Abstract
THE view that the stars are gaseous structures has held the field for more than half a century; it is implied in Helmholtz's famous ‘contractiontheory’ of the source of solar energy as well as in the pioneer researches of Homer Lane. Emden, surveying the subject in his “Gaskugeln,” scarcely discussed any alternative possibility, although finding that the centres of the stars must be too dense for the ordinary gaseous state to be possible. This particular contradiction disappeared, and indeed the whole question assumed a new aspect, in the light of a concept I put forward in 1917, according to which the atoms in stellar interiors were in a state of extreme electronic dissociation. For, as Eddington afterwards pointed out, electrons and atomic nuclei are of such diminutive size that if these, and these alone, form the flying units of a quasi-gas, no density observed in astronomy is too high to be compatible with the gaseous state.
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JEANS, J. Liquid Stars. Nature 121, 173–175 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/121173a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/121173a0