Spectral Class A Stars in an Electric Universe

Altair, Alpha Aquilae

A typical spectral class A star, Altair, Alpha Aquilae

Here is the 'electric star' framework for class A stars—the white and bluish-white part of the spectral sequence:

Stellar spectral classification

Spectral Class A Stars

Discharge Mode and Rotation

Spectral class A stars sit between the arc-mode class B stars and the cooler class F/G stars on the Electric Universe (EU) current-voltage curve—a moderately high-current regime that produces the characteristic white and bluish-white colors of these rapidly rotating plasma balls.

Rapid rotation gets folded into this picture through class A stars' role as current-carrying plasma bodies. EU proponents generally treat a star's spin as coupled to the star’s powering Birkeland current’s electromagnetic field structure with the rotation rate, reflecting how that external current couples angular momentum into the star.

Stellar Oblateness

Mainstream says that rapidly rotating class A stars, such as Altair in Aquila, have extreme equatorial bulging and gravity darkening, with the equator being cooler and dimmer than the poles due to lower effective surface gravity there.

In the EU framework, this is interpreted not as a hydrostatic/rotational-flattening effect. It is evidence of a non-uniform discharge across the stellar surface. It is a plasma body responding to external current flow, showing discharge-intensity gradients between the poles and equator, with the poles (aligned with the presumed current axis) running hotter as higher-density discharge zones and the equatorial bulge treated as a lower-density glow region.

The Mainstream View of Class A Stars

Interferometric observations directly confirm the oblateness and gravity-darkening trend predicted for rapidly rotating stars such as Vega and Altair, although detailed measurements show departures from the simplest classical von Zeipel prescription.

The Swedish astronomer Edvard Hugo von Zeipel formulated the von Zeipel gravity-darkening law in 1924. It shows that the emerging radiative flux (F) and effective temperature (Teff) scale with the local effective gravity:

Flux: F ∝ geff

Temperature: Teff ∝ geff1/4, or Teff ∝ geffβ, where the gravity-darkening exponent β = 0.25.


Because polar regions have higher effective gravity than equatorial regions, the poles appear hotter and brighter, while the equator appears cooler and dimmer (gravity darkening).

That is a quantitative rotation-driven hydrodynamic prediction that a discharge intensity gradient account would need to reproduce with equal precision. The EU literature does not derive the von Zeipel exponent from first principles the way the standard model does.

However, the classical exponent of β = 0.25 applies strictly to stars with radiative outer envelopes (hot, early-type O, B, and A stars). For cooler stars with convective envelopes, empirical adjustments are used instead; Lucy's classical law, for example, gives a temperature-gravity-darkening exponent of approximately β ≈ 0.08. Leon B. Lucy formulated Lucy's law in 1967. It is a gravity-darkening law used in astrophysics to describe how the local effective temperature, Teff, of a rapidly rotating or distorted star varies across its surface as a function of local effective gravity, geff.

Leon B. Lucy (1938–2018) was a British-American astrophysicist, best known for his contribution to the Richardson-Lucy deconvolution algorithm and spearheading the development of smoothed-particle hydrodynamics methods.

High-precision optical/infrared interferometry (such as studies on the fast-spinning star Regulus in Leo) has shown that while the qualitative trend holds, actual temperature variations between the equator and poles can quantitatively deviate from classical predictions due to complex subsurface effects such as meridional circulation (large-scale north-south movement).

Asteroseismology

Asteroseismology of some Class A stars, such as pulsating Delta Scuti variables, which overlap with this rapid-rotator population, constrains internal rotation profiles and structure in ways tied to acoustic mode physics inside a stratified, gravitationally bound star. There is no established EU-side treatment of these pulsation frequencies.

Rapid Rotation

Rapid rotation in class A stars correlates with the presence or absence of the chemically peculiar Am/Ap phenomenon (slow rotators show strong chemical peculiarity). Mainstream says this is from radiative levitation and gravitational settling; fast rotators do not, because rotational mixing washes it out. This is a well-worked mainstream link between rotation rate and atmospheric physics. An EU account needs a separate mechanism to explain this.

However, remember that the mainstream treats stars as hydrodynamic fluids. Plasma balls obey different rules. It is less about population statistics and more about the EU's discharge-gradient reframing needing to match a hydrodynamic law (von Zeipel) that has already been independently confirmed to good precision by direct interferometric imaging—that is a stiffer quantitative bar than the giant-branch color-luminosity relation used in EU theory.

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