Do stars actually exist beyond our solar system?

[markjohn82]

It is a question i have been thinking about for a while.

When we look into the sky, are we actually looking at other stars or are we looking at our own sun from lots of different angles, we know light bends with the gravitational pull of planets. is it not possible that the light we see from stars is actually just the light from our sun bent around the gravitational bodies in our solar system. surely if not all of them are our sun then atleast some of them must be! Also when we look into space we can see lots of amazing colours of distant solar systems, is it not possible that these are just a result of many paths of light particles interacting with or crossing over each other to cause the effects? All this in mind, how big is our universe, actually!

I'm not trained in any form of science and there maybe evidence i have not seen so excuse me if the answer is simple.

many thanks

Mark John

 

[mgb_phys]

When we look into the sky, are we actually looking at other stars

Yes
We also measure different temperatures, chemical constituents and even speeds of different stars - from their light.

we know light bends with the gravitational pull of planets. is it not possible that the light we see from stars is actually just the light from our sun bent around the gravitational bodies in our solar system.

The bending of light by something as tiny (on a universal scale) as a planet is incredibly small. The hipparcos satelite which measured the positions of stars to incredible accuracy just about detected bending form light passing Jupiter - but only at the fraction of a billionth of a degree level

 

[markjohn82]

Hi Mgb

Thanks for clearing that one up for me.

One more question though.

You say that light bends only a small fraction from a planet (tiny on a universal scale) but is there a chance that something larger or a collection of smaller bodies (planets) might bend the light from our sun to the correct degree for us to be able to see if from another angle? has anyone actually discovered the light from our sun that has taken a less direct route to earth?

 

[russ_watters]

You say that light bends only a small fraction from a planet (tiny on a universal scale) but is there a chance that something larger or a collection of smaller bodies (planets) might bend the light from our sun to the correct degree for us to be able to see if from another angle?

Even if it is really possible (not really sure), it would have to be a rediculously strong and properly located black hole to do something like that.

has anyone actually discovered the light from our sun that has taken a less direct route to earth?

No.

 

[markjohn82]

A few more questions.

With everything in mind we have already discussed.

Has anyone ever viewed the light from any star that has been bent by any gravitational forces?

Surely in the vastness of space we must be looking at some light that has been significantly bent by gravity?

Could it be possible that we are seeing some of the stars twice just from different angles?

 

[Nabeshin]

Has anyone ever viewed the light from any star that has been bent by any gravitational forces?

Yes. Indeed, this was one of the first classical tests of GR performed by Arthur Eddington in 1919 where he observed light coming from distant stars bend as they passed behind the sun (this took place during a solar eclipse. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity ).

Also, the geometry of gravitational lensing is quite distinctive, so it really isn't likely at all that any stars (or galaxies) we see are false images. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lensing for some example pictures of what lensed objects look like, and know that the night sky doesn't really look like this.

 

[brainstorm]

I don't see how this idea that sunlight travels through many different trajectories to produce all the different star-images visible from Earth is so easily dismissed. Granted, it would be a major shock to find out all the data that has served as a basis for cosmology is mirage-type effects, but on the other hand it would be interesting to discover how many different effects are possible due to various paths and interactions of divergent light trajectories. The whole idea does seem like a kind of solar-centric cosmosolipsism - but I just don't see how it is 100% excludable.

 

[Pengwuino]

I don't see how this idea that sunlight travels through many different trajectories to produce all the different star-images visible from Earth is so easily dismissed. Granted, it would be a major shock to find out all the data that has served as a basis for cosmology is mirage-type effects, but on the other hand it would be interesting to discover how many different effects are possible due to various paths and interactions of divergent light trajectories. The whole idea does seem like a kind of solar-centric cosmosolipsism - but I just don't see how it is 100% excludable.

We've never seen light act in this manner on any scale we've been able to access. The idea that not only does light act differently on planetary scales, but is so radically different as to make all of hundreds of years of physics completely wrong is far fetched to say the least. You may believe that it is just 1 change that you're proposing, but infact would require probably hundreds of new conjectures to make your 1 change to make sense. For example, how would it account for different temperatures, cataclysmic variables, x-ray binary stars, and a plethora of different things that involves radically different suns and how they interact or the radiation they give off?

