Original Post September 20, 2013 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 September 11, 2013 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…
Original Post September 6, 2013 Radio-wave observations of a Herbig-Haro (jetted) star at the edge of an opaque plasma cell reveal the wiring harness that drives it. In visible light, a spiraling filament jets toward the upper left of the image. It ends in a bright double layer. Surrounding…
Original Post August 13, 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…
Original Post March 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…
Original Post February 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…
So, what’s the deal with matter? At the human scale, matter is something like a rock: You can hold it in your hand, feel its weight, and see something solid with sharp boundaries. It is there. However, when you look at it with an electron microscope, the solidity is mostly…
Stephan’s Quintet is a close group of five distorted galaxies that appear to be interacting. Their arms are stretched, twisted, intertwined—and the two galaxies closest to each other seem to be mashed together. Apparently the larger galaxy is 250 million light-years closer than the others. Two that appear mashed together…
Original Post November 19, 2012 “Planetary nebulae are glowing shells of gas around white dwarfs,” according to the standard explanation. This is a better description of dogma than of the image. “Astronomers have long debated how these symmetric jets could be created,” the press release continues. “Stars are spherical”; the…
Original Post November 9, 2012 The Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a companion galaxy to the Milky Way, is called a nursery for new stars. The growing awareness of plasma should make it also a nursery for new ideas to explain its features. It features glowing filaments of…
