Stellar metamorphosis

Stellar metamorphosis is a crank hypothesis that claims that planets are old stars that have lost mass and thus the difference between a "star" and "planet" is baseless distinction. In response, proponents of the hypothesis propose a unified term, "astron" and seek to establish processes by which this can take place. Proponents claim that stars lose mass, cool, the stellar plasma undergoes chemical reactions converting to molecules, and necessarily create life. The hypothesis is communicated almost exclusively via Youtube videos and viXra, a home for "papers" by authors too crazy to get the vetting needed for the generally reputable arXiv. Despite bold claims, the hypothesis is furthered by unfounded principles which are simply declared without evidence. While there have been attempts to make Stellar Metamorphosis an ostensibly quantitative model by tossing in equations, these equations go unexplained, untested, and uncompared with any actual observations by proponents.

Like many pseudosciences, since Stellar Metamorphosis is unable to stand on its own merits, a great deal of the published material exists solely as an attack on mainstream science, implicitly invoking the logical fallacy of bifurcation in which if the proponents can cast sufficient doubt on mainstream science, Stellar Metamorphosis becomes the alternative explanation by default. However, the attacks on actual science from Stellar Metamorphosis proponents are universally factually incorrect or represent severe misinterpretations of mainstream science.

Work on Stellar metamorphosis is largely driven by Jeffrey Wolynski. No known professional astronomers support the hypothesis of planet formation being star evolution itself. There is no peer-reviewed research concerning this "theory". Modern scientists support the hypothesis of gravitation forming the solar system out of dust and gas in a protoplanetary disk, also known as the with a long history dating back to Sir Isaac Newton himself. There is a great deal of evidence supporting the standard model from the existence of the plane of the Solar System (the ), and observations of protoplanetary disks.

Fundamentals of Stellar Metamorphosis
Wolynski's first "evidence" for Stellar Metamorphosis is that, if one were to plot the mass of known stars and planets as a function of their radius, it presents a generally smooth line. Anyone that passed high school physics would understand that this is because there is a fairly limited range of densities for objects due to the laws of physics. While there are certainly outliers (such as neutron stars), most objects in the universe fall into this range. However, Wolynski takes this as an indication that there must be progression along this line. Fundamentally, this is not absurd on its face as it is akin to seeing a sampling of the fossil record and understanding the progression. But whereas biological evolution makes numerous testable predictions, Stellar Metamorphosis does not and instead makes many claims that are easily contradicted by observations. Similarly, this "evidence" could be applied to any progression of objects and Stellar Metamorphosis has been parodied with the hypothesis of Sportsball Metamorphosis.

Mass Loss
To explain how stars turn into planets, Stellar Metamorphosis must reconcile the extreme difference between the two in terms of mass. The obvious implication is that stars must lose mass. Wolynski claims that mass loss is a result of "solar wind, solar flaring, photoevaporation, impacts and coronal mass ejections" but no effort is made to determine whether or not these processes can reasonably account for the mass loss required to make Stellar Metamorphosis a viable hypothesis for the timelines it claims. A simple back of the envelope calculation would show that such processes are orders of magnitude off as stars like the sun do not lose any appreciable amount of mass via these processes over trillions of years. Wolynski simply knows these processes result in some mass loss, so that must be good enough to explain whatever he needs.

Chemical composition
Stellar Metamorphosis must also explain how the chemical composition of stars differs from that of planets. Wolynski rejects nuclear fusion, claiming it is pseudoscience despite fusion being directly observed in laboratories and observed from the sun via stellar neutrinos. This rejection of nuclear fusion requires that there be no new generation of elements; only recombination of existing elements into molecules which he proposes happens as the star cools into a planet. While generally true that molecules can form at lower temperatures (and are even observed in the atmospheres of low mass stars ), Stellar Metamorphosis provides no actual chemical pathways or statistical analyses and simply devolves to an unscientific statement of "chemistry happens".

Age of the Universe
Since Stellar Metamorphosis does not involve chemical evolution of the universe, it no longer relies on a universe with a finite age. Instead, Wolynski subscribes to the notion of an eternal universe in which the elements are only remixed in an infinite progression of generation of decay. However, this is flatly contradicted by observations which clearly show the chemical evolution of the universe as a function of time. In addition, an eternal universe contradicts the second law of thermodynamics which states the entropy of a closed system must increase over time. In other words a universe without a beginning would have an infinite entropy. Despite Wolynski's claim his model abides by the Laws of Thermodynamics he clearly hasn't considered these ideas to the point that they can be considered robust.

Formation of Life
Stellar Metamorphosis' vague process of chemistry continues and, according to Wolynski, aged stars will form life unless the star evolves "too fast" for life to evolve. What defines "too fast" left as a tautology. Regardless, the insistence that a great deal of stars will turn into planets and evolve life lead Wolynski to numerous other unfounded claims including that aliens visit earth.

