For several months now, the Rosetta Mission has followed the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko around the sun. And as we’ve expected, direct observation continues to add one mystery to another. How are we to understand the weird configurations of dust on the comet’s surface? Watch Update #1: The Rocky Comet Watch Update…
Dec 30, 2014 The Sun influences all the planets. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System. It is so massive, that it is greater than all the other planets and moons combined. Jupiter is 142,984 kilometers in diameter at its equator, but it rotates so fast its day…
Dec 29, 2014 Mars is probably the most intensively studied celestial body. Not even the Moon has been examined in so many ways. One of the most important questions about other planets is whether water is present in any significant amount. Since water sustains Earth’s ecology, it is presumed…
It seems that the puzzle of cometary jets continues to haunt comet science. The mystery has been stated and re-stated for decades. But it’s possible that a resolution is now within reach, through the Rosetta Mission to comet 67P?Churyumov Gerasimenko? This video is the fourth in a series of reports…
Dec 23, 2014 Electric Universe theory has never required an unseen and undetectable component. Lambda Cold Dark Matter theory (ΛCDM) gets its name from the idea that dark matter cannot be detected with any known instruments. The “lambda” indicates a dark energy component, since both are considered to be necessary…
Dec 22, 2014 The melting of the glacial ice sheets in North America, Europe and elsewhere was a stochastic process. Long periods of slow melting alternated with bursts of accelerated melting. Between the Late Glacial Maximum and the early Holocene, global sea level rose by 100 to 130…
On the surface of today’s most well-studied comet, we see fields of rubble everywhere. From great boulders down to gravel, sand and dust, a surface littered with debris. Why would an evaporating clump of ice and dust look more like the debris-strewn surface of Mars than any comet that scientist…
Dec 19, 2014 On the surface, the idea that the sun could reverse its apparent direction and be seen to move from west to east might seem bizarre in the extreme, but exactly this is what several ancient traditions claim to have happened in the past. In the 5th…
Dec 18, 2014 Some stars are said to be surrounded by haloes of hot water mixed with carbon dust. Astronomers using the Herschel infrared space observatory discovered a putative cloud of hot water surrounding a giant star in the constellation Leo known as IRC+10216. They were also puzzled by the discovery of…
Dec 17, 2014 Direct statements concerning dramatic changes in the appearance of planets are few and far between in ancient sources. A classic example is a fragment from the obscure Greek astronomer Castor of Rhodes (1st century BCE), as cited by his contemporary, the Roman grammarian Marcus Terrentius Varro,…
