Our reporter Cameron Mercer continues his interview with Steve Smith, managing editor of the Thunderbolts Picture of the Day. The Earth-Sun connection, as part of the electrified heliosphere, makes clear that the Sun will never be properly understood apart from the electric currents through which planets and their satellites continually…
Jul 26, 2013 The Cassini space probe’s flyby of Iapetus confirms its electrical attributes. The closest images of Iapetus ever taken came from the Cassini spacecraft as it flew to within 5000 kilometers of its target, resolving features as small as ten meters. In a previous Picture of the Day article…
Jul 25, 2013 Galactic tails, bright comas, and central nuclei are reminiscent of comets. What is a comet? Most astronomers think comets are small, fragile, irregularly shaped objects composed mostly of water ice and dust, along with carbon and silicon-based compounds. “Dirty snowballs,” as Fred Whipple described them in…
Jul 24, 2013 When we look at the geology of our planet and how it is shaped, there are assumptions that govern our interpretation of the landscape that surrounds us. We have been told and taught that the only choices are wind, rain, and tectonic forces. We accept this…
Jul 23, 2013 What takes place in thunderstorms on Earth is most likely a smaller version of large scale phenomena. “I have always believed that astrophysics should be the extrapolation of laboratory physics, that we must begin from the present Universe and work our way backward to progressively more…
Jul 20, 2013 Rotating motors propel some bacteria. Some bacteria can swim through their tiny worlds. They accomplish this feat with the aid of spinning propellors called “flagella”. The species of bacteria with this capability that is most familiar to readers is probably Escherichia coli, or E-coli. E-coli possesses a…
David Harrison is a long-time enthusiast of The Thunderbolts Project (TM). He was so captivated by what David Talbott, Don Scott, Wal Thornhill and others were saying that he offered his help as a volunteer, lately in the NPA and EU conference bookstores. Besides this work, Dave offered in…
Editor’s note: The new Picture of the Day that normally appears on Friday will delayed until Saturday. Meanwhile, please continue to enjoy this one about the enigmatic Martian moon Phobos for another day. Jul 18, 2013 Did meteor bombardment scar Phobos? Phobos is the largest of the two moons of Mars. Deimos is…
Jul 17, 2013 A second generation of stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 stopped evolving. Perhaps they’re waiting for a better theory. The idea that stars evolve is one of those unjustifiable preconceptions with which observations are interpreted and understood. With that idea for ink, astronomers can draw…
Jul 16, 2013 A distant galaxy cluster is said to exhibit evidence for an unknown force. Not a single reference is made to the most powerful known force in the Universe: electricity. The European Space Agency’s XMM Newton X-ray Telescope research team has found a grouping of galaxies containing more than…
