An example of an (historical) alternative conception:
"So also the fixed stars, which are exhausted bit by bit in the exhalation of light and vapours, can be renewed by comets falling into them and then, rekindled by their new nourishment, can be taken for new stars. Of this sort are those fixed stars that appear all of a sudden, and that at first shine with maximum brilliance and subsequently disappear little by little."
Isaac Newton (1999) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (3rd edition, 1726): The authoritative translation (I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman), University of California Press.
