Mar 19, 2013 This recent image of the Pencil Nebula from La Silla Observatory showcases a cosmic counterpart to “hair” discharges from Tesla coils. Electric forces separate the plasma into parallel filaments. Magnetic forces further constrict them (the “z pinch”) and induce them to twist around each other, producing a braided…
March 15, 2013 Is Cassiopeia A (Cas A) dying or just changing her fashion? Bio 1: In the beginning was an artist’s illustration of the consensus theory of stellar evolution. Thermonuclear fusion reactions at the center of the star transformed hydrogen into helium. After a time, the growing core…
Mar 14, 2013 Astronomers have finally observed “dark galaxies,” proving again that if you look hard enough for what you believe, you’ll find it (or something that’s close enough). Dark galaxies, like the many other dark things in modern astronomy’s black box of unobservables, are predicted by the theory…
Mar 07, 2013 Astronomers have recently taken more precise measurements of the Sun’s shape over several years. They found that it was rounder and less variable than they expected from theory. If gravity and centrifugal force from its rotation were the primary influences on its shape, then the Sun…
Feb 20, 2013 It has the body of a snake and the head of a lion. It has legs that end in clawed feet. It often has wings: it flies, or at least it comes from the sky. It breathes fire. It’s an absurd creature, and the stories can be…
Feb 19, 2013 It twists like a Birkeland Current; it’s stringy like a Birkeland Current; it’s dense like a Birkeland Current; but Everyone Knows (if they want to pursue a career in astronomy) that There is No Such Thing as Electricity in Space. The press release for this new image of…
Feb 18, 2013 Is this an image of a supernova remnant around a black hole? An exploding double layer in a galactic circuit? A mythical creation event in another planetary system? An unnamed formation in an unimagined process? Theories and facts interdependently provide names for things; without a name,…
Jan 10, 2012 El Gordo is so called because it is the biggest, brightest, and hottest pair of colliding galaxy clusters known to astronomers. Astronomers “know” that El Gordo is over 7 billion light-years from Earth. This knowledge derives from the amount by which El Gordo’s light is shifted toward the…
Jan 02, 2013 A recent image of the Helix Nebula in the constellation Aquarius exposes more details of its electrical structure. The new infrared image shows radial Birkeland currents (called “strands” in the press release) crossing the concentric rings and converging on the central star. (Will “strands” now replace the…
Nov 29, 2012 Is hot gas sloshing in a gravitational wine glass—or is astrophysicists’ reasoning going in a circle? A recent press release explains: “Like wine in a glass, vast clouds of hot gas are sloshing back and forth….” The blue image is assembled electronically from x-ray data and superimposed on…
