Supernova 1987A Decoded

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By Wal Thornhill August 24,

2005

Supernova 1987A is the closest supernova event since the invention of the telescope. It was first seen in
February 1987 in the nearby Magellanic cloud, a dwarf companion galaxy of the Milky Way, and only
169,000 light years from Earth. Close observation since 1987 has now provided proof that supernovae
are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star.

The enigmatic and beautiful structure of SN1987A with its three axial rings. The brightening of the equatorial ring is obvious. The two
bright stars are just in the field of view and are not associated with the supernova. Credit: NASA/STScI/CfA/P.Challis.

A supernova is one of the most energetic events witnessed in the universe. The accepted explanation is that it
occurs at the end of a stars lifetime, or red giant stage, when the stars nuclear fuel is exhausted. There is no
more release of nuclear energy in the core so the huge star collapses in on itself. If sufficiently massive, the
imploding layers of the star are thought to rebound when they hit the core, resulting in an explosion, and the
blast wave ejects the stars envelope into interstellar space. The bright equatorial ring is caused by the collision
of exploded matter from the star with the remnants of an earlier stellar wind. The two faint rings are a problem.
The best that theorists have been able to manage is to postulate some kind of rotating beam from an assumed
supernova remnant, sweeping and lighting up a shell of gas expelled at an earlier epoch. The ad hoc nature of
these explanations is obvious.

The detection of a pulsar remnant after some supernovae is explained by the implosion of the stellar core to
produce a neutron star. Pulsars emit bursts of radiation up to thousands of times a second. It is believed that a
pulsar must be a super-collapsed stellar object that can spin up to thousands of times a second and emit a
rotating beam of X-rays (like a lighthouse). Commonsense suggests that this mechanical model is wrong when
some pulsars rev beyond the redline, even for such a bizarre object.

A recent example of conventional thinking can be seen on the Chandra website. On August 17, a news story was
posted:

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Supernova 1987A: Fast Forward to the Past.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/S.Park & D.Burrows.; Optical: NASA/STScI/CfA/P.Challis

Recent Chandra observations have revealed new details about the fiery ring surrounding the
stellar explosion that produced Supernova 1987A. The data give insight into the behavior of the
doomed star in the years before it exploded, and indicate that the predicted spectacular
brightening of the circumstellar ring has begun.. The site of the explosion was traced to the
location of a blue supergiant star called Sanduleak-69 202 (SK-69 for short) that had a mass
estimated at approximately 20 Suns.

Subsequent optical, ultraviolet and X-ray observations have enabled astronomers to piece
together the following scenario for SK-69: about ten million years ago the star formed out of a
dark, dense, cloud of dust and gas; roughly a million years ago, the star lost most of its outer
layers in a slowly moving stellar wind that formed a vast cloud of gas around it; before the star
exploded, a high-speed wind blowing off its hot surface carved out a cavity in the cool gas cloud.

The intense flash of ultraviolet light from the supernova illuminated the edge of this cavity to
produce the bright ring seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the meantime the supernova
explosion sent a shock wave rumbling through the cavity. In 1999, Chandra imaged this shock
wave, and astronomers have waited expectantly for the shock wave to hit the edge of the cavity,
where it would encounter the much denser gas deposited by the red supergiant wind, and produce
a dramatic increase in X-radiation.

The latest data from Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that this much-anticipated
event has begun. Optical hot-spots now encircle the ring like a necklace of incandescent
diamonds. The Chandra image reveals multimillion-degree gas at the location of the optical hot-
spots. X-ray spectra obtained with Chandra provide evidence that the optical hot-spots and the X-
ray producing gas are due to a collision of the outward-moving supernova shock wave with dense
fingers of cool gas protruding inward from the circumstellar ring.

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 Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

These fingers were produced long ago by the interaction of the high-speed wind with the dense
circumstellar cloud. The collision of the outward-moving supernova shock wave (yellow) with the
dense fingers of cool gas produce bright spots (white) of optical and X-ray emission. The
expanding debris (blue) of the exploded star lags behind the shock wave and, except for a thin
shell around the outer edge (gold), is too cool to produce X-rays.

The dense fingers and the visible circumstellar ring represent only the inner edge of a much
greater, unknown amount of matter ejected long ago by SK-69. As the shock wave moves into the
dense cloud, ultraviolet and X-radiation from the shock wave will heat much more of the
circumstellar gas.

Then, as remarked by Richard McCray, one of the scientists involved in the Chandra research,
Supernova 1987A will be illuminating its own past.

On the contrary, Supernova 1987A illuminates only how poorly the theory of supernova explosions fits
the observations.

The official explanatory illustration above is conjectural and relies (again) on invisible matter that the star is
supposed to have conveniently pre-released in just the right places and filamentary form to produce the observed
effects. To say, the predicted spectacular brightening of the circumstellar ring is disingenuous. Neither the
presence of the three rings nor the pattern of bright beads in the equatorial ring was predicted from theory. The
Hubble images of the rings are quite spectacular and unexpected, said Dr. Chris Burrows of the European Space
Agency and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, when first discovered. This is an
unprecedented and bizarre object. We have never seen anything behave like this before. The pattern of
brightening is not explained by an expanding shock front.

