March 28, 2012 Are the bright crater rims and striations on Vesta the mark of discharge “vents”? Are asteroids and comets close cousins in the Solar System’s family? Comets are usually called “dirty snowballs” in the scientific press, although missions like Giotto and Deep Impact observed them to be blackened,…
Mar 27, 2012 Could an ocean of liquid water exist on Europa? According to a recent press release, “Sending a submarine to the bottom of the ocean on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is the most exciting potential mission in planetary science…” Is it a forlorn hope? Europa is the fourth…
A NEW PARADIGM OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT – THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE (A VIEW FROM THE CAYMAN ISLANDS) by Bishop Nicholas Sykes In their book The Electric Universe by Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott (pub by Mikamar Publishing), the authors state: “The electric universe is a hypothesis, a new way of interpreting…
Mar 26, 2012 A new mission to map the gravity field of the Moon. On September 10, 2011 NASA launched the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) satellites on a mission to the Moon. GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B are nearly identical spacecraft, except that B is designed to follow A around…
Mar 23, 2012 Mercury reveals the violence of planetary genesis. Mercury’s story is probably a complicated tale of extremes. The planet’s surface is heavily scarred, with steep-walled canyons, scarps that rise up several kilometers, and craters that penetrate the crust for several kilometers below the mean elevation. The difference in…
Mar 22, 2012 The telescope that was once thought to be canceled has escaped mothballs and is on track for launch. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), formerly The Next Generation Telescope, is scheduled to be launched sometime in 2018. According to a report in Aviation Week & Space Technology,…
Mar 21, 2012 Heliophysicists acknowledge the role of plasma in solar eruptions but miss important aspects of its behavior. In Bengal to move at all Is seldom, if ever, done, But mad dogs and Englishmen Go out in the midday sun. — Noël Coward According to a recent press release,…
Mar 20, 2012 Vesta is confirming Electric Universe ideas about planetary scarring. Vesta appears to have experienced some powerful forces. Several craters more than 50 kilometers in diameter mar its surface. Near Vesta’s south pole is a particularly large example that is 460 kilometers wide. Since Vesta has a mean diameter of 529 kilometers…
Mar 19, 2012 The Dawn spacecraft will arrive at Ceres in August of 2015 Ceres is the largest asteroid in the Solar System. The most recent measurement from the Hubble Space Telescope puts it at approximately 975 kilometers in mean diameter. It is so large that it is roughly spherical,…
Mar 16, 2012 Schmidt et al. authored the paper Formation of the Black Hole in Nova Scorpii, The Astrophysical Journal, 567:491-502, 2002 March 1. Editor’s note: Many Picture of the Day articles have been written about the problems with so-called ‘black holes.’ This paper by Stephen J. Crothers addresses the…
