Mar 06, 2012 A star becomes a diamond? A recent press release announced the “discovery” of a planet in orbit around a pulsar that is thought to have once been a star, but is now a planetary body composed of something similar to compressed carbon, or diamond. The reason for…
Mar 02, 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 for material…
Mar 01, 2012 The so-called “god particle” is most likely an illusion. The idea of a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was originally proposed early in the 1980s. Since the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP) was at the end of its life, and a machine capable of generating more power was…
Feb 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 was rivers…
Feb 28, 2012 Solar flares can be thought of as giant lightning discharges. Conventional thinking suggests that the Sun accelerates charged particles into space in the same way that sound waves are amplified. Eruptions in the photosphere travel outward through “acoustical wave-guides,” known as magnetic flux tubes. Structures called spicules…
Feb 27, 2012 Astronomers continue to cling to outmoded theories of star formation The European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Planck telescope platform on May 19, 2009 into an orbit around Lagrange point L2. Planck is designed to analyze the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) with greater precision than its…
Feb 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 processes that…
Feb 23, 2012 On August 24, 2006 the International Astronomical Union adopted fixed definitions for various objects in the Solar System. “Snow White,” otherwise known as 2007 OR10, is a dwarf planet about 13 billion kilometers from the Sun. Its orbit, canted by almost 31 degrees to the plane of…
Feb 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 Moon has…
Feb 21, 2012 Can the surface of a tiny moon help to explain the mysterious geography of Mars? In an Electric Universe, the charged moons and the charged rings around Saturn are alternately repelling and attracting each other as they move through the gas giant’s plasma sheath. Electric discharges from…
