Origin of Radio-Waves from the Sun and the Stars

Abstract

IT has been show in a previous communication1 that radio wayes of metre range cannot escape from the quiescent sun unless they originate in the corona, where the electron concentration falls to 106–108 p/c.c. This seems to me to invalidate, at least case of the sun, the free free transition theorey of the electron in the field of the proton, put forward by Henyey and Keenan to explain the origin of 1-metre waves from regions of the Milky Way. For the corona is a purely ‘electron atmosphere’, where H-ions cannot exist in any considerable quantity without violating the laws of physics. Pawsey, Payne-Scott and McCready³ do not consider it likely that these radiations can originate in any atomic or molecular process, but they suggest an origin in gross electrical disturbances, analogous to thunderstorms on the earth. Greenstein, Henyey and Keenan⁴ in a note in Nature concede that the 1-metre waves emitted from the sun have probably a different origin than in the free free transitions of the electron in the field of the proton.