February 5, 2020 Galaxy cluster are like everything else in nature: electrical. Many Picture of the Day articles discuss black holes, because they are often used to “explain” anomalous phenomena in space. As most Electric Universe advocates would insist, they exist only through some mathematical legerdemain, and have nothing to do…
February 4, 2020 The Universe is composed of condensed plasma. We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.— George Berkeley In 1755 Immanuel Kant suggested that the Solar System evolved from a cloud of dust and gas floating in space. The cloud condensed because gravitational attraction…
February 3, 2020 Gravity and other kinetic forces are inadequate when it comes to galactic formations. The Coma Cluster of galaxies is a roughly spherical region about 3.5 million light years in diameter over 300 million light years from Earth. According to calculations, it is one of the most compact…
January 31, 2020 Scientists do not understand how the Sun works. For example, how does a coherent magnetic field exist when observations reveal chaos at small scales? Heliophysicists believe that there is a dynamo inside the Sun that is powered by two forces: the “stretching and winding” of magnetic fields…
January 30, 2020 Mars is devoid of any detectable life. Martian areography bears witness to violent events at some time in the past. Images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) reveal scenes of devastation: the North polar terrain, for instance, is six kilometers below the planet’s mean elevation. Burned craters…
January 29, 2020 Why is this red giant so puzzling? Betelgeuse is one of the 10 largest stars. If it occupied the Sun’s position, its outer envelope would exceed Jupiter’s mean orbital diameter. It is so diffuse, however, that the orbits of the inner planets might not be affected. Red…
January 27, 2020 Do stars accrete? The Nebular Hypothesis is the common star-forming theory. It is thought that stars condense out of primordial stuff, and that the remaining dust and gas that is not absorbed attracts more material, until it also condenses, but into planets. This is the consensus view…
January 23, 2020 Most astrophysical models about stars rely on mechanical action. The collapse of cold gas under gravitational influence is thought to be the force that shapes stars. Common viewpoints see stars as collapsed whirlpools of gas and dust heated to fusion temperatures by pressure, alone. Gravity, it is…
January 22, 2020 NASA officials recently announced that there is water on Mars. Again. That idea builds upon ideas that are embedded in the philosophy of Martian exploration: the search for life on other planets. As most theories state, for life to exist, liquid water must exist. Oceans, lakes and…
January 20, 2020 Dark energy does not exist. In 1997, two astronomers were studying Type 1a supernovae, when they found that there was “something wrong” with their data. They were shocked to discover that the recessional velocity (redshift) of the most distant Type 1a supernovae indicated that they were accelerating….
