November 11, 2020 Is Europa covered with ice on top of a briny ocean? When Voyager 1 flew by Europa on March 1979, planetary scientists were surprised to see that the moon was completely encased in water ice. Another surprise was that Europa exhibited few craters. Instead, its surface is…
November 10, 2020 Are there thousands of exoplanets? Exoplanets are thought to be in orbit around various stars in the Milky Way. In the past, it was impossible to see them, because starlight is so bright that it obscures dim, reflecting bodies like planets. Twenty years ago, astronomer Geoff Marcy,…
November 9, 2020 The mainstream theory of magnetic reconnection is a common “explanation” for celestial phenomena. As the consensus view states, Earth’s magnetosphere stretches and deforms like a teardrop, because it is being bombarded by a powerful stream of charged particles from the Sun. As it is pushed on the…
November 6, 2020 Electricity “grips”. Volcanoes on Earth are said to form when tectonic plates move over upwelling magma plumes. Conventional theories state that rising magma naturally erupts from the weakest fractures in the plates, building up lava deposits and creating steep-sided mountains. As discussed in a previous Picture of…
November 5, 2020 Oceanic microstructures. Seawater is not very exciting when you look at it. It is, presumably, just water with salt and other minerals. To most of the denizens of Earth’s oceans, the sea is something quite different, a web of gel. According to an article from New Scientist…
November 4, 2020 Transient optical phenomena dominate Jupiter’s environment. The Juno spacecraft was launched on August 5, 2011. After a five-year flight, it entered orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. As most readers know, Jupiter is the largest planet, with an equatorial diameter of 142,984 kilometers. it is so…
November 3, 2020 Conventional redshift observations seems to indicate that the Universe is expanding faster today than it did in the past. As written in a previous Picture of the Day, “dark energy” is a force that is thought to drive the expansion of the Universe. However, like “dark matter”…
November 2, 2020 In other Pictures of the Day articles, it was noted that dark energy is primarily an ad-hoc theory, so that the current gravitational model of the Universe can be preserved. The lack of matter that can be observed in the Universe presents problems for the underlying concept…
October 30, 2020 Dusty space. According to astronomers, stars condense out of protoplanetary nebulae. X-ray emissions from such clouds are thought to indicate new fusion reactions are beginning. As previously written, supernovae send shockwaves into regions of greater density, compressing the wispy dust and gas. That process is what is…
October 29, 2020 Continental flood basalts. A wide region of central India is dominated by what geologists call “flood basalts”, because they represent what are thought to be the largest eruptions of magmas ever to occur on Earth. The Deccan Plateau consists of basalt lava more than 2000 meters thick,…