Rogue Planets
Stellar Metamorphosis' equivocation between stars and planets implies that solar systems would actually be binary/multiple star systems of stars with vastly different ages. This poses an obvious problem for Stellar Metamorphosis since, if these systems were composed of objects randomly wandering throughout the galaxy, we should find them entering orbit around the central star from all directions. Rather, we find stellar systems largely confined to a single plane - a statistical impossibility that Stellar Metamorphosis has never attempted to address. Instead, Wolynski skips to the other end of such a system in which the central star would lose mass via the unexplained Stellar Metamorphosis process, and the system would dissolve leaving the more highly evolved objects to wander the galaxy until they are captured into another stellar system. He goes so far as to claim that the time spent outside of the orbit of a young, hot star is the cause of ice ages. No attempt has been made to determine the statistical average time it would take for the Earth to travel between stellar systems nor whether such a time period aligns in any way with the length of previous ice ages nor what the complete loss of a source of heat would do to a biosphere.

Formation of Stars
Another fundamental problem for Stellar Metamorphosis to address is where new stars come from before they purportedly turn into planets. Here, Wolynski again rejects the standard model for stellar formation in which nebulae can collapse under self gravitation despite the ability for nebulae to do so being well understood from first principles and gravity through the Wolynski's rejection of this is based on an absurd comparison of the collision of atoms to that of billiard balls where, coincidentally, gravity is not a factor. Instead, Wolynski begins dipping into another branch of crank science, invoking concepts from electric universe proponents and claiming that the nebulae are plasma that are forced together by electric currents. This is despite the fact that nebulae are relatively cool and thus not plasma and the fact that the currents necessary for electric universe phenomena have never been observed.

Age Determination
In an attempt to make the hypothesis sound more plausible, Wolynski has spent considerable time coming up with mathematical methods by which one can determine the true age of an object. These methods are often rooted in true scientific principles, such as that of but the equations Wolynski creates are untethered to that basis. Unsurprisingly, the various equations Wolynski dreamed up are self-contradictory returning results that are thousands of times different from one another for the same objects. Such discrepancies should have been obvious to Wolynski since he has even noted them in his own papers.

Other methods Wolynski proposes lack even the pretext of a mathematical foundation.

It is obvious to see why such equations fail when examining Wolynski's process for creating them:

Here, we can see that the data used by Wolynski to fit this curve is only two data points based on the luminosity of the sun and Epsilon Eridani as a function of age. However, Wolysnki's ages are made up. These figures are derived by assuming an age of the Earth (which Wolynski cannot settle on an actual age for) and then assuming that if some property is X times larger/smaller, the age must be X times larger/smaller as well. Thus, Wolynski is attempting to define a line with a single data point (the Earth) - something that anyone who passed middle school math should know is an impossibility without more information. Thus, Wolynski's equations are a case of garbage in garbage out.

The pseudoscientific method


Stellar Metamorphosis is a textbook case of pseudoscience and highlights many characteristics of it.

Principles, principles, principles
One of the most prominent ways Stellar Metamorphosis reveals itself as pseudoscience is that the claims are presented without evidence. Many of Wolynski's papers consist of a single principle which is just declared to be true without any supporting evidence, but still heavily cited in other papers as if it had actually been well established. For example an entire Wolynski paper:

As we can see, Wolynski simply claims Truth without any attempt at supporting it. Since it is offered without evidence, it may thus be dismissed by Hitchen's Razor. While Stellar Metamorphosis can loosely be described as a hypothesis, its proponents have yet to make a single novel testable prediction from it. Since proponents have failed to make any novel testable predictions, Stellar Metamorphosis can be fairly put in the category of not even wrong. However, opponents have proposed tests based on the implications of Stellar Metamorphosis and found it is contrary to basic observations as shown above.

Lame Attacks on Mainstream Science
Pseudoscientists frequently try to make their claims seem more plausible by attacking mainstream science and claiming it is flawed. Wolynski fits this paradigm to a tee, making numerous claims about what mainstream science says that are clearly at odds with reality. While one may be attempted to apply Hanlon's razor and simply attribute this to stupidity on Wolynski's part, these basic errors have been pointed out to him but Wolynski has refused to correct them.

Orbital Kinematics
While Wolynski completely ignores the statistical impossibility that stable systems could form under the Stellar Metamorphosis paradigm, he spends some time trying to attack mainstream physics based on perceived flaws in its orbital mechanics. In one case, Wolynski discusses the exoplanet XO-3b which has an orbit highly inclined to the equator of its parent star. The mainstream model of planetary formation has planets forming in a disk around the forming proto-star, all aligned on a fairly narrow plane. Thus, seeing a planet on a highly tilted orbit should be rare, but not impossible as Wolynski claims. He states that such a deviation has "no explanation" from the planetary disk model. However, this is flatly untrue as astronomers have long held that planetary interactions are commonplace in the early formation of solar systems and can throw planets into various inclined orbits. This was referenced for XO-3b in particular a full 5 years before Wolynski decided not to do any homework and asserted his claim.

