Traditions of Science
Original Post December 28, 2011 Science and folk tradition are supposed to be strictly separate domains of knowledge, but in practice they often shade into each other. The image shown above right attempts to map the entire visible universe. The galaxies tend to collect into vast sheets and superclusters of ...
Which Came First?
Original Post December 26, 2011 Electric currents create magnetic fields in the Sun. “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Asking this question always gets a chuckle from a group of kids who haven’t been asked that before. For adults, it confirms their conviction that unanswerable questions must be ...
As Below, So Above
Original Post December 21, 2011 Nary a traditional culture failed to believe that the gods modelled the ‘lesser’ things on earth, including many aspects of human life, on the ‘greater’ things in the sky. European esoteric belief systems shared and elaborated this core idea. In its most common application, the ...
Getting Sloshed
Original Post December 20, 2011 Is hot gas sloshing in a gravitational wine glass—or is astrophysicists’ reasoning going in a circle? A recent press release explains: “Like wine in a glass, vast clouds of hot gas are sloshing back and forth….” The blue image is assembled electronically from x-ray data ...
Number Three
Original Post December 16, 2011 New images of the third largest asteroid reveal etched chasms and deep holes. The Dawn mission continues in orbit around Vesta. Vesta is ranked high among minor planets, with Pallas (531 kilometers) and Ceres (952 kilometers) as its larger cousins. Ceres is also part of ...
Twisted Pairs
Original Post December 13, 2011 A remote galaxy is said to host two black holes. Could an electrical explanation better fit the observation? Electric Universe advocates propose that electric currents in plasma generate magnetic fields that constrict the current. As previous Picture of the Day articles point out, the constricted ...
The Sands of Mars: a Speculation
Original Post December 9, 2011 Throughout human history the planet Mars has held mankind’s rapt attention. When telescopes were sufficiently advanced by the late nineteenth century, the red planet seasonally fogged over with dust storms. After such storms it appeared to darken in spots with what was thought to be ...
A Superstar for Gravity is Normal for Plasma
Original Post December 5, 2011 A bright star without companions challenges popular theories. Electricity comes to the rescue. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released this image of a “superstar,” named VFTS682. It appears reddish, but the color is attributed to the absorption of higher wavelengths by surrounding dust. The ...
Zero Mass Particles
Original Post December 2, 2011 Gamma-rays are said to be particles with no mass, yet possessed of extreme momentum. According to a recent press release, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected several unidentified sources of intense gamma-ray emissions that are not seen in any other frequencies. NASA launched the ...
Glacial Potholes
Original Post November 30, 2011 Did pieces of stone really carve these holes? Rockwood Provincial Park lies alongside the Grand River in the Niagara Escarpment region of Canada. Numerous geological features are located in the park and all are attributed to glacial action as the sole creation mechanism. The two ...
A Spray of Plasma
Original Post November 28, 2011 Consensus opinions state that a star in the latter stages of its life will undergo violent upheavals as its supply of hydrogen fuel diminishes and the "ash" of heavier elements accumulates in its core. Before stars reach the final white dwarf stage in their evolution, ...
The Truth of False Knowledge
Original Post November 16, 2011 The key to modern knowledge is the exclusion of disproof and other possibilities. From the press release (emphasis added): Data from [five instruments] were combined to create the most complete spectrum of an asteroid ever assembled. This spectrum of Lutetia was then compared with that ...
Son of Zeus
Original Post November 15, 2011 MESSENGER has completed 100 orbits around the planet Mercury. In the image at the top of the page, all the characteristics of an electric discharge leaping from Mercury's surface to space can be seen. The crater walls are terraced, there is a peculiar spiral-shaped crater ...
Eclipsing Cepheid Falsifies Stellar Evolution Theory
Original Post November 10, 2011 Victory for one theory should mean defeat for its rival. An ESO (European Southern Observatory) press release boasts, “Pulsating Star Mystery Solved.” Cepheid variables are stars whose rates of pulsation vary with their luminosities: the brighter the star the longer it takes to complete a ...
That One Story Again
Original Post November 8, 2011 Ev Cochrane’s recent book, "Fossil Gods and Forgotten Worlds", again presents the challenge to explain an undeniable intelligibility in a large and coherent body of data. Petroglyphs, myths, and rituals around the world are composed of the same motifs: the ladder to heaven, the great ...
Cometary Asteroids
Original Post November 07, 2011 In an Electric Universe, comets are thought to be rocks moving rapidly through the Solar System's force fields. Comets are often called "dirty snowballs" by astronomers. However, various investigative missions, such as Giotto and Deep Impact, revealed them to be blackened, cratered, and fractured. No ...
Windy Galaxies
Original Post November 1, 2011 Winds and shockwaves are often used to describe phenomena in the cosmos because plasma behaves in unfamiliar ways. According to a recent press release, The European Space Agency's orbiting telescope Herschel has observed "molecular gas gusting at high velocities" from galaxies that appear to be ...
Gold, Glamour and Destruction
Original Post October 28, 2011 Could the Carrington Event of 1859 have had broader effects than originally assumed? Imagine your posturing self-assurance as you parade on the dockside at Port Melbourne, dressed in the finest fashions the colony of Port Phillip can offer. Your beautiful new bride is elegantly bubbling ...
Dawn of the North Wind
Original Post October 27, 2011 Earth's aurorae demonstrate the electrical connection between our planet and the Sun. The Sun unleashed another coronal mass ejection (CME) on October 22, 2011, causing an outburst of colorful displays in nighttime skies as far south as Arkansas, in the United States. There is an ...
Out in the Cold
Original Post October 21, 2011 Cold dark matter theory might be in need of serious revision. Dark matter theory is in the news again. Although cold dark matter (CDM) gets its name from the idea that it cannot be detected with any known instruments, cosmologists persist in using it to ...
Long Journey Home
Original Post October 19, 2011 Hayabusa's return to Earth was delayed for more than three years. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the Hayabusa spacecraft (Japanese for "Peregrine Falcon") in May of 2003, after a several month delay and a change in mission goals as a result. Hayabusa was ...
The Fog Clears
Original Post October 14, 2011 Redshift measurements of five galaxies verify what astronomers have always believed—if their beliefs are true. The nice thing about math is that it provides results that are absolutely true. Unless you’ve made errors in your addition, you can be sure that your conclusions are without ...
Black Flares
Original Post October 12, 2011 Black hole theory contradicts itself. Most astrophysicists try to explain narrow jets erupting from various sources by using words like “nozzle” or "high pressure," contradicting the known behavior of gases in a vacuum. For example, according to a recent press release, "flares" have been discovered ...
The Moon, Yes, That Will Be My Home
Original Post October 7, 2011 Lunar colonization awaits a benefit that exceeds that cost. A recent Picture of the Day article discussed the new GRAIL mission to the Moon. Two satellites will orbit the Moon together, with a range-finding system that will detect gravity variations on the lunar surface. On ...
Galactic Umbilicus
Original Post October 5, 2011 The Milky Way is connected to the rest of the Universe. According to a recent press release, astronomers have found "...evidence for the cosmic thread that connects us to the vast expanse of the Universe." By examining the positions of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters ...
