A picture and essay from the perspective of the Electric Universe.
Dec 6, 2017 Do stars follow the laws of gravity? Stars do not follow the course that conventional understanding demands. They are not born in clouds of gas far less dense than a puff of smoke. They are not balls of hot gas, they are composed of various elements…
Dec 5, 2017 Magnetic reconnection is in the news again. On February 17, 2007 NASA launched the The Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) on a mission to study Earth’s aurorae. The fleet of five satellites monitored changes in auroral brightness and morphology, in order…
Dec 4, 2017 Stardust factories. “Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.” — Benjamin Franklin Clouds of dust in space are said to form because stars condense out of dusty protoplanetary nebulae. Nebulae are said to be “star forming” when points of X-ray radiation are observed by…
Dec 1, 2017 Lightning phenomena are scaleable. Transverse electric currents accompany a main discharge channel. That channel is often seen by most people as a terrestrial lightning bolt. Slow-motion videos show that multiple leader strokes descend from the clouds, while less visible potential contacts rise from the ground. Once two…
Nov 30, 2017 Different kinds of objects have long “tails”. From galactic-scale objects such as Centaurus A, to hot-bright stars, to planets, to comets, it seems like everything in space exhibits an energetic jet or trailing emission that is difficult to explain using conventional theories. Every new observation requires…
Nov 29, 2017 Venus is an electrically active world. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Venus Express was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on November 9, 2005. The spacecraft entered orbit around Venus on April 11, 2006. One its “surprising” discoveries was electric discharges in the planet’s upper atmosphere….
Nov 28, 2017 When Einstein introduced the theory of relativity in 1905, astronomers thought the universe consisted of only the Milky Way. What we think of today as galaxies were thought of then as tiny clouds within the Milky Way. It was 20 years later that Hubble showed they…
Nov 27, 2017 Jupiter’s Red Spot is shrinking. For over 300 years, the Great Red Spot has persisted in Jupiter’s atmosphere—longer than telescopes have existed to see it. It is commonly believed to be a cyclonic storm driven by thermal convection from deep inside Jupiter’s atmosphere. How it was formed…
Nov 22, 2017 One of the most important questions about other planets is whether water is present in any significant amount. Water sustains Earth’s ecology, so there is a presumption among planetary scientists that water is necessary for life to exist on other planets. There are rovers on Mars, along…
Nov 21, 2017 Nebulae are not just clouds of gas and dust. Look up on any dark winter night and you’ll see the constellation Orion, the Hunter. Orion includes two unusual astronomical objects: the red giant star Betelgeuse and the Orion Nebula, faintly visible to the naked eye as…
