A Few Things We Do Not Know About Stars and Model Atmospheres

We list a few things that we do not understand about stars and that most people ignore. These are all hard problems. We can learn more cosmology by working on them to reduce the systematic errors they introduce than by trying to derive cosmological results that are highly uncertain. 1. Optimism and Pessimism People sometimes complain that I am too pessimistic and that I criticize too much. In fact I am the most optimistic person. I believe that the human race is tremendously improvable and that humans can solve any problem. But the most important step in solving a problem is to realize that the problem exists. When I identify a problem I tell, or try to tell, the people who are capable of doing something about it. I also work on correcting the problem myself, if I am capable. A pessimist does not believe that problems can be solved so does not question the present and does not search for errors. A pessimist acts so “optimistically” about the present that a pessimist prevents progress. Why worry about basic physics when everything is fine as it is? The papers below are on my web site kurucz.harvard.edu. Some of them are also on the ASTRO-PH preprint server at Los Alamos. A Few Things We Do Not Know About the Sun and F Stars and G Stars. I gave part of this talk at The Workshop on Nearby Stars at Ames two years ago. They wanted to know the state of the art in computing model atmospheres and spectra to determine whether they could see small abundance effects in the nearby stars or any spectral signature of planets. (I doubt it.) Radiatively-Driven Cosmology. Most cosmologists never took a stellar atmospheres course and do not have experience with radiation. They do not realise the power of radiative acceleration compared to gravity. A Correction to the pp Reaction. What if the pp reaction is a threebody reaction, two protons and an electron? Vegan Astrophysics. This is a gedanken experiment to show the importance of basic physics. afewthingpv.tex; 1/02/2008; 18:13; p.1