Mar 16, 2018 Comets are not made of ice and mud. Accepted astrophysical theories would never lead astronomers to consider X-rays from comets. Comets are supposed to be dirty snowballs, gradually melting away as they approach the Sun. However, as previously written, both the Giotto and Deep Impact missions…
March 15, 2018 New ways to see the cosmos. According to a recent press release, an electromagnetic field connects the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. As previously written, the Small Magellanic Cloud is no more than a smudge of light in the southern sky. Its companion, the Large Magellanic…
Mar 14, 2018 The Milky Way is built from plasma. NASA launched the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope on June 11, 2008. Its primary mission is observing high frequency electromagnetic waves in space, including gamma-rays. Gamma-rays are the most energetic of the three types of radioactivity, with values 10^15 times…
March 13, 2018 The Solar System is encompassed by a globe of electromagnetism. There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. — Pythagoras It is estimated that there is one atom per cubic centimeter in interstellar space, while in…
Mar 12, 2018 Electricity sculpted Rhea. Recently, Cassini completed its multi-year mission in orbit around Saturn. During that time, it trained its camera on the majority of Saturn’s moons, including Rhea. Rhea is second in size to Titan, with a mean diameter of 1528 kilometers. One of its more…
Mar 9, 2018 High temperatures in galaxy clusters are an enigma. Astronomers use gravity as their primary explanation for most energetic events, like high temperatures in the galaxy cluster shown above. It “must be” because of collisions among its member galaxies in the remote past, or from the merger…
March 8, 2018 Jupiter’s electromagnetic fields are larger than predicted. The Juno spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016 after an August 5, 2011 launch and a five-year flight. Since there are radiation belts around Jupiter similar to the Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth, but…
Mar 7, 2018 The Solar System travels through space in an electromagnetic bubble. “In order to understand the phenomena in a certain plasma region, it is necessary to map not only the magnetic but also the electric field and the electric currents. Space is filled with a network of…
March 6, 2018 Conventional theories state that stars are born in the cold. Stars are commonly thought to be bright, burning balls of hydrogen whose gravitational attraction holds planets in their orbits. Theories say that fusion fire in stellar cores sends energy on a million-year journey before the radiation…
Mar 5, 2018 A new mission to Mars. Sometime in the morning between May 5 and June 8, 2018 NASA will launch the Mars InSight lander. Unlike the upcoming Mars 2020 rover, this new mission will be sessile, studying Mars only from its landing site. A key component of the…
