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Abstract


The Strange and Checkered Career of Carrington's Law: A Century and a Half of Solar Modeling

Thomas Geoffrey Franzel
Year: 1999 Pages: 38
Keywords: differential rotation, solar dynamo, dissipation or circulation, the universe as a perfectly reversible thermodynamic engine

In the inaugural year of Physics Essays (1988) the present author contributed a two-part paper (1, 184-208, 213-243). The paper concluded with a list of twelve brief discursive statements addressed to foundational issues in physics (pp.238-240). This "research program" or preliminary hypothesis sprang from a mixture of physical, philosophical, and deconstructive historical arguments, all of which had been marshalled in the paper.  In the present follow-up paper, it is argued that evidence from solar physics, then either unknown to the author or not yet firmly established, may provide additional support for the earlier proposed hypothesis.  While reader familiarity with the first paper is desirable, the present paper can be read alone.