rearward cut-tail to slow, other particles to their rear, which would not have been slowed, will ball-up into them. If, for example, the particles balling-up were travelling at 115 kps, half the speed of our Solar System, we might ask how long it would take for a 6 light year rear tail to ball-up?
 

The Back of Another Envelope A light year is approximately 9.4607 x 1012 kms, so 6 x 9.4607 x 1012 = 5.67642 x 1013 kms /115 x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365 = 15,652.00847065 or say 15 and a half thousand years.

However, if that rear tail moved at the rate of our Sun, the mass balling-up would be 15¹/₂ thousand x 13,472 trillion tonnes, or approximately 2,088,160,000 trillion tonnes. Depending on the nature of particles in the part of interstellar space concerned, we'd very soon have an interstellar comet or asteroid. This would continue to build up. If no mass dispersed, by the end of the 15¹/₂ thousand years we'd end up with an interstellar planet larger than Mars, almost, though not quite as large as Venus or Earth! If our Solar System ran into the back of such a tail, left by a larger star, travelling in the same direction but at say, twice the velocity, it might not take very long to double our Sun's mass. Double the velocity to take half the time, add more or less dust, a longer or shorter tail, or a larger or smaller initial star, and you create larger or smaller asteroids, comets, moons, planets, or in the case of the tail from say an O8 or larger star, even baby 'M'-type stars. Much, if not most material would of course, disperse, but these calculations do serve to illustrate the process.

Nevertheless, a multitude of similar, if lesser, scenarios must happen, and even galactic arm shockwaves still have their uses. When stellar shockwaves are compressed in, near an outer planet, or planets orbit far out near the shockwave, the planet's gravity will cause an indentation in the stellar shockwave. At passes through dense galactic arms, where stellar shockwaves are compressed inwards, where there are also dense accretion rings, these could breach shockwaves. At such indentations, in such circumstances, new mini companion stars could possibly form almost instantly, because of the friction caused by the sudden vast influx of the matter flowing over the shockwave into the indentation, one small volume of space.

This could be common at standing shockwaves of galactic arms, which may explain why non-identical double stars are common. The shockwave around a parent star at such a star birth, might tend to expand into a double hump formation round both stars. Trails of ice particles down both sides of a double humped shockwave of a double star single shockwave system, could explain the formation of seemingly identical twin stars. When the double humps meet a galactic arm standing shockwave, the humps might smooth out, releasing the ice particle trails and slowing the forward motion imparted by the star's shockwave to the forward end of the ice trails, whereby the rearward part of the long trails would ball-up, perhaps forming near identical twin stars.

If stars accrete mass faster than they radiate it away, they must grow! They radiate an enormous amount all the time. Whether or not they grow depends upon whether or not the continuous if sporadic influx provides a total incoming mass greater than their radiation's total, and while this may take some time to prove, the evidence for considerably more infall material than had hitherto been supposed has been accumulating.

If stars grow, they must move up the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram. "B" And "O" type stars need not be young as generally believed.  They may be very old stars that have worked their way up. Nearly all stars must become black holes. Any star 3.2 times our Sun's mass will become a black hole according to theory, but if stars grow, almost all stars will reach that mass sooner or later. If enough mass is injected, perhaps, R, N, and S, stars shine by frictional heat alone, M, K, G, up to F2 stars shine by forms of fission and F2 up, A, B, O, and maybe W, by fusion?

When present theories were formed, quantities of incoming mass were not properly known. Indeed, it is now abundantly plain from the recent discovery that our own solar system is really filled with snowballs which continually rain into our Earth's atmosphere, that the quantities of such infall material may presently be as much as 80 times larger than presumed. This greatly alters probabilities as to whether or not the current theories have validity. Apart altogether from this, NASA has photographed our Sun swallowing several whole comets over a very short time period.

When fission was rejected as a means of stellar power, it was rejected because of lack of known incoming mass. Calculations show despite this however, that straight fission is highly unlikely in the case of our Sun. There is a lot more mass than was realised, but it still isn't enough. Relatively recently, various exotic reactions have been examined, particularly lithium fission, or "aneutronics" as it is generally called. Dr. Graham Yates has shown that a natural aneutronic reaction of lithium combined with a chain breakdown reaction of heavier elements - taking revised calculations of infall per galactic orbit into account, may explain our Sun's enormous energy. It would explain the mysterious lack of neutrinos being emitted, and might also add to our understanding of Sunspots.
 

