The parent star of planet Earth holds a strange and special place in countless ancient traditions around the world. The celestial body identified as the Sun in myth, religion, ancient astronomies and rock art routinely bares no resemblance at all to our familiar Sun. For decades, comparative mythologist Ev Cochrane,…
Nov 1, 2019 Astronomers believe that the Universe is expanding at an ever accelerating rate. They suggest that galaxies are receding from their instruments because they started out that way: the Big Bang is supposed to be the source for all energy in the Universe, including expansion. Current estimates for…
Oct 30, 2019 Astronomers think that light from remote globular clusters should be blue. “Blue oblivion, largely lit, smiled and smiled at me.”—William Rose Benet Modern astronomers measure the Universe with a tool based on a theory of its expansion. They believe that objects farther out into space are representative…
Oct 29, 2019 The Kepler Space Telescope is defunct. The Kepler Space Telescope was launched March 7, 2009 on a planetary search mission. Before problems occurred, Kepler identified 989 “confirmed” planets around other stars. Kepler did not use Doppler shift as its means of detection. It used a photometer to…
A team of scientists using the ALMA telescope to study the doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust at the center of the galaxy NGC 1068 recently made a shocking discovery — two separate disks of gas and dust are rotating in opposite directions. Phys.org reports on the team’s discovery: “Unexpectedly,…
Oct 25, 2019 Summarizing Earth’s electrical connection with the Universe. “Although we know nothing of what an atom is, yet we cannot resist forming some idea of a small particle, which represents it to the mind … there is an immensity of facts which justify us in believing that the…
Oct 24, 2019 Stars are not born out of frigid emptiness. Gravity is a weak force compared to electromagnetism. When objects fall in Earth’s gravitational field, they accelerate with a sluggish 9 meters-per-second, squared. However, when they encounter the electromagnetic fields of some substance, like a sidewalk, they decelerate instantly;…
Oct 23, 2019 Saturn is a violent electrical environment. Recently, planetary scientists announced a new type of storm swirling near Saturn’s North Pole. Robert West from Caltech and JPL says the origins of the storms and how they relate to other weather phenomena on Saturn “are still mysterious.” The planet…
Oct 22, 2019 Ice on the Moon? “The angel had told me in my dream that if I wanted to acquire the perfect knowledge I desired, I would have to go to the Moon. There I would find Adam’s paradise and the Tree of Knowledge. As soon as I had…
Oct 21, 2019 Temperature has little to do with electricity. “Bipolar outflow” is a term used to describe twin-lobed nebular structures like the ones seen above. The cause of the effect remains baffling to astrophysicists, however. One theory suggests that the shapes are due to slow-moving stellar matter “crashing into”…
