Nov 28, 2014 Some meteors begin to flare in the mesosphere. What causes large meteors to “burn up” or explode in Earth’s atmosphere? Is it friction and other aerodynamic effects? Is it that they are loosely conglomerated, being so frangible that turbulence causes them to breakup? During most meteor showers…
Nov 27, 2014 The size of Jupiter’s red vortex is smaller than ever. For over 300 years, the Great Red Spot has persisted in Jupiter’s atmosphere—longer than telescopes have existed to see it. It is commonly believed to be a cyclonic storm driven by thermal convection from deep inside…
Nov 26, 2014 The definition of “life” can be ambiguous. The Galileo spacecraft was launched on October 18, 1989 from the Space Shuttle Atlantis, and subsequently entered orbit around Jupiter on December 7, 1995. After eight years in orbit, Galileo was deliberately incinerated by sending into the atmosphere of…
Nov 25, 2014 Ionized particles from the Sun contribute to electric discharges on Earth Electric Universe theories propose that plasma discharge behavior is a better model for solar activity than most consensus opinions would like to accept. Experiments using a positively charged sphere show that a plasma torus forms above its…
Nov 21, 2014 Another asteroid has been detected sporting a long tail. Comets are often called “dirty snowballs” by astronomers. However, various investigative missions, such as Giotto and Deep Impact, revealed them to be blackened, cratered, and fractured. No ice fields, reflective crust, or watery clouds were observed. Indeed,…
Nov 20, 2014 Some gamma ray bursts exhibit unusual characteristics. When charged particles are accelerated in an electric field, they emit synchrotron radiation that creates X-rays and gamma rays—something that has been demonstrated in laboratory experiments. Gamma rays are a class of theoretical “electromagnetic particles” called photons, which are…
Nov 18, 2014 Science advances through irrational methods. “I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.” — Thomas Jefferson It is a common perception that “we stand on the…
Nov 17, 2014 A toroidal magnet field is said to be embedded in a magnetar. “Magnetars” are usually classified as “X-ray pulsars (AXP)” or “soft gamma repeaters (SGR)”. As conventional theories argue, they are created when neutron stars reach magnetic field strengths measuring over 10^15 Gauss. Earth’s magnetic field…
Nov 14, 2014 Rapid gamma ray bursts from a black hole thunderstorm. An “extremely powerful outburst of gamma rays” was recently detected by the MAGIC telescopes in the Canary Islands. The most remarkable aspect to the observation was that it exhibited “very rapid flux variations”. In other words, the…
Nov 13, 2014 Electromagnetic fields guide light in specific ways. The image above is from the Planck satellite, now defunct, that was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) in May 2005, along with the Herschel Space Observatory, which also recently ended its mission. According to ESA, Planck’s mission was…