Supernova
Wolynski has made many claims regarding the mainstream position on supernovae which holds that they are caused by the sudden gravitational collapse of a star which has exhausted all available nuclear fuel. Wolynski makes the bizarre claim that astronomers have never observed the progenitor of a supernova. Yet his own citation for this claim is about the detection of a progenitor. Numerous other supernovae had their progenitors directly imaged including, SN1993J and SN2003gd, SN2004et, SN2005gj, SN2006my, SN2008bk, SN2009hd, SN2009kr, SN2011dh SN2012aw, SN2012ec, SN2015bh, SN107eaw, SN2017ein, and SN2018aoq. In all cases, progenitors have been identified as supermassive stars as predicted by mainstream astronomy.

Wolynski's rejection of the mainstream explanation for supernovae is rooted in an argument from incredulity in which he asks "Why would an extremely stable object [a star] implode/explode?" The answer is given by a cursory glance at the Wikipedia article on (hint: it's gravity) but Wolynski pretends that mainstream science has no answer. Instead, he pretends that supernovae could be caused by the collision of two "large objects" but doesn't bother to do any sort of check to ask whether or not the speeds that would be required for to produce enough energy to outshine an entire galaxy are observed anywhere in the universe.

Wolynski also claims that supernovae remnants and planetary nebulae are the same phenomenon. This is based on a pathetically cursory examination of these phenomenon in which Wolynski engages in cherry picking, comparing the morphology of a roughly spherical supernova remnant to a roughly spherical planetary nebula and claiming they must be the same thing. This betrays his stunning and willful ignorance of how actual astronomers characterize such phenomena. Since supernovae are massively energetic events, the energies of the nebulae are orders of magnitude higher, with the ejecta having a significantly higher velocity. In addition, the energy from a supernova causes fusion via the and the decaying isotopes can be observed in supernova remnants which will not be present in planetary nebulae. If categorization of these objects were in any way difficult for someone that knew the basic categorization criteria, then astronomers should be evenly split on what to call a particular object, but no such confusion actually exists.

Quantum Mechanics
Wolynski rejects the entirety of quantum mechanics This is rooted in his desire to reject nuclear fusion which requires to overcome the. He rejects quantum mechanics because he believes that it states "that an object can exist in many places at one time" and because he as a full sized (but small brained) human can only be in one place at a time, quantum mechanics must be wrong.

The notion that a single particle can be at multiple places at a single time is well established by the variation on Young's double slit experiment which passed single photons through the double slit at a time, finding that they still exhibited an interference pattern requiring that the single photon went through both slits at the same time and thus interfered with itself. However, quantum phenomena only apply at very small scales and/or relativistic velocities. Attempting to "disprove" quantum mechanics by appealing to macroscopic physics is an intentional misapplication of the theory.

Black Body Radiation
While it is true that hot, liquid objects like magma will glow strongly in the infrared, that does not imply that any object glowing in the infrared is "liquid hot" (a categorization fallacy). In reality, the physics of thermal emission says that warm bodies emit which to some extent follows a Planck distribution. From this it is seen objects from 100's of Kelvin upwards emit strongly in the infrared. Humans, buildings and other warm bodies also emit in the infrared which allows to map thermal emissions by imaging long-wave infrared light, and yet buildings are not "liquid hot like magma".

If theory conflicts with observations, the observations must be wrong
Wolynski also demonstrates his break from scientific principles by refusing to acknowledge any evidence that is presented that contradicts his hypothesis and stating that the observation must be wrong. For example, Wolynski claims that giant stars (which do not fall neatly into his linear evolution) don't exist and that their calculated size is the result of an error measuring parallax. Here, he makes the outrageous claim that:

It is impossible that there could be a sufficiently large error in measurement that this would be possible since, at that distance, Betelgeuse would have a parallax of 63 arcseconds which would be measurable even by amateur astronomers (consider the Hubble Space Telescope has a resolution of ~0.05 arcseconds). Secondly, giant stars are discernible from main-sequence stars independently of their luminosity, based on their spectra and thus could not be confused simply due to distance.

Dated Sources and Dubious Experts
To help give the appearance that a pseudoscientific hypothesis is more well supported than it really is, pseudoscientists will frequently cite other authors out of context to make it appear that the other author agrees with them. This is especially fun for them to do when the author is deceased and cannot refute the claim and in such cases, is often quite easy to do since such works often come from a much earlier time when the fundamentals of the field were not well established and legitimate doubt did exist on certain topics. Examples of this can be seen wherein Wolynski claims support from (1707-1788), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) (who, Wolynski claims, proposed Stellar Metamorphosis 67 years after his own death), and  (1894-1980).

Word play
Many of Wolynski's papers consist merely of pointlessly redefining terms to suit his new model and to maximize the confusion for anyone not well informed on the topic. For example:

In reality, I and II stars are defined not by the ages of stars but by their measured metallicity (abundances of elements heavier than helium). It is an interpretation that pop I stars (the more metal-rich) are younger than the pop II stars - disagreeing with that interpretation does not require one to redefine these terms, which are observational. To ignore the distinction between pop I and II shows the shallow nature of stellar metamorphism: why are pop II stars found more in the Galactic Halo and globular clusters while pop I stars mostly inhabit the disk? This is a real question for a model of stellar evolution; redefining terms, however, is a pointless distraction.