Building on the past year of experimentation and analysis, the SAFIRE Project is moving into Phase 2, which takes the lessons from the Phase 1 Proof of Concept Prototype into a much larger chamber. Phase 1 ended on a cliff-hanger with indications of fusion and transient million-fold CME-like eruptions. Montgomery…
Oct 30, 2015 Galaxies are threaded through with filaments. The Herschel Space Observatory was launched with the largest spaceborne mirror ever constructed: 3.5 meters in diameter. Herschel was set to orbit around LaGrange point L2 in July 2009, to protect its liquid helium-cooled infrared detectors. However, Herschel’s helium coolant…
Oct 29, 2015 Rhea bears examination in light of electrical theories. Rhea is one of Saturn’s medium-sized moons, second only in size to Titan, with a mean diameter of 1528 kilometers. The entire visible surface of Rhea is covered in craters, making it a candidate for the most heavily cratered…
Oct 28, 2015 The concept of Time is poorly understood. The notable philosopher Immanuel Kant, considered by some to be the center of modern philosophy, insists that he has given a rigorous and conclusive proof for the proposition that the world had a beginning in time, and other philosophers…
Oct 27, 2015 Easter eggs are not unique to Christendom, but find a match in the eggs painted by ancient Zoroastrians and modern Persians on occasion of Nowruz – the beginning of the new year, celebrated on the spring equinox. For the student of ancient religions they are a bit…
Oct 26, 2015 1500 years ago a pungent world plague nearly exterminated the human race! Thomas Short wrote: “from 562 A.D. a plague raged for 52 years the like of which has never been seen before or since!” Conventional wisdom maintains this worldwide plague began in Ethiopia and was…
Oct 23, 2015 Flying through a vapor plume from an ice moon. The Cassini spacecraft is preparing to fly by Saturn’s moon Enceladus on October 28, 2015 when it will pass though the mysterious plume of gas and water vapor erupting from the moon’s south polar region. At that…
Scientists working at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are proposing a radical new theory about the nature of invisible, theoretical dark matter particles. The scientists have developed what they call a “stealth dark matter” model, which suggests that dark matter is composed of electrically charged particles and which are bound…
Oct 22, 2015 In 1742, the French natural philosopher John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683-1744) formulated some of the first generalisations regarding the electrification of air. That – as well as Halley’s work, presumably, although he did not cite it – inspired Pontoppidan, writing in 1755, to propound an electric nature…
Looking for Lightning By Andrew Hall One thing you can say about lightning – it’s not very subtle. Geomorphologist Stephan Grab and Geologist Jasper Knight at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa have studied the Drakensberg Peaks in Lesotho and discovered the primary force shaping them is lightning. …
