Strange Stars Pulsate According to

the "Golden Ratio"

Astronomers have discovered variable stars that periodically dim and brighten at frequencies close
to the famed golden mean
By Clara Moskowitz | February 9, 2015

A Hubble Space Telescope image of a variable star called RS Puppis.

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-Hubble/Europe Collaboration
Scholars have seen the golden ratio in nautilus shells, the Parthenon, da Vinci paintings
and now in stars. A new study of variable stars observed by the Kepler space telescope
found four stars that pulsate at frequencies whose ratio is near the irrational number
0.61803398875, known as the Greek letter phi, or the golden ratio (which is also
sometimes referred to as the inverse of that number, 1.61803398875).
The golden ratio had not turned up in the celestial sphere before astronomer John
Linder of The College of Wooster in Ohio and his colleagues analyzed the Kepler data.
The researchers looked at a class of stars called RR Lyrae that are known for their
variability. Unlike the sun, which shines at a near constant brightness (a good thing for
life on Earth!), these stars brighten and dim as their atmospheres expand and contract
due to periodic pressure changes. Each star pulses with a primary frequency and also
shows smaller brightness fluctuations occurring on a secondary frequency. The ratios
between these two frequencies are very important, says astronomer Rbert Szab of
the Konkoly Observatory in Hungary, who was not involved in the study, because they
are characterized by the inner structure of starsand if a star exhibits many modes,

then observation of the frequencies gives very strict constraints to stellar models. For
four of the six RR Lyrae stars the researchers analyzed, the ratio of the primary to
secondary frequencies was near the golden meanwithin 2 percent of its value in the
case of the star KIC 5520878, for example.
The golden ratio has been a source of fascination to mathematicians, scientists and
artists since the days of Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, although whether or
not it is actually present in all of the places people have claimed to find it is debatable.
The golden ratio has a long history in disciplines ranging from the physics of crystals to
visual arts, says astrophysicist Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in
Baltimore, who wrote the 2002 book The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's
Most Astonishing Number. Two numbers have the golden mean if the ratio between
them is the same as the ratio between their sum and the larger of the two numbersin
rectangular terms, long is to short as the whole is to the long. The golden ratio is
special in that it is in some sense the most irrational of all irrational numbers, Livio
says. An irrational number is one that cannot be expressed as a ratio of whole numbers.
But some irrational numbers are easy to approximate using rational numbers whereas
others are hard. The golden ratio is the irrational number that is hardest to approximate
with rational numbers.
The connection between the golden ratio and these variable stars could be meaningful or
it could just be a fluke. Many claims about natural phenomena and the golden ratio are
exaggerated, says mathematician and computer scientist George Markowsky of the
University of Maine, Orono. I refuse to accept anything off by 2 percent or more as
evidence of the golden ratio. After all, around any real number there are infinitely many
other real numbers. People don't seem to write papers about the mystic properties of .6
(which is very close to .618....). Astronomer Szab, who leads the working group
studying Kepler data on RR Lyrae stars, says he is not yet convinced that the golden
ratio in this case is more than a coincidence, but that characterizing the stars oscillation
frequencies is important. This paper is a significant contribution to the topic, he says.
Although the sample of stars in this study was very small, the researchers noticed an
intriguing pattern among the four stars with pulsation frequencies close to the golden
ratio. These stars all exhibited fractal behaviornever-ending patterns that repeat on
continuously smaller scaleswhereas the two nongolden ratio stars did not. That
suggests there might be a pattern, Linder says. What we need is more data. An

example of a fractal is a jagged coastline, which reveals more and more wiggles in its
outline as you zoom in from any vantage point. Its the same with the frequencies in
these stars, Linder says. As we lower the threshold we see more and more
frequencies.
The golden stars are actually the first examples outside of a laboratory of whats called
strange nonchaotic dynamics. The strange here refers to a fractal pattern, and
nonchaotic means the pattern is orderly, rather than random. Most fractal patterns in
nature, such as weather, are chaotic, so this aspect of the variable stars came as a
surprise. If you look in the literature, you see lots of examples of strange chaotic
behavior, Linder says. I think our paper is going to bring this overlooked type of
dynamics to the foreground. If the same pattern is seen in more stars with golden ratio
frequencies, it might help astronomers better understand and predict the detailed
physics of stellar pulsations. From a dynamics perspective, Livio says, it is quite
intriguing to understand why systems would be attracted to this ratio.

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