Mar 11, 2015 Imagine a rock. Now, imagine breaking it into pieces. Break the pieces into smaller pieces. Continue breaking until your eyes can no longer resolve the pieces. Get a microscope. Now you can distinguish the pieces. Break them until the microscope can no longer resolve the parts….
Mar 10, 2015 A recent coronal mass ejection could be headed toward Earth. “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.” — Steve Martin According to the Electric Sun hypothesis, the Sun is a positively charged electrode within a vast, galactic electric circuit. As previously written, the negative electrode…
Mar 9, 2015 The Dawn spacecraft achieves another historical first. Ceres captured the Dawn spacecraft in its gravity field at a distance of 61,000 kilometers at 7:39 AM EST on Friday, March 6, 2015, after spending several months in orbits around asteroid Vesta. Three ion propulsion engines enabled Dawn…
Kirchhoff’s law of thermal emission (formulated in 1860) is presented and demonstrated to be invalid. This law is crucial to our understanding of radiation within arbitrary cavities. Kirchhoff’s law rests at the heart of condensed matter physics and astrophysics. Its collapse can be directly associated with 1) the loss of…
In the last few years, several of the comets discovered by astronomer Terry Lovejoy have provided astronomers on Earth with dramatic and unexpected displays. From the astonishing 2011 journey of comet c/2011 W3, which survived perihelion just 140,000 km above the Sun’s surface, to the recent observation of rapid changes…
Mar 5, 2015 The Ring Nebula could be called the “Tube Nebula”. “Bipolar outflow” is a term often used to describe the nebular structure seen above, although the cause of the effect remains baffling to consensus astronomers. The prevailing opinion is that nebular structures form “knots” because gases and dust…
The subject of this video series by Dave Talbott is the ancient experience of towering celestial forms that are no longer present. From a single snapshot of the configuration, we can work backwards to the first appearance of these bodies out of an undifferentiated cloud or sea of dusty plasma….
Mar 4, 2015 Homer’s Odyssey narrates the chaotic homeward journey from the devastated battlefield of ancient Troy. The hero, the resourceful and cunning king Odysseus, leaves a Troy shattered not only by war but by the vindictive gods of the Greek pantheon. Although the heroes of the Trojans and…
Sungrazer comets that survive perihelion extremely close to the Sun is a longstanding puzzle for comet science. In reality, observations going back centuries reveals that a comet’s activity has little or nothing to do with solar warming. Comets sometimes flare or even explode at impossibly vast distances from the Sun….
Mar 03, 2015 Could two dynamos made of hydrogen create Jupiter’s magnetosphere? Jupiter is the largest of all the planets. At 142,984 kilometers in diameter at its equator, it is so large that all the other planets could fit within its volume. Jupiter rotates so fast that a day lasts…