It's like suggesting that the Moon is not actually there but simply a reflection of a soda can i have my driveway. You can immediately name off dozens if not hundreds of things about the Moon that can't be described by said theory

 

[russ_watters]

Has anyone ever viewed the light from any star that has been bent by any gravitational forces?

Surely in the vastness of space we must be looking at some light that has been significantly bent by gravity?

Could it be possible that we are seeing some of the stars twice just from different angles?

The answer to all of those is yes.

Here are four images of the same object, caused by gravitational lensing. Note that the object must be extremely far away and the gravitational field extremely strong to create this (thust the angle of "bend" is very small). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Einstein_cross.jpg

 

[AUK 1138]

has anyone actually discovered the light from our sun that has taken a less direct route to earth?

No.

incorrect. every time you look at a planet in our solar system or the moon you are seeing light from the sun that has reflected off that body. hence, a less direct route was taken.

 

[FawkesCa]

pay close attention to the experiment in 1919 by Eddington. the most important part of it (in regards to this question) is that the images from the distant stars that were measured were different by an INCREDIABLY small margin. for a quanta of light to be bent around as to be seen twice (let alone as many times as there are "object" in the sky) the gravitational pull would require something ridiculusly large as the new star found recently (with 280 solar masses). as has been my experience with such thought, "Its a wonderful idea... but it doesn't work."

 

[brainstorm]

We've never seen light act in this manner on any scale we've been able to access. The idea that not only does light act differently on planetary scales, but is so radically different as to make all of hundreds of years of physics completely wrong is far fetched to say the least. You may believe that it is just 1 change that you're proposing, but infact would require probably hundreds of new conjectures to make your 1 change to make sense. For example, how would it account for different temperatures, cataclysmic variables, x-ray binary stars, and a plethora of different things that involves radically different suns and how they interact or the radiation they give off?

It's like suggesting that the Moon is not actually there but simply a reflection of a soda can i have my driveway. You can immediately name off dozens if not hundreds of things about the Moon that can't be described by said theory

True, but consider a piece of crumpled aluminum foil reflecting light and all the different configurations and directions it reflects that light. Then consider if the foil was covered with oil and water in such a way that it also had multiple prism effects. My point is that if gravitational lensing would take place as complexly as the crumpling of a wet, oily sheet of aluminum foil, then it is not so far-fetched that the full spectrum of observed stars and galaxies could be artifacts of gravitational optics. Like you, I am not willing to trade in all known astronomy and cosmology for cosmosolipsism but I also don't see any point to burying the very thought of it either. It's simply interesting to take one visible artifact at a time and ask how its image could be the result of gravitational lensing. Could the solar system be like the nucleus of an atom with light trajectories around it as diverse as electron paths around the atomic nucleus? That is an interesting if relatively impractical question, imo. I'm glad this thread was posted and I hope people don't give up this query because it would be a loss of scientific imagination.

 

[Deuterium2H]

It is a question i have been thinking about for a while.

When we look into the sky, are we actually looking at other stars or are we looking at our own sun from lots of different angles, we know light bends with the gravitational pull of planets. is it not possible that the light we see from stars is actually just the light from our sun bent around the gravitational bodies in our solar system. surely if not all of them are our sun then atleast some of them must be! Also when we look into space we can see lots of amazing colours of distant solar systems, is it not possible that these are just a result of many paths of light particles interacting with or crossing over each other to cause the effects? All this in mind, how big is our universe, actually!

I'm not trained in any form of science and there maybe evidence i have not seen so excuse me if the answer is simple.

many thanks

Mark John

Besides all the other responses already provided, I believe that the only suitable explanation for stellar parallax is proof that extrasolar stars exist, and that they are not simply multiple images of our own sun. In other words, we can measure the parallax of many of the "close" stars. The Hipparcos satellite has measured over 100,000 stars with detectable parallax. The fact that these stars are perceived to move against the fixed background of more distant stars (i.e. parallax) proves they cannot be images from our own sun. Or put more simply, if the stars were images of our own sun, why would some of them appear to move, while others didn't. That, in and of itself, totally disproves the possibility that the stars are simply multiple images of our own sun.

As an interesting side-note, besides the aberration of startlight, the first undisputed detection of stellar parallax in 1837, was the first irrefutable evidence that the Earth revolves around the sun.

And of course, stellar parallax is of "cosmic" importance, as it provides the first rung on the distance scale "ladder", which we use to measure cosmological distances.

