A novel stellar model: ‘A sacrifice before the lesser shrine of plausibility’

Abstract

Arthur Eddington argued in the second decade of this century that only mathematicians can offer complete proofs to their theorems. Physicists, he contended, must be content with offering only plausible argument. Bearing his thoughts in mind, in this paper we present the outline of a stellar model that describes the early evolution of a fully-mixed star in terms of its hydrogen abundance. This model offers a good approximation to the detailed calculations made of such stars. Given the plausible arguments that now exist for the existence of chemically-homogeneous stars, we conclude that the model has, at least, a small chance of playing a useful utilitarian role in calculating the early evolutionary parameters of a few special stellar groups.