Jul 26, 2018 Why are stars most often seen in pairs? More than half of all stars observed in the Milky Way have one or more companions, suggesting that something, at least in our galaxy, influences the formation of multiple star systems. Stars are so remote from each other…
Jul 25, 2018 Stars are electrically charged. From an early age, children are taught that stars are burning balls of hydrogen gas. Also, that gravitational attraction from a star like the Sun is what holds the planets in their orbits. Fusion fire in their cores is said to take a…
Jul 24, 2018 Electromagnetism drives the cosmos. NASA launched the Herschel Space Observatory into orbit around LaGrange point L2 on May 14, 2009. Since Herschel used liquid helium-cooled infrared detectors built to last about three years, its mission came to an end on April 29, 2013. Herschel’s primary mission…
Jul 23, 2018 Solar plasma interacts with Earth’s electromagnetic fields. Recent Picture of the Day articles address many issues that make understanding the Sun exceptionally difficult. The consensus viewpoint about solar activity and the Electric Universe viewpoint are, in many cases, diametrically opposed to each other. In particular, the hypothesis…
Jul 20, 2018 Electrons and positrons are formed in lightning bolts. Lightning is a plasma that creates powerful electromagnetic pulses across a wide range of frequencies. Thunderheads may be several thousand cubic kilometers in extent, yet all of that stored electrical energy travels down a discharge channel no wider than…
Jul 19, 2018 Birkeland currents are a better model than gravity. Among astronomers, it is commonly thought that the vast majority of observable galaxies hide “supermassive black holes” (SMBH) within their cores. SMBHs contain up to a billion times more mass than putative stellar black holes, and it is…
Jul 18, 2018 Nebulae are electrical phenomena. As written in previous Pictures of the Day, plasma behavior is unfamiliar. It is sometimes difficult to see the differences between plasma and a gas. Plasma’s similarities to gas are overshadowed by its failure to correspond with gas kinetics. Since the light frequencies…
Jul 17, 2018 Plasma does not obey the laws of kinetic energy. “The plasma exhibited striations and double-layers, the electron distribution was non-Maxwellian, there were all sorts of oscillations and instabilities. In short, it was a field which was not at all suited for mathematically elegant theories.” — Hannes…
Jul 13, 2018 Enceladus reveals an electric circuit with Saturn. Recently, the Picture of the Day discussed the discovery of heavy molecules in the geyser eruptions from the south pole of Enceladus. Similar to those found elsewhere, such as the dwarf planet, Ceres, the molecules are probably the result…
Jul 12, 2018 Cosmic rays are poorly understood. “…plasma is so silly that it does not understand the sophisticated mathematics, or it is that the plasma is so clever that it finds other ways of behaving, ways which the theoreticians were not clever enough to anticipate.” — Hannes Alfvén…