 

[DaveC426913]

We have read the spectrographs of what? Thousands? Tens- Hundreds-of-thousands of stars?

None of them have spectral signatures identical to Sol.

In fact, it might be big news if one of them did!

This, and a thousand other examples make up an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that stars in the sky are not the sun.

 

[brainstorm]

The fact that these stars are perceived to move against the fixed background of more distant stars (i.e. parallax) proves they cannot be images from our own sun. Or put more simply, if the stars were images of our own sun, why would some of them appear to move, while others didn't. That, in and of itself, totally disproves the possibility that the stars are simply multiple images of our own sun.

What if photon-paths are stratified the way electron shells are, such that some shells "drift" relative to others? Would this not explain the appearance of relative motion between strata of some sets of duplicate images relative to others?

 

[Chronos]

Has anyone mentioned parallax? The distance to many stars has been determined by parallax measurements. The only reasonable explanation is they are vastly distant from earth.

 

[Deuterium2H]

Has anyone mentioned parallax? The distance to many stars has been determined by parallax measurements. The only reasonable explanation is they are vastly distant from earth.

Beat you to it. Look three posts up

 

[Deuterium2H]

What if photon-paths are stratified the way electron shells are, such that some shells "drift" relative to others? Would this not explain the appearance of relative motion between strata of some sets of duplicate images relative to others?

If I am understanding your question correctly (and I may not be)...then since different stars have different parallaxes, one would have to assign a dedicated shell to each of the thousands of different stars with different parallaxes. Besides, I am not sure how you could reconcile that with the way light behaves...always taking the path of least (minimum) time.

 

[brainstorm]

However long the conduit of curved spacetime would be to make the sun appear so distant, it would be indistinguishable from a situation in which the path taken by light was actually straight, nor would it appear any different from if it followed a straight path. Light always appears to have followed a straight path because the mind is programmed to perceive images as corresponding with the location of their source. This is why people who fish using spears have to initially submerge the end of the spear to adjust their aim to the underwater distortion. Without submerging the spear first, stabbing into the water in the direction of the fish's image would cause you to miss the fish because that is not really where it is.

 

[cjameshuff]

Aside from the existence of multiple-star systems, the variety of stars of all ages and types, the differences in star variability to our sun's own cycles, the stars with planets circling them in systems that could never be mistaken for our own, the galaxies, nebulae, neutron stars, white dwarfs, and many other objects that bear no resemblance to our sun, etc, etc, etc...

...you seem to be imagining light being twisted around every which way as it goes through the universe. Light just doesn't behave that way. Space isn't like crumpled foil or oil or water. Photons from a distant source just passing the sun on each side are deflected so little that their paths don't cross for 500+ AU. Aside from the fact that the resulting image would be so smeared and distorted that it could never be mistaken for distant stars, it would require such tremendous concentrations of invisible mass in nearby space that the survival of the sun and solar system would be miraculous, which also raises the issue of why those masses haven't long ago coalesced into a single giant black hole. (after consuming us and our sun)

The responses you've gotten aren't closed-minded rejections of something new. Your proposal is utterly at odds with observations of light's behavior and the appearance of the universe, while requiring things that appear impossible. There's no observational support for it and many severe problems with it.

A more reasonable proposal is that the universe is large but finite in size, closed, and small enough that light can cross it multiple times, leading to multiple images of nearby galaxies being seen as progressively more distant ones. This could be investigated using computer searches for the patterns that would result, and IIRC some fairly detailed searches have been done, with no unambiguous signs of such patterns being found.

 

[brainstorm]

...you seem to be imagining light being twisted around every which way as it goes through the universe. Light just doesn't behave that way. Space isn't like crumpled foil or oil or water. Photons from a distant source just passing the sun on each side are deflected so little that their paths don't cross for 500+ AU. Aside from the fact that the resulting image would be so smeared and distorted that it could never be mistaken for distant stars, it would require such tremendous concentrations of invisible mass in nearby space that the survival of the sun and solar system would be miraculous, which also raises the issue of why those masses haven't long ago coalesced into a single giant black hole. (after consuming us and our sun)

The responses you've gotten aren't closed-minded rejections of something new. Your proposal is utterly at odds with observations of light's behavior and the appearance of the universe, while requiring things that appear impossible. There's no observational support for it and many severe problems with it.

