Ring in the New

Jan 28, 2019 Science depends on novel ideas. “A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.” — Plato It is commonly believed that science “stands on the shoulders of giants”. In other words, new theories are based on those inherited from older generations. If that is the…

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Cold-Hearted

Jan 25, 2019 Dust at a temperature near absolute zero shows up as red and orange in this image of the Carina Nebula.  NGC 3372 is a large, bright nebulosity in the constellation Carina, located between 6500 and 10,000 light-years from Earth. Since there are so many nebulae, and all…

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Galaxy Wheels

Jan 24, 2019 What forms galactic disks? Observations by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) indicate that a torus of stars surrounds the Milky Way at a distance of 120,000 light-years. The Milky Way’s stellar population was previously estimated to be about 200 billion stars contained in the spiral arms…

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Electric Nodes

Jan 22, 2019 Recent data calls black holes into question. Astronomers “know” that black holes exist because they see energetic radiation and collimated jets erupting from small regions of space. Collimated jets are said to result from matter falling into a black hole’s gravity field. As material orbits closer, it…

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Sun Sparks

Jan 18, 2019 The Sun is not a ball of (con)fusion. “In a low density plasma, localized space charge regions may build up large potential drops over distances of the order of some tens of the Debye lengths. Such regions have been called electric double layers. An electric double layer…

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