Original Post January 21, 2015 “The Book of Nature” is a metaphor. In science, metaphors are usually passed over as mere embellishments of language. The metaphor is expanded into “the Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics,” and then scientists turn away from embellishments and get…
Original Post January 16, 2015 Another epistemological tour de force. Probable, Possible, my black hen, She lays eggs in the Relative When. She doesn’t lay eggs in the Positive Now Because she’s unable to postulate how. — The Space Child’s Mother Goose By Frederick Winsor People don’t pay much attention…
Original Post August 7, 2014 Modern astronomy has a planetary nebula (PN) problem: Gravity can’t do what PNs do. Astronomers invent a kind of pseudo-magnetism to fill the explanatory holes. This pseudo-magnetism is a reified presumption that’s unplugged from the electric currents that generate real magnetic forces. Consensus theory has…
Original Post June 19, 2014 A second generation of stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 stopped evolving. Perhaps they’re waiting for a better theory. The idea that stars evolve is one of those unjustifiable preconceptions with which observations are interpreted and understood. With that idea for ink, astronomers can…
Original Post February 27, 2014 The large ALMA radio telescope in Chile has discovered that “billowing columns” of “gas” are “fleeing” from gravitational forces that would snare them into new stars. The size of the Sculptor Galaxy depends on the outcome. Unless, of course, star formation is not so…
Original Post January 30, 2014 A gravity-only Universe cannot explain certain discrepancies. Ilya Prigogine, from a young age, was concerned that accepted physical theory had a couple of glaring discrepancies from observation: determinism and time symmetry. Most observations are of contingency and irreversibility. No one has yet seen an…
Original Post January 9, 2014 NGC 4666 is one of the younger additions to the Virgo cluster of galaxies. It has also apparently given birth to another generation. The galaxy lies eight degrees south of M49, the great-grandmother of the Virgo cluster. Whether NGC 4666 is the daughter of…
Original Post December 24, 2013 A second generation of stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 stopped evolving. Perhaps they’re waiting for a better theory. The idea that stars evolve is one of those unjustifiable preconceptions with which observations are interpreted and understood. With that idea for ink, astronomers…
An electric star wouldn’t begin with a molecular cloud. It would begin with charge separation. Everything we see in the universe, with the possible exception of a few specks of planets and reflection nebulas, is ionized to some degree. It’s a PLASMA, the fourth and dominant state of matter. Positive…
Original Post December 5, 2013 Modern instruments enable astronomers to look at the universe in wavelengths of light beyond human biological limitations. Astronomers are surprised that the x-ray and radio images are different from what they expected. Although they’re looking in a different light, they’re still seeing—trying to understand—with the same concepts…