I'm not claiming anything about the responses being closed-minded. I'm just pointing out that IF the universe consisted of only the solar system, no one would have any clue how to theorize the behavior of light within an infinite set of recursive light trajectories.

Consider analogically that you are able to observe electron energy from a point inside an atom as if it were light. The electrons orbit indefinitely in more of a random cloud-like pattern than anything geometrically organized. So each time an electron passed through you, it would appear to come from another trajectory at a different level of intensity/momentum/velocity.

If, from your perspective, any electron that reached you would appear to have traveled linearly from a distant source (as is the case with light), you would see the same electron as many distinct electrons, just because it was consistently tracing a distinct path from you to you, with different distance and interactions with other electrons en route. Who is to say that you would be able to recognize any electron you observed as being the same as another one you observed earlier? If nothing else, though, you could assume that electrons that appeared to emanate from the same source are following the same path and are subject to similar interactions en route.

Again, this has nothing to do with whether this is a plausible model for the universe or not. It has to do with taking the idea in the OP's question and exploring what it WOULD be like if the sun was in fact the only star in the universe and light continued to circulate indefinitely along any number of curved spacetime trajectories.

 

[Deuterium2H]

I'm not claiming anything about the responses being closed-minded. I'm just pointing out that IF the universe consisted of only the solar system, no one would have any clue how to theorize the behavior of light within an infinite set of recursive light trajectories.

Brainstorm,

Besides all the other replies that falsify the question/theory that you have put forth (including Stellar Parallax), I offer you more evidence which I hope will finally settle your question. Your proposition posits the possibility that only our own Solar System exists, with the stars being reflections of our own Sun that have somehow bent around, and returning on different trajectories.

Putting aside the already stated facts regarding the myriad of different spectrums associated with different stars (with the majority being inconsistent with the spectrum of our own Sun), I offer further evidence for your consideration, which negates your argument:

A) What about the imagery of different galaxies?

Obviously, with the naked eye, you are more or less only seeing stars (except in cases like Andromeda Galaxy). However, with a telescope, you can resolve the individual "island universes" we of course call galaxies. These have structure, and look NOTHING like a star, and thus cannot be returned images of our own Sun. With a powerful enough telescope, one can resolve individual stars that make up the galaxies in our Local Group. So, the existence of galaxies immediately contradictions your proposition that only our own Solar System (and Sun) exist.

B) Cepheid Variable stars exhibit periodic changes in luminosity that is completely inconsistent with them being images of our own Sun.

C) Binary star systems. Almost half of the stars in our Galaxy belong to a Binary system. We are able to resolve the perculiar motion of these Binary stellar systems, and can actually determine their mass from their orbits, via Kepler's laws. Through observation, we can actually observe binary pairs revolving around their common barycenter. Again, this is completely inconsistent with the argument you have put forth.

D) The rest of the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light, as you are well aware, is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. If all the "stars" were simply returned reflections from our Sun, then why do some radiate powerfully in X-Ray, while some radiate powerfully in Radio wavelengths?

E) Your theory presumes a pretty isotropic pattern of returning light waves, coming from all areas of the sky. However, our local neighborhood is decidedly non-isotropic. There are areas of much higher densities (bunching) of stars, such as open clusters and globular clusters. It is impossible to reconcile the observational data of these structures with your theory.

 

[Rasalhague]

Granted, it would be a major shock to find out all the data that has served as a basis for cosmology is mirage-type effects, but on the other hand it would be interesting to discover how many different effects are possible due to various paths and interactions of divergent light trajectories. The whole idea does seem like a kind of solar-centric cosmosolipsism - but I just don't see how it is 100% excludable.

Argument for: it would be interesting. Counter argument: the universe doesn't care what we think is interesting.

Arguments against: it would be shocking, people might insult the theory by calling it "solar-centric". Counter argument: the universe doesn't care what shocks us or what names we give to its properties.

 

[Chronos]

Beat you to it. Look three posts up

Mea culpa. I am occassionally guilty of typing at a more than leisurely pace .

 

[brainstorm]

Besides all the other replies that falsify the question/theory that you have put forth (including Stellar Parallax), I offer you more evidence which I hope will finally settle your question. Your proposition posits the possibility that only our own Solar System exists, with the stars being reflections of our own Sun that have somehow bent around, and returning on different trajectories.