ANGULAR MOMENTUM
               AND THE F2 DISCONTINUITY
 

Most stars smaller than F2 have small angular momentum. Most stars larger than F2 have increasingly greater angular momentum. This is called "The F2 Discontinuity". Angular momentum is a property of the revolution and rotation of the bodies in a system. In our Solar System, most of it resides in the planets. If these are spiralling in, and stars grow, with increase in the star's gravity they'd do so faster and perhaps F2 is the size where they begin to get swallowed? This has been proposed before, indeed, so far as I know, it is the only rational solution yet put forward for the F2 Discontinuity, but it was dismissed because of astronomical theories all based on the presumption that infall mass was too low to counteract the mass of outward radiation, whereby everybody knew that stars couldn't grow! Some astronomers still don't believe planets are spiralling in.

Under F2, mass between spectral types of stars increases from type to type arithmetically. Above F2, mass increases from type to type geometrically.

Fission is an explosive process countering gravitation. Fusion is an implosive process adding to gravitation.
 

STAR DEATH
 

60% of the mass of eliptical galaxies is invisible, and calculations of what the mass of our universe ought to be, do indicate that a total of almost 98% must be invisible. A portion of this may be in dust and other non-bright material, but where is the rest? If most stars become black holes there must be more than enough intense gravitational fields out there to explain the red shift without any need for an expanding universe. The correct answer to Olbers' Paradox would be that THE SKY IS DARK AT NIGHT BECAUSE MOST STARS ARE BLACK!

Hubble's Law would still work, but would have little to do with galactic recession.

A universe constantly losing mass into black holes would suit Einstein's equations just as much as De Sitters' expanding, or Einstein's own static universe, providing there are also white holes, but then that is part of the black hole theory anyway.

We'll come back to Occam's Razor in the chapter after next. It is the essence of the scientific method as such, and says that the simplest answer must always be taken as true until or unless it can be disproved. The above answer to Olber's Paradox hasn't been disproved, whereby being simple, it might be thought that it ought to be accepted. Why then, does it not appear in the literature? Surely people must have thought of it before?  Perhaps the idea of a universe full of black stars made them think we might be living in a dying universe? Expansion followed by Big Bang or Steady State may therefore be nothing but the convoluted answers of folk desperately trying to find less sensational even if false, answers.

Which do you think is the simplest answer to the question "Why is the sky dark at night?"

1) The universe is expanding, followed by the whole Big Bang Theory, to explain why it expands?

2) The universe is expanding, followed by the whole Steady State Theory?

3) Most stars are black ?

If you choose (3) you must accept that for most of the 20th century, science has been charging down one of the greatest blind alleys since Aristotle said the world was flat, and probably for psychological rather than scientific reasons. No computer, programmed to choose the simplest answer, could ever choose other than (3). That being so, it would seem there is now an onus upon modern science to disprove the idea that most stars are black, or accept it, perhaps along with the Shockwave hypothesis, or is there some factor here that is being missed?

This is not necessarily as gloomy as it might at first seem. You will see in the chapter on Quantum Computers, that the `serial universe' concept is very nearly proven. If it is so, then particularly if we take account of Kerr's work, we can regard every point of darkness in the night sky as a possible future portal to another multiverse. If we don't like this one we may yet learn to leave it. But would you really like to live in a multiverse where the sky was white with the heat of 150,000 Suns?

STELLAR RINGS
 

The Infra Red Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) found rings round Vega and Formalhaut. Both are  "A" types, and could have well developed outer hydrogen rings. Other types of star might  have
other types of ring. The absence of a ring round Sirius may have something to do with its companion white dwarf, or it could simply be that Sirius has absorbed whatever it last picked up, and hasn't yet accumulated any other sort of ring. Stellar rings should be common if dust river creation is the norm. IRAS indicates that this may be so, as since the first two, it found around 40 more stars of various types, with rings, and others have been found since.

Regular astronomers have now explained the rings as planetary systems in formation, which is O.K. for "A" type stars, which in their view are young, rather than old, as they are if stars grow, but IRAS also found rings round Gs, Ks, and even M type stars I have no idea how regular science tries to explain these, by their way of it, very old systems spawning new planets. In Shockwave Astronomy, whether or not a star has a ring will depend on what kind of material it has picked up on its galactic orbit, perhaps after passing through an interstellar dust cloud, and how much of it has been picked up. It will have little to do with its age.
 

