The Globular Cluster Anomalies

Blue Stragglers

Globular clusters are beautiful, dense, spherical collections of hundreds of thousands of stars orbiting our Milky Way Galaxy. In binoculars they look like cotton balls because you cannot resolve the individual stars. However, in my 10-inch aperture telescope, individual stars along the edge resolve and it is quite a breath-taking sight! Their centers just look like a solid glow. Long exposure astro-photographs or larger, more professional telescopes on earth, can resolve 10s of thousands of the stars, making them even more of a sight to behold.

But their origin is mysterious to the accepted paradigm of "nuclear fusion stellar evolution." But that is not the only major and fundamental and upsetting anomaly these objects present. They are way more enigmatic than we are led to believe, especially by space news articles.

Astronomers have long believed every star in a globular cluster formed at roughly the same time: "about 10-13 billion years ago," they say. We are told these are classic "Population II stars": so called "metal-poor," "old," and mostly cool red or orange giants. Hot, massive, blue O- and B-type stars (the hallmark of "youthful Population I stars" commonly found in the Milky Way) simply shouldn't exist there. All the massive stars should have lived fast and died young billions of years ago, according to "stellar evolution."

So imagine the surprise when, starting in the 1950s (notably Allan Sandage), astronomers began spotting bright blue stars in the Hertzsprung-Russell (H-R) Diagram of certain globular clusters (see pic left). These stars were dubbed "blue stragglers" because they lie to the left (hotter, bluer) and above the "main-sequence turn-off" point where "normal" cluster stars of that age are supposed to end their hydrogen-burning lives. In plain language: these stars are glowing like teenagers in a retirement home.

Mainstream astrophysics has spent decades trying to rescue the idea that all stars in a globular cluster are the "same age." The two most common proposals are:

1. Stellar collisions or close encounters, where two older, lower-mass stars smash together (or exchange mass) and form a single, more massive, hotter star that "looks young again."
2. Helium flash rejuvenation, where red giants suddenly start burning helium in their cores in a way that temporarily pushes them back toward the blue side of the H-R Diagram.

But both of these ideas have serious problems:

• Collisions sound dramatic, but globular clusters (even in their "dense" cores) are incredibly spacious compared to the size of the stars. Typical densities in the core of a rich cluster can be imagined as having two grains of sand, each representing a single star, separated by a quarter of a mile! So, actual destructive collisions would be so astronomically improbable that many researchers privately treat this explanation more as a convenient excuse rather than an actual mechanism to explain the "young star problem."
• The helium-flash idea requires very specific timing and conditions, and it still struggles to produce the sheer number of blue stragglers we observe in some clusters.

This "young star problem" isn't limited to globular clusters either. Elliptical galaxies are also supposed to be filled almost exclusively with "old, metal-poor Population II stars." Yet when astronomers look at their cores with ultraviolet telescopes, they see far more blue and ultraviolet light than billions of years of standard stellar evolution should allow. Something in these supposedly "dead" and "aged" galaxies is still acting "young and energetic."

But here's the real problem. Much of modern astrophysics is not based on observed data. Instead, it is merely inferred through a very specific theoretical lens and math. For instance, it is 100% correct to say that stellar evolution is a model, not a direct observation. We have never watched a single star go from "birth" on the zero-age "H-R main sequence" to red giant to white dwarf (or supernova) in real time. The excuse is that the timescales are millions to billions of years (i.e. too slow to observe). How convenient! What we do observe are believed, however, to be snapshots; that is, millions of stars in different parts of the H-R Diagram right now at different times in this assumed sequence. The standard interpretation says these snapshots are different evolutionary stages of the same kind of object. But that is a theoretical choice, not a direct measurement.

The spectra of stars tells us temperature, chemical composition, and perhaps even rotation, etc. But they do not come with a birth certificate that says, "Hi. I'm a star. And I am 8.3 billion years old." Much like when you find a fossil, it doesn't introduce itself with an evolutionary age. The age of stars only appears after you plug the observed parameters into an isochrone (a model track) that assumes internal nuclear fusion, hydrostatic equilibrium, and specific initial mass functions, opacity tables, equation of state, etc.

Thus, if this underlying model of stars is wrong or incomplete, every age quoted for open clusters, globulars, or solitary stars is provisional only, not fact, regardless of what the article or astronomer may tell you.

Globular Orbits

Another shocking fact about globular clusters is that they are calculated to be orbiting the galactic disk of the Milky Way. Their orbits take them through the disk (or, at least, very near it) every revolution of their orbit. The obvious question begged is: How does the Milky Way's spiral arms survive this passage, and how do the globular clusters do this without wrecking themselves? This is one of the strongest classic arguments against the standard picture, and it has never been fully silenced.

The fact are that most globular clusters, if they are as old as they are purported to be, would pass through the Milky Way's spiral arms every 100-300 million years. How could such a massive cluster pass through the disk without leaving traces? It's like running through a room full of dust without disturbing the dust! The energy that would be deposited into the Milky Way's disk shape is real. Indeed, some globulars observed show that they have "tidal tails" and supposedly "extra-tidal stars" as a result of passing through. This seems to show, at least, that they are slowly dissolving. Yet the thin disk and beautiful spiral arms are still here after 50-100 such crossings?! And the spherical shape of the globular is still intact?!

To explain how this is possible, mainstream astronomers usually propose that the clusters were more massive in the past, and they've lost 90-99% of their original stars, so the surviving core is only the dense central part that can withstand the shocks. Or they will say the disk of the Milky Way was thicker or less well-formed in the early Universe, and many destructive crossings happened before the thin disk settled.

But I would point out that a million-solar-mass object plowing through the disk dozens of times should leave more obvious scars than we see. And most astronomers agree with this, thus the need for the ad hoc explanation.

