September 9, 2020 Double layers can accelerate charged particles, as well. “We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.”— Hannes Alfvén A recent press release from the European Space Agency (ESA) provides information about…
September 8, 2020 There are regular reports in the scientific press about the filamentary structure of the Universe. According to consensus astrophysics, galaxies are embedded in a diffuse cloud of gas and dust known as “baryonic matter”. Baryons are commonly referred to as “normal matter”, or “luminous” matter. However, along…
September 7, 2020 Editor’s note: The Picture of the Day will take a short recess today. Meanwhile, please enjoy this article from the archives. Plasma does not obey the laws of kinetic energy. “The plasma exhibited striations and double-layers, the electron distribution was non-Maxwellian, there were all sorts of oscillations…
The Riddle of the Solar Wind by Mathias Hüfner In this universe, shaped by open and intercommunicating systems, we can discern countless forms of relationship and participation. Papst Franziskus Laudato si’ 2015 For the first time, a spacecraft is on its way to fly through the atmosphere of our sun….
September 4, 2020 Editor’s note: The Picture of the Day will take a short recess today. Meanwhile, please enjoy this article from the archives. There are many carbon-based molecules in space and on rocky bodies. Tholins are large organic molecules found off the Earth, sometimes in space and sometimes in…
September 3, 2020 The Moon is a “dead body” that is billions of years old, according to theory. It has no intrinsic magnetic field and it does not radiate, except to reflect the light that it receives from the Sun. But could electrical forces have recently shaped the lunar surface?…
September 2, 2020 How does the Sun work? “In a low density plasma, localized space charge regions may build up large potential drops…Such regions have been called electric double layers…In the laboratory, double layers have been studied for half a century, but their importance in cosmic plasmas has not been…
September 1, 2020 The Crab is 25 kilometers wide, with a mass of 1.5 times that of the Sun, and is said to rotate at 30 times per second. Previous Pictures of the Day discuss the problems associated with neutron stars. The most important contradiction in the theory is that…
August 31, 2020 Stars are not strictly gravitational entities. On August 25, 2003 NASA launched the Spitzer Space Telescope, designed to study the cosmos in infrared light. Spitzer retired on January 30, 2020 because its maneuvering fuel was exhausted. W51 is a cloud of gas and dust capable of bearing…
August 28, 2020 Comets are not icy dirtballs. “A new comet model is presented that resolves the chief problem of abnormal cometary motions and accounts for a number of other cometary phenomena. The nucleus is visualized as a conglomerate of ices, such as H2O, NH3, CH4, CO2 or CO, (C2N2?),…