THE DANGERS OF DUST
 

If Shockwave Astronomy is correct, and stars do grow, new reasons for the existence of red giants, white dwarf stars and neutron stars will have to be found. Dust effects might account for red  giants, and some white dwarfs, but there is evidence that Sirius B, which you will recall, is a nearby white dwarf, is not enveloped in dust.

Interaction of shockwaves of different stars could produce shockwave "funnels", channelling dust between stars perhaps into the gravitational area of some unsuspecting star coming along behind. The late Anthony Lawton of the B.I.S., showed in Duncan Lunan's book, "New Worlds For Old", that if our Sun, Sirius, Procyon, and Alpha Centauri were to be travelling on their present orbits at their present velocities within a galactic arm, the dust between them would be sufficient to create 100,000 Suns! If these were positioned so as to funnel material onto a star coming along behind, the result may look like a nova or super-nova (seeming exploding stars. The difference between imploding and exploding may be difficult to detect). Smaller amounts may look like what we call T Tauri stars in Bok Globules, though perhaps these are embryo black holes.

Interestingly, at present these specific stars are all in the Orion Spur, which is virtually identical to a small galactic arm. Accordingly, it might be thought that such vast quantities of dust ought to be being channelled in this manner at this moment. If so, radiation from infall reactions of a close nova look-alike could wipe out life on Earth instantly, including you and me!

In an appendix to Anthony Lawton's chapter in his book, Duncan Lunan mentions evidence that the positions of the stars are such that our Sun is out in front, with a wide shockwave at about a
parsec  out. (See Box 4). The other three stars behind seem to be clearing paths through the dust precipitated. He also points out that there appears to be a dust cloud heading towards us at 72,400 kph at an angle of about 60^o to the Sun's path. Duncan suggests that the 60^o angle may indicate that it is at the Chebotarev point, which is a gravitational balance point between our Sun and the galactic centre, at about the same distance. It may be that dust flows into such points when shockwaves coincide with their distance, should our shockwave be that far out, however this seems to be penetrating the shockwave, as dust streaming in at 72,400 kph from the right direction, has now been detected by the Pioneers and other spacecraft.
 

Wolf Rayet 104 This is a recent picture taken by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii of Wolf Rayet 104 and published in the April 1999 issue of Nature. It is the first relatively clear Wolf Rayet star photographed. It caused consternation, as scientists cannot understand how the star can be emitting dust, when any dust in any star should have been consumed by the star. Amazingly convoluted explanations have been advanced.  Is this a star swallowing a dust river?

The quantity of this dust should be assessed, and what effects it may have on our Solar System. Indeed, a general search for potential funnels should be set up. Stars ahead of us should be checked to ensure they aren't funnelling stuff our way, or even to any other nearby star whose major upset could in itself wipe out all life on Earth. It is all very well for our defence forces to concentrate on potential damage from our neighbours, but it is questionable if even hydrogen bomb warfare could equal a fraction of the devastation that would be caused by a nearby nova. It is only fair of course, to point out that if we do detect such a funnel at any time, we won't be able to stop it.

What we can do however, is to get our civilisation mobile as quickly as possible, and continuously improve our space vehicle velocities, for only then will we be reasonably safe. Luckily, neither novas nor supernovas are common, but there may well be many other nasty effects that could be caused by lesser dust inflows, and these may and probably will be much more common.
 

Box 4:   If you look at the same object from two different positions, the object will appear to shift against the background. This shift is called the object's parallax, and is related to its distance. The distance at which a star would have a parallax of 1 second of arc (3.26 light years) is called a  parallax-second or "parsec".

You don't need a dust cloud with a mass of 100,000 Suns, you don't even need a single Sun mass. Carbon dust for example, even if a fraction of that mass, and much more diffuse, could bring about catastrophic changes to our climate if it got between us and our Sun. Certainly this matter deserves urgent investigation.  Since I originally wrote this in 1987, I understand that NASA's Stardust Project now intends to capture some of the inflowing dust for analysis.
 

LIFE IN SPACE
 

If Shockwave Astronomy is correct, All stars should develop planetary systems. I'll go into why in a later chapter, but as these would spiral inwards, there should generally be a planet in, just entering or just leaving the star's ecosphere, (that part of any Solar System where life as we know it can thrive). As, in this theory, stars start small and grow, generally a star of around the same mass will be of about the same age. A star with a little more mass will tend to be slightly older, and one with less, a little younger. To look for aliens slightly in advance of us, seek the nearest slightly more massive star, and solve all your problems.

