Very interesting hypothesis. Anyone here with more expertise want to comment?
The summary is that the sun is actually metallic hydrogen, which forms a lattice similar to layers of graphite. This both explains the black-body radiation of the sun and provides a mechanism to explain sunspots and the solar maximum and pole flip: sunspots are non-hydrogen elements that are excluded from the metallic hydrogen lattice and push it upwards as they migrate to the surface and are ejected.
I do not personally possess the knowledge with which to evaluate this person's claims or belief. Therefore, I have to index on other information to evaluate the plausibility of the claims.
In this case, the other information is 1) proven credentials in the subject matter and 2) general acceptance of his theories by a community with more credentials. He lacks the former and the latter, so I'm disinclined to give his theories much attention.
Plenty of so-called outsiders have made amazing discoveries before, or at least hypothesized what would eventually be an amazing discovery. Maybe that's the case here. Yet skepticism seems warranted without that being considered an ad hominem attack.
I think those facts about the authors credentials are pretty relevant, especially to this audience that's probably not filled with astrophysics literate individuals.
He was booted out of his university, he has never published an astrophysical paper in a peer-reviewed journal, he buys ad space in newspapers to publicize his "theories", his ideas either make no testable predictions or make incorrect predictions. He says the cosmic microwave background is caused by ocean waves. He thinks blackbody radiation stops working in outer space.
causality0 was making statements about his credentials and expertise, not his personal characteristics. I think ad hominem definitionally has to be irrelevant. “x knows nothing about topic y” is not ad hominem even if it is a false statement.
An ad hominem doesn't have to be irrelevant; it just means that the argument is about the person rather than the position. Attempting to dismiss an argument due to the person's credentials instead of their position is 100% an ad hominem.
But like contravariant said, that doesn't mean the argument is wrong—just that it's a weak argument.
People really ought to learn that pointing out a fallacy doesn't suddenly make it false. I mean I could point out that that is known as the fallacy fallacy, but then I'd be doing the same thing myself.
Really a fallacy represents a particular weak argument. The way to defeat them is not to name the correct fallacy but to point out the weakness.
If that doesn't work then you likely have the wrong fallacy, or the argument isn't fallacious to begin with.
From the wiki article:
"he maintains that satellite measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, believed by most astronomers to be an afterglow of the Big Bang, are actually observations of a glow from Earth's oceans."
I am no expert but that wacky idea can be ruled out with concepts in an introductory physics textbook just based on the fact that the cosmic microwave background is a few Kelvin blackbody spectrum whereas the ocean temperature is 273K or higher (which would have a very different "warmer" spectrum).
Metallic hydrogen only forms when hydrogen is stable molecules of H2. The Sun is way too hot to form metallic hydrogen. The Sun is completely ionized into plasma.
It isn't surprising that there is messy magnetic field when Sun is pure conductor.
Metallic hydrogen probably has something to do with magnetic field on Jupiter.
The summary is that the sun is actually metallic hydrogen, which forms a lattice similar to layers of graphite. This both explains the black-body radiation of the sun and provides a mechanism to explain sunspots and the solar maximum and pole flip: sunspots are non-hydrogen elements that are excluded from the metallic hydrogen lattice and push it upwards as they migrate to the surface and are ejected.