Original Post March 2, 2012 What causes the rapid changes observed in Orion Nebula “protostars”? Using a combination of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the ESA Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers found that so-called “young stars” are changing in brightness much faster than they thought possible. Instead of taking several years…
Original Post February 29, 2012 The Columbia River is a life-giving artery to the Pacific Northwest. Is it a recent addition to American geography? Many Picture of the Day articles discuss cosmic electrical forces that sculpted the face of the Earth in the recent past. The result of that interaction…
Original Post February 24, 2012 Where is the material that used to fill the Grand Canyon? In previous Picture of the Day articles, it was suggested that features on other planets and moons should be used to help explain what is found on Earth, rather than vice versa. Since the…
Original Post February 22, 2012 Did tectonic and volcanic forces create the wide, parallel trenches on the Moon? The Moon has seen cataclysmic devastation at some time in its past. There are giant craters, wide and deep valleys, and multi-kilometer long rilles crisscrossing its surface. Conventional theories postulate that the…
Original Post February 17, 2012 In an Electric Universe, plasma structures in space exhibit similar morphology regardless of scale. From galaxy clusters to individual stars, spheres and filaments predominate. Spherical clusters of stars, otherwise known as globular clusters, are another example of how plasma is organized and confined into coherent…
Original Post February 15, 2012 Dark matter is in the news. “Plasma phenomena are scalable. Their electrical and physical properties remain the same, independent of the size of the plasma.” — Donald Scott, author of The Electric Sky Plasma in space usually appears as a cloud of partially charged gas…
Original Post February 9, 2012 ‘Plasma mythology’ may be defined as the study of plasmas, specifically near-earth plasmas, in human traditions, such as mythology and proto-scientific records. If this is a discipline, one of its most notable pioneers must be the French savant, Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan (1678-1771). De Mairan…
Original Post February 8, 2012 Jupiter puts on a periodic light show. Several years ago, Picture of the Day articles discussed the so-called “volcanic” plumes erupting from Jupiter’s moon Io. It was argued that they are plasma discharges from the moon electrically connected to the giant planet. Some astronomers acknowledged…
Original Post January 25, 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…
Original Post January 24, 2012 In the consensus view, all valleys are caused by water erosion and solitary peaks must be volcanoes. The various peaks in the Glasshouse Mountains are supposed to be remnants of volcanoes that erupted eons ago, although there is no evidence of basalt, lava flows, or…