The nearest G1 star to Sol is BETA HYDRI, at 21.3 light years. Several more advanced stars are closer, the most advanced of these is Sirius at 8.7 light years. Anybody living there could well be so advanced that Sirius B being a white dwarf and all their planets being swallowed up wouldn't worry them. They could all be living in their equivalent of O'Neill habitat satellites. It is possible they'd be too advanced to find it interesting to talk to us. When did you last try to teach a pigeon Pythagoras?
 

COSMIC STRINGS
 

If there was a Big Bang at the beginning of the Universe, we are going to have to explain how our Sun's shockwave  passes through the big standing shockwaves  at galactic arms without producing the kind of effects  that should be produced, and how come the rivers of dust simply flow away without ever balling-up to create new bodies, or flow into other stellar systems from time to time, absolutely ensuring stellar growth etc., but let's consider the Big Bang Universe.

Computer calculations show that matter in the universe is not spread evenly. It occurs in clumps, and strings, and there are many large apparent voids. Also, if the Big Bang happened when the theory says it did, there hasn't been enough time for gravity to bring the larger galactic clusters into their present formations. To solve these problems, Big Bang Theorists who really needed a smooth universe, postulated Cosmic Strings.

Big Bang Theory has it that once upon a time, 15 billion years ago, (though others say differing figures from as low as 10 billion years right up to 30 billion years ago) the 4 fundamental forces, gravity, electro-magnetism, weak interactions and strong interactions, were all one.  At 10³⁵ seconds after the Big Bang blew, this symmetry broke and when it did, frozen bits of unified field got trapped in long cosmic strings that were very long, very thin, and very heavy, containing remnants of the very high energy of the big bang itself.

An average centimetre of Cosmic String material would weigh 10 tonnes. An average Cosmic String would be as thin as 10 times the radius of a hydrogen atom. Cosmic Strings would have gravity high enough to attract galaxies. Cosmic Strings would have no ends, being loops. About 20% of the total length would be in small loops, with the rest in an infinite string extending across the universe. The infinite string would meander, rather than go straight. The Cosmic Strings would form a network that would permeate all space. Sometimes Cosmic Strings would get tense, whipping about at close to the speed of light. Sometimes Cosmic Strings would collide. Colliding Cosmic Strings would break and reconnect again.

The Hubble Length is the distance light is presumed to have travelled since the Big Bang. Some Cosmic String loops would be as long as the Hubble Length. When I wrote this, the Hubble Length was estimated at 10²⁸ centimetres. Loops that break off would oscillate  roughly  a million times before they'd decay into radiation. Big Bang theorists said small loops cause galaxies and large loops cause galactic clusters. In Shockwave Astronomy on the other hand, we assume a different Universe in which gravity with black hole/white hole interfaces between multiverses provides a much more satisfactory answer. This does not necessarily mean that our universe need be infinite in time of course, but its time is not yet confined to any specific type of interval.

Until recently Big Bang Theorists were still trying to get computers to show that Cosmic String action could mathematically produce the voids, filaments and sheet formations which the computer calculations show exist in the patterns taken up by galaxies and clusters of galaxies in our real universe. Cosmic Strings don't emit light or other electromagnetic radiation, so haven't actually been observed, but strings should have sufficient gravity to affect light passing close by them. Four apparently double quasars found to be in a loop formation were claimed to be visual evidence, (however intense gravity from a really large black hole could produce the same effect).

Unfortunately for Big Bangers, Cosmic Strings were roundly disproved. In 1987, shortly after David Mitchell and Neil Turrock of Imperial College, London, showed that all cosmic strings had to be in small loops, and Americans, Alexander Vilenkin and George Field, then showed they'd be superconducting, Craig Hogan of Arizona University showed that this would cause them to be jetting about in space too much to enable them to explain the distribution of galaxies and save the Big Bang Theory for which they'd been invented, whereby there is no longer any point in imagining their existence. There are also "superstrings" but they are very different, and I'll come back to them later in this book.
 

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE
                OF OUR MILKY WAY GALAXY
 

So much for the universe, now let's have a closer look at our own Galaxy. There is a "Thing" at its centre. Most astronomers will tell you it's a black hole. If you look up from the Southern Hemisphere to where Sagittarius and Scorpius join, you'll be looking straight at it. We are just inside the Orion Spur, a star cloud, somewhat similar to an arm in itself, which seems to jut inwards from the Perseus Arm of our Milky Way Galaxy towards the inner part of the Sagittarius Arm.
 