There is a more fundamental problem with SN1987A. The star at the center was found to have been a blue
supergiant. But a supernova explosion is thought to require a ten-times bigger red supergiant star. There is no
evidence that SK-69 was a red supergiant star, emitting a massive stellar wind. The history of the star is not
based on observation, it is a fabrication required by the theory.

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The axial shape of SN1987A is that of a planetary nebula. Fifty years ago a British scientist, Dr. Charles E. R.
Bruce (1902-1979), argued that the bipolar shape, temperatures and magnetic fields of planetary nebulae could
be explained as an electrical discharge. Bruce was ideally situated to make the discovery, being both an electrical
engineer versed in high-energy lightning behavior and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was
ignored.

C. E. R. Bruce indicating examples of

planetary nebulae which are clearly not
simply expanding shells around a central star.
Courtesy of E. Crew.

The place to look for real answers is not in abstract astrophysical theory but in the practical experiments and
supercomputer simulations of some plasma cosmologists. They unleash the most powerful man-made electrical
discharges on this planet. The result is called the z-pinch. The term z-pinch comes from the usual
representation of a current flowing along the z-axis, parallel to the magnetic field. With a strong enough current,
the plasma formed by the discharge electromagnetically pinches into a string of sausages, donuts and plasma
instabilities, along the z-axis.

Electrical discharges (Lichtenberg figures) illuminate the surface of the Z machine, the world's most powerful X-ray source, during a
recent accelerator shot. The most recent advance gave an X-ray power of about 290 trillion watts for billionths of a second, about
80 times the entire world's output of electricity.

Since Bruce, and following the pioneering work of Hannes Alfven on an electric circuit model of stars, it has
become clear to plasma cosmologists that the electrical z-pinch effect is instrumental in forming stars. Once
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formed, stars continue to be lit by electrical power delivered throughout the universe by cosmic transmission
lines known as Birkeland current filaments. These giant filaments can be traced by their radio transmissions.
Stars also trace the Birkeland currents in galaxies in the same way that electric streetlights trace the routes of
electrical cables.

Stars are an electrical, not a thermonuclear, phenomenon. Consequently, a stars size, color and spectrum tell us
nothing about its age. A red supergiant star is huge because it is under low electrical stress. It is not at the end of
its life. And being under low stress it is not expected to explode. However, a blue star is under extreme electrical
stress. We do not have to advance the ad hoc postulate that SN1987A was a red supergiant before it exploded.

Here we see the changes in the equatorial ring over time. Some astronomers wrote, "The origin of the circumstellar ring is the outstanding
mystery of SN 1987A. Why is the ring so thin, and so nearly circular? Why is it expanding so slowly? Today we have no clear answers to
these questions. But we do know that the ring around SN1987A is not unique. Many planetary nebulae have remarkably similar bipolar
structures."

How does a star explode? The conventional implosion followed by explosion model has many shortcomings.
An electric star, on the other hand, has internal charge separation which can power a star-wide, expulsive
lightning-flash. The star relieves electrical stress by fissioning or blowing off charged matter. A star also has
electromagnetic energy stored in an equatorial current ring. Matter is ejected equatorially by discharges between
the current ring and the star. Our own Sun does it regularly on a small scale. However, if the stored energy
reaches some critical value it may be released in the form of a bipolar discharge, or ejection of matter, along the
rotational axis. The remnant of SN 1987A shows such a bipolar ejection in the form of two blobs of matter (inside
the bright ring).

A companion star may initiate a stellar discharge that results in fissioning. It is significant in this context that an
unexplained and much-disputed Mystery Spot appeared along the line joining the two blobs and was seen
briefly a couple of months after the explosion and then quickly faded from sight. The spot was too far away to
have been ejected by the supernova and its brightness (10% of the supernova) was too great to be explained by
reflection off a cloud of matter. It may have been a faint companion that triggered, or was a part of the circuit of
the electrical supernova discharge.

The bright beaded ring shows that matter has been ejected equatorially. However, the ring is not expanding. The
other two fainter rings are also arranged above and below the star on the same axis and show similar but fainter
bright spots.

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Conventionally, a shock wave from an exploding star should show spherical, rather than axial, symmetry. And
there is no particular reason why the shock front should form a ring of bright spots. We should expect some
visible indication of the spherical cavity.

Stars are an electrical plasma discharge phenomenon. Electrical energy produces heavy elements near the
surface of all stars. The energy is transferred over cosmic distances via Birkeland current transmission lines. The
energy may be released gradually or stored in a stellar circuit and unleashed catastrophically. It is these cosmic
circuits that are the energy source for the supernova explosion not the star. That is why the energy output of
some nebulae exceeds that available from the central star. See Shocks from Eta Carina.

The electrical energy released in supernova fissioning is prodigious, so it is no surprise that there is an
abundance of heavy elements and neutrinos dispersed into space by the stellar lightning flash.

The crucial evidence for the electrical nature of supernovae must come from experiment and
observation.

