Feb 21, 2018 There is an electrical structure called a magnetotail extending away from Earth for millions of kilometers. In 1966, the U.S. Navy satellite, TRIAD, recorded electromagnetic disturbances as it passed over Earth’s poles and through the Van Allen Radiation Belts. Those vertical electric currents that flow to Earth from…
Feb 20, 2018 Enceladus exhibits electrical scarring. A previous Picture of the Day reported that the Cassini Saturn orbiter flew through one of the plumes of vapor that erupt from the southern plains of 494-kilometer-wide Enceladus, a small moon, so cold no chemical reactions can occur. It was assumed…
Feb 19, 2018 Neptune’s clouds contradict consensus viewpoints. On July 12, 2011 Neptune completed its first orbit around the Sun since it was discovered on September 23, 1846. This means that observations are limited, since great distance strains technology’s ability. Spectrographic data about Neptune, for instance, is limited to…
For the last 85 years, scientists have hypothesized many different types of dark matter, and the search continues in earnest today, with astronomical sums invested in the technological quest to prove dark matter’s existence. Yet rather than finding any confirmation of dark matter, space scientists have been left empty-handed, with…
Feb 16, 2018 A ring of galactic plasma. There is a twisted ring of material surrounding the nucleus of Galaxy Centaurus A; an “active galaxy” that exhibits axial jets and a doughnut-shaped plasma discharge. Active galaxies are brighter than other galaxies of the same type, since they radiate excess…
Feb 15, 2018 Have you ever seen a carpenter try to cut a 2×4 with a hammer? Probably not. Carpenters usually carry a saw as well as a hammer in their toolboxes, and they know to use the proper tool for the task at hand. If they didn’t have…
Feb 14, 2018 Newton, Einstein, Darwin and the other early explorers of science discovered the “New World” of fundamental laws of reality, and the scientists who have come after them are mere colonists. Continuing this line of thought, John Horgan writes in THE END OF SCIENCE that the latecomers…
Feb 13, 2018 Brown dwarf stars could be harbors for life in the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is scheduled for launch in October 2018 on a five-year mission. Its goals are to search for the earliest galaxies—meaning that it will look for those with the greatest…
The Mysterious Hum By Jimmy Mikecz You hear a low rumble that sounds like it is about a mile away. You go outside, but the annoying noise is actually louder in your house. The low hum is not an appliance, and there are no factories or highways nearby. You and…
Sputtering Canyons, Part 2 By Andrew Hall In Sputtering Canyons, Part 1, we discussed Arches National Monument and evidence that it was formed by a complex sputtering discharge process. That process involved a thermal spiking, barrier discharge in a layer of wet sandstone. In Part 2, we’ll take a broader look…
