The Fall of El Gordo

Colliding galaxy clusters

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…

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Electric Helix

New infrared image of the Helix Nebula in Aquarius

Original Post January 20, 2012 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…

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The Lake Victoria Cosmic Massacre

Lake Mungo's 'Walls of China' lunettes

Original Post January 16, 2012 Is there a connection between Australia’s lunettes and Carolina’s oval bays? Scattered around the shoreline and erratically buried in the sand dune lunettes of Lake Victoria lay an estimated 15,000 aboriginal bodies of uncertain age. Archaeologist Colin Pardoe believes they represent a communal burial ground…

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Balanced Water

Eroded flanks of cliffs near Palisades, CO

Original Post January 14, 2012 Balanced rock formations are common. But how to explain balanced water? At first thought, one would not expect water to run down the hip ridge of a hill. The gravitational condition is unstable equilibrium: any deviation from the exact locus of highest points will perpetuate…

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It Has a Nice Ring To It

Galaxy AM 0644-741

Original Post January 11, 2012 Galactic haloes are best explained using the Electric Universe theory. There are rings around planets, rings around stars, and there are rings around galactic nuclei, as demonstrated by the Hubble Space Telescope image of AM 0644-741. Although the conventional explanation for such structures is that…

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Corona Discharges

NGC 891

Original Post January 6, 2012 From galaxies to the laboratory, transverse electric currents accompany a main discharge channel. That “main discharge channel” experienced by most people comes in the form of a terrestrial lighting bolt. Slow-motion studies reveal that each flash is a complex episode. Multiple leader strokes descend from…

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As Below, So Above

Front side of an Altai drum, Siberia

Original Post December 21, 2011 Nary a traditional culture failed to believe that the gods modelled the ‘lesser’ things on earth, including many aspects of human life, on the ‘greater’ things in the sky. European esoteric belief systems shared and elaborated this core idea. In its most common application, the…

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Getting Sloshed

Original Post December 20, 2011 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…

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