Jun 15, 2017 Mercury is no longer geologically active. Mercury has no atmosphere and a weak magnetic field, so it receives the Sun’s radiation with little deflection, similar to Earth’s Moon. Since the Moon is also an airless world, with only traces of a magnetic field, perhaps the Moon…
Jun 14, 2017 Kristian Birkeland was called the first space scientist because of his pioneering experiments in the early 1900s. June 15th marks the 100th anniversary of his death. “It seems to be a natural consequence of our points of view to assume that the whole of space is filled…
Tornado — The Electric Model By Andrew Hall Cold, Dusty Plasma… Previously, in Nature’s Electrode, we looked at an Electric Earth model for lightning genesis driven by a plasma corona formed from condensing and freezing water vapor in the central updraft of the thunderhead. We also looked at the thunderstorm…
Scientists working on NASA’s historic Juno mission to the gas giant Jupiter have recently presented their early findings for the first time. Like so many other recent space missions, what they have discovered is not what they expected. As reported by Newscientist.com, “… the findings are already challenging assumptions about…
Sep 28, 2016 Europa is not a harbor for life. In March of 1979 Voyager 1 found that Europa appeared to be completely encased in water ice, with few craters. Sinuous channels, called “rilles,” extend for thousands of kilometers across its face. Cycloid, dual ridge “faults” mystified NASA mission team…
Jun 12, 2017 Hot gravity? Astronomers have only one force in their bag of tricks: gravity. Anomalous observations, such as high temperature in galaxy clusters, “must be” caused by collisions. Shockwaves and ram pressure are invoked because it is assumed that celestial objects are pushing though a medium. It is…
In Discourse#30, we consider the popular Egyptian story, “The Destruction of Mankind,” recounting how a rebellion occurred and the primeval sun god Ra sent the goddess Sekhmet to destroy humanity. Though nothing in the tale makes sense to the modern mind, the cross-cultural connection to the “Comet Venus” throws considerable…
Jun 9, 2017 A hidden star factory. NGC 6334 (the Cat’s Paw nebula) is also known as the Bear Claw nebula. It is 50 light-years across and approximately 5500 light-years away, using redshift distance calculations. It is part of a larger nebular complex near the heart of the Milky Way…
Jun 8, 2017 Mars is not a dried-out museum of life. “When dealing with other worlds, we must take care to remember that unfamiliar processes are possible and even likely in alien environments.” — Colin Dundas of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center Mars is a freeze-dried wasteland…
Jun 7, 2017 Did many lakes make an ocean? It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid. — Ray Bradbury Mars is not a rounded or softened world like Earth. It does not represent an environment that was weathered by rainfall or blowing dust….
