Original Post June 22, 2012 The MESSENGER spacecraft has recently been approved for an extended mission in Mercury orbit. The Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on August 3, 2004. On March 17, 2011 MESSENGER entered orbit, initiating a yearlong study of…
Original Post June 21, 2012 Is it the breaking and reconnecting of magnetic field lines that power solar phenomena? According to a popular view of the Sun, its core pressure is supposed to be so high that it crushes hydrogen atoms together until they fuse into helium atoms, releasing energy…
Original Post June 18, 2012 Wind socks, bow shocks, shockwaves and collisions are often used to describe the phenomena that create high-frequency electromagnetic radiation in the cosmos. From gamma rays down through X-rays and extreme ultraviolet, conventional theories have relied upon gravity and acceleration as the only way for them…
Original Post June 15, 2012 The Sun’s nearest neighbors do not share a similar chemical composition. There are ten stars within 11 light-years of the Sun: Star Name Distance Proxima Centauri 4.2 light-years Rigil…
Original Post June 14, 2012 In parts of the Amazonian rainforest, traditional costume included a headdress consisting of a circular arrangement of feathers. The ring of 36 feathers, most of which are white, lacks an obvious counterpart in the skies we see above us. The above example was collected in…
Original Post June 10, 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…
Original Post June 8, 2012 David Pratt’s publication in the year 2000 enumerates multiple problems affecting the theory of plate tectonics and seafloor spreading. The above schematic of Alaska reveals regions of rock strata that appear to have “accreted” to an original craton. Southern Alaska is composed of fragments in…
Original Post June 4, 2012 Venus will transit the Sun on June 5, 2012. Venus and Earth describe a unique orbital configuration with respect to the Sun. The resonance between the two planets is readily apparent when a plot of their movements is made over the course of eight years….
Original Post June 1, 2012 Dark energy continues to be an astronomical mystery. A new European Space Agency (ESA) space-based telescope named Euclid, after the ancient Greek philosopher, has received approval for development, with a tentative launch date sometime in 2019. According to ESA, Euclid is “a mission devised to…
Original Post May 31, 2012 Throughout human history the planet Mars has held mankind’s rapt attention. When telescopes were sufficiently advanced by the late nineteenth century, the red planet seasonally fogged over with dust storms. After such storms it appeared to darken in spots with what was thought to be…