No Dark Matter Needed

Credit: Junying Chen

The final anomaly I want to mention is the biggest one of all. It is the cleanest, most under-discussed contradiction in all of astrophysics, if you ask me. In a previous article (here) I pointed out that galaxies need 5-10x more mass than we see in stars and gas in order to explain their rotation curves and velocity dispersions... thus, the invention of  the make-believe "dark matter." But here's the kicker: globular clusters have exactly the same observable ingredients (stars + gas + remnants) as galaxies, and we can resolve their individual stellar motions with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Gaia. The result? Their measured velocity dispersions match Newton gravity using only the visible stars! No missing mass is required to be added to the equations like it is with galaxies.

So, same gravity law, same kind of object (self-gravitating collection of stars), yet one needs a huge invisible component and the other doesn't. What the...?!

The standard reply? "Globulars formed early and the dark matter hadn't condensed yet," or "They're too small to retain dark-matter mini-halos." Both answers are pure "just-so" stories. There is no predictive calculation from the current cosmological model (ΛCDM; Lamda Cold Dark Matter) that says systems of only tens of thousands to millions of solar masses should be dark-matter-free while the larger systems of a hundred billion solar masses (galaxies) are swimming in it.

Plasma Solution?

I believe the underlying assumption of "nuclear fusion stellar evolution" model is fundamentally incorrect. The main reason for this is that the overwhelmingly more powerful electromagnetic force of plasma is not even in the theory! Yet the stars are all 100% plasma. I cannot emphasize enough that this is, by far, the most overlooked and under-assumed failure of modern astronomy and astrophysics. The electromagnetic force is literally 1000 trillion trillion trillion times stronger than gravity. And the ironic thing is, gravity is the only tool in the astrophysical toolbox at the moment.

So, what powers the stars? To me it seems they are not isolated islands powered only by internal nuclear fusion. Instead, they are anodic or cathodic foci in vast galactic-scale circuits, specifically, in twisting plasma filaments known as Birkeland currents (named after Kristian Birkeland, how first proposed them to explain the aurora). If you've ever watched the aurora borealis, you've seen Birkeland currents in action: glowing plasma ropes and curtains that move, braid, split, and reform on timescales of minutes. They are dynamic, not static.

Thus, in this picture, a star's position on the H-R diagram (which shows its temperature, luminosity, and color) depends partly on the electrical stress it experiences. In other words, the current density flowing through it. Increase the current density, and the star's photosphere gets driven to a higher temperature, meaning, it shifts leftward (bluer and hotter) on the H-R diagram. It could do this dramatically. Reduce the current, and it cools and reddens, shifting rightward on the H-R diagram. Thus:

• Blue Stragglers: These stars are not mysterious. They aren't stars that somehow cheated old age through a lucky collision or an odd internal arrangement. They are simply normal stars that, right now, happen to be immersed in a stronger portion of its local Birkeland current filament. The filament moves (just like auroral curtains move), or the stars drift relative to the filament over time, and their appearance may change accordingly. So, they aren't revived old stars, cheating death. They're just blue. The same would hold true for the mystery of blue stars in elliptical galaxies. No new star formation is required. They are just showing that the elliptical galaxy's filamentary currents are still active, lighting them up.
• Globular Orbits: Globular clusters are not primarily gravity-bound objects. Instead, they are electromagnetic pinches (Z-pinches) along large-scale Birkeland currents that thread the Milky Way's galactic halo. Therefore, they are durable, not fragile gravitational snowballs. They travel along the same extended Birkeland current filaments that maintain the spiral arms of the Milky Way in the first place. In plasma, when two current-carrying filaments approach each other, they either attract and merge (if currents are parallel) or repel and bounce (if anti-parallel), or they braid and exchange energy smoothly (which is what we seen in auroral curtains and laboratory plasma jets). Thus, disk crossings are not violent collisions but relatively gentle interactions within the same extended circuit. And the spiral arms of the Milky way are continuously regenerated and maintained by the ongoing galactic current, so even if a crossing did deposit some energy, the arms simply reform downstream, just as an auroral arc reforms after a plasma sheet is momentarily disturbed. That is why, even if you imagine dozens of orbits and hundreds of disk crossings over billions of years, both the globular clusters and the beautiful thin disk with its sharp spiral arms are intact and glowing. No missing mass, no ad-hoc evaporation, no destroyed spiral structure required. The galaxy is an electric circuit, and everything in it (arms, cluster, and stars) is part of the same living plasma flow.
• No Dark Matter Needed: Dark matter is only needed when you insist that gravity is the sole binding force at all scales. Once you recognize the electromagnetic force operating in cosmic plasma, the need for dark matter disappears at every scale; from the smallest globular clusters to the largest galactic superclusters. Globular clusters require no dark matter because they are electromagnetically confined plasma Z-pinches in which the observed stars are directly supported by the self-generated magnetic forces of the very Birkeland currents that power them. Gravity is a minor contributor, and the visible matter is essentially all there is.

Milky Way's Galactic Circuit

Thus, if we merely recognize plasma and its electromagnetism, these three stubborn anomalies of globular clusters resolve naturally with one consistent plasma mechanism; globulars are electromagnetic Z-pinches formed and bound by galactic Birkeland currents. Blue stragglers appear when a star experiences higher current density, driving it hotter and bluer without needing improbable collisions or internal rejuvenation; repeated plunges through the galactic disk are gentl because the cluster travels along the same current filaments that trace the spiral arms, encountering almost no destructive perpendicular shocks; and no dark matter is required because the confining force is the powerful magnetic pinch generated by the filament itself, making the visible stars alone fully account for the observed velocity dispersion. 

Three separate ad-hoc fixes in the standard model become one straightforward consequence of treating the cosmos as the electric plasma environment it observably is.