No! This is not actually a map of our Milky Way Galaxy, it's a photograph of another galaxy, NGC 1232, which after you flip the image around a bit on the computer, just happens to look very similar to ours. Accordingly, you'll note that I've drawn on a little white spur attached to the NGC1232 equivalent of our Perseus Arm. We are roughly where the straight line to the words "Solar System" ends in it.

7 Or 8 thousand light years in from us, is the outer edge of the Sagittarius Arm. If we look through 7 thousand light years of thickness of this, we lose vision not far into it, so we can't see the Thing. ESA's COS B satellite's Milky Way Gamma Ray Map shows a vast ring of dense gas clouds all round the centre, and streaming from 10,000 to 15,000 light years out.15,000 Light years, is just about the inner edge of the Sagittarius Arm along our line of vision, whereby instead of space  on the other side, there's a 5000 light year thick, ring of dense gas.  About 3000 light years into this we meet the edge of yet another arm, though this time only about 3000 light years thick. Whereby when we come out of the gas ring, we've got another 1000 light years of arm to get through before we finally hit some clear space - or do we? Yes, but since we entered the outer edge of the Sagittarius Arm we've actually travelled through 13 or 14 thousand light years of gas and dust before we came out again.

There's now a 2 to 3 thousand light year gap, in the face of a wind of charged and other particles flying out at us. Then we meet the central bulge of our Galaxy, full of stars, gas and dust, (though the whole of our galactic central plane seems to be a 1 light year thick disc of hydrogen gas).

2 Thousand light years into the central bulge, we run into a ring of gas clouds orbiting the centre at 160,000 kph. The outer edge of this is about 32 light years from our MilkyWay Galaxy's centre. Velocities increase as we go inward.

At 2 light years from the centre we meet another gas ring. At its outer edge, this rotates at 400,000 kph, increasing to 700,000 kph at its inner edge. This gas is ionised at temperatures around 5,800^o. Close to the Sun's surface temperature.

At 1 light year out from the centre, we come to a final ring, this time of mixed gas and dust travelling at only 150,000 kph. It isn't ionised, and the temperature is only 300^o, room temperature, yet apparently rising out of this, there is an enormous arc of very hot ionised gas reaching at right angles to the plane of the Galaxy to heights of 10 to 20 light years!

Of several x-ray and other radiation sources near the centre, two seem special, and of these Sagittarius A (West) seems to be the actual centre. Sagittarius A (East) used to be thought to be a supernova remnant but its energy is too high for this. Nobody seems to know what it is. Whatever, it still doesn't compare with what is fountaining out of Sagittarius A (West).
 

THE THING AT THE CENTRE OF OUR GALAXY!
 

26,000 Light years in from us, Sagittarius A (West) shines in x-rays alone as brightly as a 1000 Suns at all wavelengths put together, according to Nigel Henbest and Michael Marten. In Gamma Rays it is brighter still, and permanently flickering! Strangely, almost all the gamma rays are at the same wavelength, 0.0023 nanometres the annihilation wavelength for positrons and electrons - the wavelength of radiation from matter and antimatter destroying each other.

Intense radio and infra red radiation also stream out of it (though Sagittarius A (East) has even more infra red than Sagittarius A (West)). The Thing's size is around that of Jupiter's orbit round our Sun.

To hold the 1 light-year-out ring in place, it needs a total mass of 6 million Suns, however, infra red studies show its actual mass is only 3 million Suns. (See Box 5). The space immediately around it is a particularly high vacuum. `Aha!' Astronomers exclaim, `All the matter has fallen into the black hole.' However, if it were a white hole, such a gap could equally have been caused by matter being thrown out at such high energies as to permanently sweep the area clean. Let's take a closer look at black and white Holes.
 

BLACK & WHITE HOLES
 

As you'll recall from the Cosmic Jigsaw, Laplace proposed black holes in 1798. Anything, be it matter or antimatter, over 3.2 times the Sun's mass will eventually collapse into a black hole. It will retain its mass, angular momentum and charge, but nothing else. Every time matter falls through any event horizon, (that distance from the centre of a black hole from which not even light can escape), that event horizon grows. It has also been shown that when two black holes collide and merge, the area of the new event horizon will be greater than the sum of the original two.

