The Great Sun Jester

Holy 8-Tesla superconducting crank magnetism, Batman! Apparently it is not enough for maverick Professor Oliver Manuel to invent his own Outsider Astrophysics, in which the solar system originated as a supernova, and the sun is the supernova remnant -- a huge iron sphere with a neutron-star core and an atmosphere of superheated hydrogen, wracked by storms through which we glimpse the cooler iron surface.

Tempted perhaps by the funding and publicity available to the AGW-denialist camp, Prof. Manuel threw in his lot with them and added a supplementary hypothesis -- that changes in Earth's climate are in fact under the control of fluctuations in the solar corona (an idea that had rested in merciful desuetude since 1974).

His overtures were accepted! The denialists are hugging Manuel close to their unwarmed little hearts. A search for "Iron Sun" returns page after page of Ghits for this Citizen Astrophysicist drongo's crackpottery, much to the disappointment of certain Riddled staff who only want to look up pictures of a Scottish percussionist without receiving merciless mockery from tigris. Also the Charlie Stross novel would have provided plausible deniability.

The theory demands that a neutron star is not stable as the physicists thought -- evidently there is no such thing as a pulsar -- but instead is a repository of titanic stores of energy which it releases over billions of years in slow decay, providing 2/3 of the solar output.* The other 1/3 comes from newly-invented pathways of plasma fusion in the corona.

In fact the theory also applies to every star with a planetary system. The galaxy is evidently full of supernova remnants, and where are the pre-supernova stars? It is a mystery... like the origins of new birds-nests:

It is an extraordinary but indisputable fact that whereas an enormous number of these birds built nests last year, practically none have built nests this year.

To investigate this possibility, here at Riddled Research Laboratory we are dusting off old plans for a permanent solar station that will hover on the edge of a sunspot. Certain technical problems remain with the anti-grav, the refrigeration and the muirium-extraction apparatus, but we have Harness' word that it is possible. Of course these stations aren't cheap:

Personally I blame music lyrics for inspiring Manuel:

Into the whirlpool, where matter vanishes
Degenerate star, arm of Orion
An iron sun, the forbidden circle
It’s a mountain, it’s a black horizon

Some people might argue that BÖC were in turn inspired by Adrian Berry's forward-looking plan to create a galaxy-spanning network of hyperdrive wormholes involving artificial black holes, but this hardly gets them off the hook.

One might expect a clash between the AGW-denial claim that the Earth's atmosphere is not warming (meteorologists having faked all the evidence) and the professor's claim that the Earth is warming (under the influence of the solar chromosphere). But 'consistency' is not a priority in the Deniosphere, and those bloggers who were loudest about the fraudulence of climate scientists are also the biggest boosters for Manuel. The bat-signal goes out and they descend en masse on comment threads whenever the Iron Sun is mentioned. Perhaps they will come here! What fun!

If AGW-denialists think their case is strengthed by the support of someone best-known for raping his own children, go for it.

* Manuel also has developed his own Outsider school of nuclear physics, and is prone to popping up in discussions of alternative-energy sources to argue that the Earth's energy problems could be solved by mastering the mechanisms of neutron repulsion.