June 25, 2012 Discoveries in space plasma may provide an explanation for a century-old mystery. Sir William Armstrong, an English hydraulics engineer, first observed the floating water bridge in 1893. It defied explanation and was ignored until recently. Findings in space plasma that have renewed attention to plasma’s electrical properties,…
June 22, 2012 The MESSENGER spacecraft has recently been approved for an extended mission in Mercury orbit. The Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on August 3, 2004. On March 17, 2011 MESSENGER entered orbit, initiating a yearlong study of the Solar…
June 21, 2012 Is it the breaking and reconnecting of magnetic field lines that power solar phenomena? According to a popular view of the Sun, its core pressure is supposed to be so high that it crushes hydrogen atoms together until they fuse into helium atoms, releasing energy of such…
Introduction Maxwell’s Equations and the Lorentz Force Law together comprise the e/m field equations; i.e., those equations determining the interactions of charged particles in the vicinity of electric and magnetic fields and the resultant effect of those interactions on the values of the e/m field. For ease of explanation, the…
June 20, 2012 NASA computer simulations are not able to correctly model supernova explosions. Contemporary astrophysical models of stellar evolution rely on the mechanical action of cold gas collapsing from gravitational impetus. Stars are seen as whirling vortices of compressed matter heated to fusion temperatures by pressure, alone. Clouds of…
June 19, 2012 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 galaxies surrounding large voids…
June 18, 2012 Wind socks, bow shocks, shockwaves and collisions are often used to describe the phenomena that create high-frequency electromagnetic radiation in the cosmos. From gamma rays down through X-rays and extreme ultraviolet, conventional theories have relied upon gravity and acceleration as the only way for them to be…
June 15, 2012 The Sun’s nearest neighbors do not share a similar chemical composition. There are ten stars within 11 light-years of the Sun: Star Name Distance Proxima Centauri 4.2 light-years Rigil Kentaurus …
June 14, 2012 In parts of the Amazonian rainforest, traditional costume included a headdress consisting of a circular arrangement of feathers. The ring of 36 feathers, most of which are white, lacks an obvious counterpart in the skies we see above us. The above example was collected in c. 1910…
June 13, 2012 Electric planets exist in an electric Solar System. “The main aurora oval on Jupiter we think should dim when the solar wind blows harder, but what we see is that actually gets brighter, which is totally counter intuitive and we still don’t know why.” — Jonathan Nichols,…