The point at the centre of a black hole into which everything is collapsing is called a singularity where everything gets jumbled up and torn down into its constituent parts. If a naked singularity (one not clothed in a black hole gravity induced accretion ring) were to exist, it would throw everything out again violently, creating like crazy while it did so. Most of what is thrown out would be rubbish but it could equally include such things as, you name it, TV sets showing your favourite program, home computers, gwargs, you when you were a baby, you as you will be in old age, perhaps holding hands with you as a baby, Globgelglutches, all sorts of alien things which exist, have existed, may exist, or can be imagined to exist. It knows no future, no past, and no present. Time, like everything else, gets jumbled in a singularity.

By applying quantum theory to black holes, Hawking has shown that using masses of pairs of virtual particles (tiny particles which flash in and out of existence, everywhere throughout our multiverse), black hole event horizons will behave like naked singularities, flinging out products among the rubbish, as they get older, they'll lose their charge, dwindle, and finally explode.
 

Box 5:  A recent 1999 update gives this mass as 2.6 million times that of our Sun

White holes of course, are exploding all the time. Even though, like black holes, they'll have event horizons, theirs will be event horizons which everything will fall out of, rather than which nothing can get out of, whereby light will fall out with everything else, which means you'd be able to see in, indeed, perhaps this is how we are detecting the gamma rays at the destruction wavelength of 0.0023 nanometres, perhaps our instruments are doing just that, seeing inside a white hole! Products, if made in the singularity, would be violently thrown out, just as the products Hawking showed could be manufactured at the event horizons of black holes.

Because of the masses of material present, whether or not the `Thing' is black or white, there ought to be black holes near the centres of galaxies, whereby perhaps the central bulges of galaxies are cosmic rubbish dumps, but if so, apart from things we know and don't know, there may be machines we need and haven't yet invented, advanced spaceships for example, ready made for us by nature, but don't forget, in all those cases, most of what gets thrown out will be genuine rubbish, nothing more.

We'll start our second Cosmic Jigsaw in 1916...

The Second Cosmic Jigsaw
 

1916 Event Horizon German scientist Karl Schwarzchild said there would be an event horizon round any black hole  into which matter could fall.  1935 White Holes Einstein and Nathan Rosen showed that for every black hole there had to be a white hole  and  that the black holes would be connected to the white holes by "wormholes". This caused consternation as some thought that even if briefly, prior to the formation of the white hole the formation of a black hole may lead to a naked singularity. This idea still terrifies scientists to the extent that many refuse to accept that white holes can exist.

1916 Singularity Schwarzchild also said that all matter which fell into an event horizon would be crushed out of existence in a "singularity" the point into which   the  black  hole  was collapsing.   1963 Spinning Black Holes New Zealand scientist, Roy Kerr, pointed out  that Einstein and Rosen had been considering   stationary  black holes,  but that  due to conservation of angular momentum all  black holes  would spin. From this he showed that it's possible for matter to flow through an Einstein-Rosen bridge (a wormhole), not just to another multiverse, but to an infinite number of these. Even spaceships ought to be able to go through.  A 10 Sun mass black hole would have a worm hole 600 metres wide!

1966 Shockwaves M. Fujimoto said that as spiral arm density waves travel at 30 kps, while gas in the arms can only carry a wave at 10 kps, there has to be a strong standing shockwave along all spiral arm leading edges.

1975 Shockwaves McCrae pointed out that this also meant that stars, including ours, had to have shockwaves.

1999 Galactic Orbit The VLBA, the world's largest telescopic facility, has recently accurately measured our movement relative to the Thing at 135 miles per second, or 217.2909 kps.

Thus, our Sun's shockwave must clash with all spiral arms in the Galaxy one after the other as it orbits every galactic year, with other dust clouds even more frequently, and it probably also regularly passes through the plane of our Galaxy, which is surrounded by dust clouds.

Back to black and white holes... A problem with the idea that our 'Thing' is a black hole, is that the vacuum created by stuff falling in should be inside the event horizon, and you can't see inside these, whereby we shouldn't have been able to detect that vacuum if The 'Thing' is a black hole! If the 1 light year out ring was the event horizon of the Jupiter orbit sized 'Thing', we couldn't see inside that event horizon, and we can. Apart from vacuum, and The 'Thing', there are several stars inside the ring.

The radiation given out from black holes comes from accretion rings at their event horizons, not from the objects themselves, yet we have far more from the 'Thing' than from the 1 light year out ring, just beyond that high vacuum area. If there is another ring at the Jupiter orbit from which the radiation is actually coming, why is there vacuum outside it?

