Feb 20, 2012 Strands of magnetically confined plasma can be seen throughout the cosmos. A rotating vortex of solar plasma was the topic of a recent press release. Does that phenomenon relate to other energetic vortices? Previous Picture of the Day articles describe many cases of ionized clouds in space…
Feb 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 formations that…
Feb 16, 2012 Immense clouds of ionized plasma as large as galaxies have been seen in deep space. A recent press release from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) discusses a vast cloud of gas and dust originally discovered in 2000, conventionally measured to be over 300,000 light years in diameter…
Feb 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 and dust….
Feb 14, 2012 Water is said to have carved many of the features on Mars. Scientists from the University of California reported in June 2007 that a “confirmation” for the Martian liquid ocean theory was found: “shorelines” extending for thousands of kilometers around a large lake that existed a little…
Feb 08, 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 the electrical…
Feb 1, 2012 An X-2 class solar flare recently missed a direct impact with Earth. Heliophysicists classify solar flares according to their brightness in X-ray wavelengths. C-class flares are the smallest on the scale, with X-ray measurements in the 10^-6 watts per square meter range (W/m^2), while X-class flares can…
Jan 31, 2012 Some so-called “neutron star pulsars” are said to create nebulae as they spin. The standard model of stellar evolution proposes that pulsars are neutron stars rotating at incredible speed. For example, PSR J1748-2446ad, in the globular cluster Terzan 5, is reported to be spinning at almost 43,000…
Jan 30, 2012 The Sun is predicted to “hibernate” during its next cycle in 2020. A recent press release states that the Sun’s activity will slow to an unprecedented decline in the next ten years. The prediction is based on “…three independent studies of the sun’s insides, surface, and upper…
Jan 27, 2012 It is common knowledge that electric charge must flow in a circuit in order for a magnetic field to be created. On May 30, 1908, Nobel laureate Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén was born in Norrköping, Sweden. His work in plasma physics, and the motion of charged particles…
