Casting Shadows

  Apr 26, 2016 Dark matter theory is in the news again. “Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.” ― William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 4 Consensus science states that the Big Bang created all matter and energy—including gravity. Every cosmological theory is now…

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The Hubble Bubble

  Apr 22, 2016 Planetary nebulae are electrical in nature. Contemporary opinions about nebulae involve “winds” of gas and dust created by shockwaves from exploding stars “blowing” through them. They are often described as “star forming” because intense X-ray radiation and extreme ultraviolet light suggest that nuclear fusion reactions are…

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The Ties that Bind

  Apr 21, 2016 Earth and the Sun are joined together. The four Magnetospheric Multiscale Satellites (MMS) were launched March 12, 2015 on a mission to study the magnetic field around Earth, especially what scientists like to call “magnetic reconnection” events. According to the theory, when magnetic field lines cross and…

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Petrified Thoughts

  Apr 19, 2016 Earth should not be used to explain the Solar System. Previous Pictures of the Day discuss dune-like formations in various locales, except they are seen on other celestial bodies, such as Saturn’s planet-sized moon, Titan. Along with the extraterrestrial example, Australia’s Simpson desert contains 1240 parallel, unmoving…

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Reflections

  Apr 15, 2016 Boundary layers in the heliosphere. Space is a vacuum, it is said. As written elsewhere, material in space is far more diffuse than any vacuum that can be created on Earth, but matter does exist there. The best vacuums created on Earth reach a 0.1 millimeter…

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Heat Death

  Apr 14, 2016 Is it going to be a dark future? “Don’t wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.” — Roger Zelazny Since the early days of cosmological speculations, especially after the introduction of Big Bang theory, three competing ideas about the…

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