Things would fall in from the event horizon, but gravity will attract from further, whereby space outside The Thing should be full of bits flowing towards it, not a vacuum.

Strangely, all but one of the stars inside the 1 light year out ring seem to be red giants, very old stars, according to regular astronomy. Why should there be a preponderance of very old stars?

All types should fall in if it is a black hole. Red Giants might be expected to predominate if it is a white hole and Shockwave Astronomy is correct. In my article on Shockwave Astronomy in Space Voyager magazine (issue 12, December 1984/January 1985), I showed how these could be newly formed very young stars, with dust (or in this case, 'rubbish'), filling out their whole shock-waves, before settling, and revealing them to be simple M type stars.

If the Thing is white, and it throws out spurts of rubbish and/or products, these might look like dust clouds from here. As any black hole will spin rapidly, (the greater the mass the faster it  rotates) and its white hole will have the same rotation, chances may be that most, "dust clouds", may also have high rotation.

Perhaps dust clouds of sufficient mass to be detected from here, and spinning rapidly, will collapse into stars reasonably quickly, whereby there ought to be lots of young new stars near a white hole. If this is so, and Shockwave Astronomy is right, these would be expected to be either red dwarfs or red giants.

The rotation of the 1 light year out ring was determined by Doppler shift measurements on neon atoms in the ring. If this is possible, it should also be possible to check whether the movement of the stars and dust clouds inside the ring is inward, outward, or rotational. If the Thing is a black hole, one might expect an inward motion, if a white hole, an outward motion. If it is only rotational, or if they all move in differing directions, we'll have to think again. Near anything that massive, the velocity of any single star ought to be highly affected, so this motion should be relatively easily to detect.

If it is a white hole, the Kerr equations bring up an interesting possibility. If spaceships can pass through the wormhole, why not the effects of gravity?  This might explain how a 3 million Sun mass object can hold a ring requiring 6 million Sun masses, in position. There will be another 3 million Sun masses on the other side, in the multiverse in which the mass, later to be ejected from the white, is imploding into a 3 million Sun mass black hole.

A 3 million Sun mass object could have a diameter of around 10 million kms, well within Jupiter orbit size, and it could have a wormhole width of 180,000 kms across - big enough for whole fleets of spaceships to invade our Milky Way in formation.

Naturally, there are objections to all of this, so please realise we are here deep in the realms of the most speculative thought.
 

THE EGG OF DARKNESS
 

The 1 light year out ring, should be where the gravitational attraction of the Thing balances the energy of outflowing material, if the Thing is in fact a white hole. If so, mass may accumulate there, and in time, form black holes. As more and more such black holes are formed there, the increase in mass may cause event horizons to meet and merge, forming a black doughnut around the ring. Our Galaxy may become lens shaped.

As event horizons merge, they will grow larger than their sums. In time, the doughnut may become a large black egg, enclosing the white hole. Matter in our Galaxy may pour in a co-ordinated manner, like light through a laser, into the egg of darkness.

Because matter cannot fall into a white hole event horizon, the white hole will continue to exist inside the black hole, pouring matter from one multiverse, through ours, where it will mix with some of our mass, and out through the black hole's own gigantic singularity wormhole, into still other multiverses, and into other times. When all the matter in our Galaxy has gone in, there will be nothing left of our Milky Way Galaxy but the great black egg in space.

There “is a kind of object in our universe called a "BL Lacerta Object", which looks mighty like the co-ordinated natural laser stage. The white hole a BL Lacerta might eject its mass from might look like a quasar.  There is also evidence that there seem to be a number of invisible sources of intense gravity far out in intergalactic space, perhaps traces of black eggs of previous galaxies.

So the answers to our original questions, "What and Where is our Solar System, and Where is it going?" are as follows : Our Solar System is made of condensed gas clouds according to regular astronomy, or of captured infall material including balled-up objects, according to Shockwave Astronomy. It is just inside the Orion Spur, a dense star and dust formation which juts inwards from the Perseus Arm towards the Sagittarius Arm in a strange Galaxy which we call the Milky Way Galaxy, and which has either a black or a white hole, perhaps both, at its centre, and is in a strange universe which is either held together by gravity, or held together by string, cosmic or otherwise. It is orbiting our galactic centre according to both concepts, and travelling with the Milky Way across the cosmos.