Dec 24, 2012 Glass, plastics, and various metal oxides are efficient dielectric insulators. Dry air is another example. Lightning is not well understood. The most common interpretation involves the circulation of water vapor up and down through clouds in a process called convection. Water is heated by the Sun until…
Dec 19, 2012 Images of the Coma Cluster from the Subaru Telescope reveal galactic filaments connecting bright “knots” of ionized gas. According to redshift calculations, the Coma Cluster is a sphere of galaxies 3.5 million light years in diameter over 300 million light years from Earth. The cluster is…
Dec 17, 2012 Is planetary science correct to use Earth as the basis for explaining other planets? “Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to…
Dec 14, 2012 Volcanoes on Mars should not be found in chains, since no crustal plate movement exists either there or on Earth. According to a recent press release, Mars experiences plate tectonics, just like Earth does. As An Yin, a UCLA professor of Earth and space sciences wrote:…
Dec 13, 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 to…
Dec 11, 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 Kentaurus …
Dec 10, 2012 X-rays in space are an electrical phenomenon According to a recent press release, the most distant X-ray jet ever observed is spewing from a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in the center of a quasar known as GB 1428+4217, extending for an estimated 230,000 light-years from the…
Dec 07, 2012 Electric double layers are like waterfalls that energize charged particles falling through them. “We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture.” — Hannes Alfvén A double layer forms in plasma when…
Dec 05, 2012 Electric planets exist in an electric Solar System. “The main aurora oval on Jupiter we think should dim when the solar wind blows harder, but what we see is that actually gets brighter, which is totally counter intuitive and we still don’t know why.” — Jonathan…
Dec 04, 2012 According to astronomers, a cloud of gas with the mass of a small galaxy is approaching the Milky Way. A cloud of hydrogen gas known as Smith’s Cloud, massive enough to be considered a galaxy itself, may have collided with our own Milky Way galaxy at…