I don't think this idea is anywhere close to the level of falsifiability yet. Your comments in this post are helping to get it there, though. Personally, I don't really see falsification as the most interesting way to address this idea. It seems more conducive to me to explore the hypothetical question of what WOULD be observed from Earth if the solar system was alone in the universe. But I don't mind approaching it your way, since it makes for an equally interesting discussion, imo.

A) What about the imagery of different galaxies?

Obviously, with the naked eye, you are more or less only seeing stars (except in cases like Andromeda Galaxy). However, with a telescope, you can resolve the individual "island universes" we of course call galaxies. These have structure, and look NOTHING like a star, and thus cannot be returned images of our own Sun. With a powerful enough telescope, one can resolve individual stars that make up the galaxies in our Local Group. So, the existence of galaxies immediately contradictions your proposition that only our own Solar System (and Sun) exist.

Spiral galaxies are somewhat plausibly theorized as an optical effect caused by multiple star images spiraling toward the observer. Other galaxy forms could be caused by other optical effect-patterns. The basic amalgamation of repeating images of the sun could be caused by the fragmentation and reconstitution of photon trajectories in deep space with very little gravity. It could be that just as the photon stream from the sun fragments and divides into various trajectories of differing length, so do the "daughter images." As these daughter-image photon streams break away from their parents, they could attract each other into conglomerate flows, the way tributaries flow into rivers. What appears to be a galaxy to a telescope could be the result of such a "river" of star-images. The trajectory that "river" would take back to Earth would cause the galaxy to appear to have one pattern or another.

B) Cepheid Variable stars exhibit periodic changes in luminosity that is completely inconsistent with them being images of our own Sun.

If areas of deep space would be so devoid of gravitation as to produce a kind of mirage effect on the light passing through them, then changes in luminosity could be caused in that way, no?

C) Binary star systems. Almost half of the stars in our Galaxy belong to a Binary system. We are able to resolve the perculiar motion of these Binary stellar systems, and can actually determine their mass from their orbits, via Kepler's laws. Through observation, we can actually observe binary pairs revolving around their common barycenter. Again, this is completely inconsistent with the argument you have put forth.

This is the most difficult to explain purely in terms of light-gravity interactions because why would light-images orbit each other in the same way objects with mass do? The only explanation I can imagine is that due to the orbital patterns of some of the planets, spacetime conduits for light might vary according to planetary motion, causing the solar light that travels through those conduits to appear as images orbiting each other.

D) The rest of the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light, as you are well aware, is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. If all the "stars" were simply returned reflections from our Sun, then why do some radiate powerfully in X-Ray, while some radiate powerfully in Radio wavelengths?

This one's pretty easy. Doppler effects could result from trajectories and interactions of light-flows. It would open up a whole world of possibilities if light exerted attractive and/or repulsive force vis-a-vis other light.

E) Your theory presumes a pretty isotropic pattern of returning light waves, coming from all areas of the sky. However, our local neighborhood is decidedly non-isotropic. There are areas of much higher densities (bunching) of stars, such as open clusters and globular clusters. It is impossible to reconcile the observational data of these structures with your theory.

Why couldn't all this be attributed to spacetime topography?

Argument for: it would be interesting. Counter argument: the universe doesn't care what we think is interesting.

Then what makes you think the universe cares what you think it cares about?

Arguments against: it would be shocking, people might insult the theory by calling it "solar-centric". Counter argument: the universe doesn't care what shocks us or what names we give to its properties.

Right. One of the useful functions of exploring this kind of speculative BS is to discover how subjectively biased people are toward insistence on adherence to established lines of inquiry and theory, instead of simply applying knowledge, logic, and reason to implausible issues.

The fundamental issue in all this that I really do find interesting and worthwhile is to consider how radically gravitational optics can ultimately affect light trajectories and optical patterns. It is easy to assume that what you see is basically what you get, but what basis do we really have to know how light behaves in gravitational spacetime topography extremely far from any gravitational concentration of matter? People tend to assume that the spacetime fabric reaches a certain level of consistent flatness far from gravity wells, but everything we know about the universe is based on data collected from inside a gravity well. Who knows how deep the rabbit hole goes once you're actually observing from outside the hole you've always been in?

 

[russ_watters]

Brainstorm, I don't think you quite grasp just how broad the body of knowledge astronomers have about the universe is and just how impossible this idea you are exploring is. But in any case, since you acknowledge that it is "speculative BS" and PF doesn't allow speculative BS, thread locked.