Dwardu Cardona showed that a reconstruction of Earth’s cosmic history can be distilled from the universal “mytho-historical record,” complemented by studies in earth history and space science. Most recently, the strongest scientific validation comes from space, as new instruments enable the viewer to see extraordinary electro-magnetic detail across the cosmos,…
Jul 25, 2014 The deserts of the Southwest United States are full of anomalous geography. In a previous Picture of the Day, the giant sandstone tors of Monument Valley, Arizona were mentioned, in passing. Consensus geology considers monolithic structures to be millions of years old, and the result of erosion…
Jul 24, 2014 Cosmologists still have no idea what dark energy is. In 1998, two astronomical research teams independently discovered what is now called “dark energy.” Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brian Schmidt from the Australian National University projects each led the two teams who…
Jul 23, 2014 More electric biology. A previous Picture of the Day described the way that some single-celled organisms make use of charge exchange in order to drive their flagella. Rather than the conversion of ATP, they move protons along special cellular structures, converting that flow of electric charge…
Jul 22, 2014 Supernovae are what Hannes Alfvén called them: exploding double layers. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is relatively small, irregular galaxy approximately 168,000 light-years from Earth. The distance is approximate, because different parallax values are obtained when different measuring sticks are used. Within the LMC is an object commonly referred to…
Jul 21, 2014 Extensive deposits of various compounds are found on Mars. The idea that there might once have been liquid oceans on Mars has been bandied about for hundreds of years. The Mars Science Laboratory, known as Curiosity, was sent to Mars in order to look for signs of…
According to a paper in the journal Nature, astronomers are now looking for a whole new theory to explain how planets form. The standard model of planet formation says that planets and stars form gravitationally in a contracting disk of gas and dust called the core accretion theory. Since astronomers…
Jul 18, 2014 Some surprises as the spacecraft closes in. The Rosetta Cometary Probe is rapidly approaching Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. To the research team’s surprise, it appears to be made of two distinct lobes. As the catalog of small objects in the Solar System increases, about 15% of the asteroids…
Jul 17, 2014 Astronomers have detected a strand of galaxies and gas flowing into a remote cluster. Today’s predominant cosmological hypothesis is based on a gravity-only paradigm. Moving masses and heat are the only factors allowed to operate in this Universe. Electric charge is sometimes considered, but it is…
Jul 16, 2014 “The Sun is new each day”. — Heraclitus For a long time it was thought that the anomalous multimillion degree temperature in the solar corona resulted from “steady heating”, therefore, coronal loops at a certain temperature should possess a specific density. However, solar observatory satellites and balloons…
