What are the stars? Do all scientists agee that they are suns similar to our own? If so, what is the evidence for this? Red shift?
there are lots of different kinds of stars,some like our sun others very not (neutron stars,pulsars are interesting if you want some reading).they are essentially a ball of gas which has sufficient mass and so energy to start a chain nuclear reaction which provides the heat and luminosity.brown dwarves are examples of "failed stars" where there isnt enough mass to start the reaction (jupiter).Evindence could be gained by taking the luminosity and working out the distance to the star by parallax (if they are close) then seeing how much energy is needed to create such a luminosities at that distance and then work out possible mechanisms for this.red shift would only be used on distant events and at those distances single stars may not be resolvable unless they are supernovas.,this is a pretty fuzzy outline,i could email you some things to read if you are interested.
Hey, Jupiter is not a brown dwarf! Brown dwarfs have masses 55 to 78 times the mass of the planet Jupiter
To be pedantic stars aren't made of fire, rather hot gas and plasma heated by fusion in the core of the star. Fire is the chemical combustion of two reactive elements, fusion is the nuclear combination of atoms into heavier atoms.
What are the stars? Do all scientists agee that they are suns similar to our own? If so, what is the evidence for this? You can start here for an introduction at a very basic level - scroll down to the bottom of the page for more links: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/961112a.html Red shift? Here are some quick explanations regarding redshift: http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~jh8h/glossary/redshift.htm
Thank you, those readings help alot. What are the best texts for laymen who want to study cosmology and physics with only minimal mathematics?
how the universe got its spots is quite good,about topology mainly if i remember right. a textbook called "universe" ccant remember who by.i can forward you my cosmology notes if you want.
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene ISBN: 0375708111 A very good place to start.
In the same sense that the Earth is close to being Jupiter. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Some of the bright spots you see with your naked eye in the sky (assuming you live in a nice clear area of the world where stars are seen in great numbers) are deffinitly NOT stars at all, some are Galaxies, some are indeed planets within our own solar system. Not all stars are exactly the same, althought I think many of them are similar to our very own Sol (our sun). In genereal they are all "big balls of fire" even thought that isn't a very accurate description, see eburacum45's description for something more accurate.
I didn't know that, cool....I just assumed that since there are so many that some of the spots must be Galaxies.
I love that that site has explanatory "mouseover" points, including one for WWW that explains that "The World Wide Web is a loose linkage of internet sites which provide data and other services from around the world", instead of, "How the hell do you think you're even reading THIS, fuckwit?" Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Pardon me, Ophiolite, but however well written for the layman that book may be, don't you think it's likely to be going a little too deeply into fundamental physics, for someone who (for bible-related reasons, I'm sure we'll find) finds it difficult to believe that the distant stars are gigantic balls of nuclear reacting hydrogen? Something the rest of us learnt in primary school? I recommend The Collapsing Universe by Isaac Asimov, but you'll have to trawl e-Bay and amazon z-shops to find a copy, I'm guessing. But it gives a full description of more or less every class of astronomical body, in its journey to the Black Hole. Still a very good introduction, even though 30 years out of date.
I'm from the sink or swim school on alternate days. S/he seems genuinely interested, so worth a go. Anything by Azimov has my vote. Kenworth, there is an order of magnitude mass difference between Jupiter and a brown dwarf. They are very different beasts.