Anthony L. Peratt, Fellow, IEEE, published a seminal paper in the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 31,
No. 6, December 2003. It was titled Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as
Recorded in Antiquity. In it he explained the unusual characteristics of a high-energy plasma discharge. He
discussed mega-ampere particle beams and showed their characteristic 56- and 28-fold symmetry. He wrote:

A solid beam of charged particles tends to form hollow cylinders that may then filament into
individual currents. When observed from below, the pattern consists of circles, circular rings
of bright spots, and intense electrical discharge streamers connecting the inner structure
to the outer structure.

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 This photograph shows a 0.6-mm-thick titanium witness plate that has been placed 15 cm in front of a 100 kilo-Gauss, sub-
megaampere charged particle beam. Initially, the particle beam was cylindrical but after traveling the 15 cm has filamented. In the
sub-gigaampere range, the maximum number of self-pinched filaments allowed before the cylindrical magnetic field will no longer
split into "islands" for the parameters above has been found to be 56.

These results verify that individual current filaments were maintained by their azimuthal self-magnetic fields, a
property lost by increasing the number of electrical current filaments. The scaling is constant for a given hollow
beam thickness, from microampere beams to multi-megaampere beams and beam diameters of millimeters to
thousands of kilometers.

This scaling of plasma phenomena has been extended to more than 14 orders of magnitude, so the bright ring of
supernova 1987A can be considered as a stellar scale witness plate with the equatorial ejecta sheet acting as
the plate for the otherwise invisible axial Birkeland currents.

Peratt adds:

Because the electrical current-carrying filaments are parallel, they attract via the Biot-Savart force
law, in pairs but sometimes three. This reduces the 56 filaments over time to 28 filaments, hence
the 56 and 28 fold symmetry patterns. In actuality, during the pairing, any number of filaments less
than 56 may be recorded as pairing is not synchronized to occur uniformly. However, there are
temporarily stable (longer state durations) at 42, 35, 28, 14, 7, and 4 filaments. Each pair
formation is a vortex that becomes increasingly complex.

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The images of SN 1987A shows the Birkeland currents around the star have paired to a number close to 28. The
bright spots show a tendency toward pairing and groups of three. This witness plate model explains why the
glowing ring is so nearly circular and is expanding very slowly unlike a shock front. It is more like a cloud at
night moving through the beams of a ring of searchlights.

If the equatorial ring shows the Birkeland currents in the outer sheath of an axial plasma current column, then the
supernova outburst is the result of a cosmic z-pinch in the central column, focused on the central star. It is
important to note that the z-pinch naturally takes the ubiquitous hourglass shape of planetary nebulae. No special
conditions and mysteriously conjured magnetic fields are required.

Experimental and simulation derived geometries for extreme plasma currents in a plasma column. The Birkeland currents will only be
visible where the plasma density is high.

It is also the shape of SN1987A with its three rings. It will be instructive for plasma cosmologists to watch closely
the development of SN1987As necklace of incandescent diamonds. I do not expect the ring to grow as a
shock-wave-produced ring would be expected to. Some bright spots may be seen to rotate about each other and
to merge. It is an opportunity more rare and valuable than a diamond to be able to verify the electric discharge
nature of a supernova. Supernova 1987A will be illuminating the future of plasma cosmology!

Plasma cosmologists have not ignored the pulsar, sometimes found in a supernova remnant. Healy and Peratt in
Radiation Properties of Pulsar Magnetospheres: Observation, Theory and Experiment , concluded:

the source of the radiation energy may not be contained within the pulsar, but may instead derive
either from the pulsars interaction with its environment or by energy delivered by an external
circuit. [O]ur results support the planetary magnetosphere view, where the extent of the
magnetosphere, not emission points on a rotating surface, determines the pulsar emission.

In other words, we do not require a hypothetical super-condensed object to form a pulsar. A normal stellar
remnant undergoing periodic discharges will suffice. Plasma cosmology has the virtue of not requiring neutron
stars or black holes to explain compact sources of radiation.

This completes the electrical sketch of supernova 1987A.

Postscript:

This discovery of the electrical nature of supernovae has implications back here on Earth. The extensive
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interdisciplinary scope of the ELECTRIC UNIVERSE model is highlighted by Peratts recent discovery that
objects from antiquity manifest 56- and 28-fold symmetry. These range from concentric petroglyphs around the
world to geoglyphs (stone-rings), megaliths, and other constructs. The most renowned of the 56-fold symmetric
megaliths is Stonehenge.

An Aerial View of Stonehenge. The view includes the circular bank, ditch, and counterscarp bank. A number of the Aubrey holes are
also visible. The Heel Stone can be seen in the lower right.

Our ancestors witnessed a cosmic electrical discharge up close. It raises fundamental issues about the recent
history of the Earth and its cargo of life.

The explosion in new understanding will be an intellectual and cultural supernova!

Wal Thornhill

Further reading:
W. Thornhill, The Z-Pinch Morphology of Supernova 1987a and Electric Stars
ISSN : 0093-3813
INSPEC Accession Number: 9618789
Digital Object Identifier : 10.1109/TPS.2007.895423
Date of Current Version : 13 August 2007
Issue Date : Aug. 2007
Sponsored by : IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society

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