Freezing Desert

January 30, 2020 Mars is devoid of any detectable life. Martian areography bears witness to violent events at some time in the past. Images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) reveal scenes of devastation: the North polar terrain, for instance, is six kilometers below the planet’s mean elevation. Burned craters…

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Extremis

January 29, 2020 Why is this red giant so puzzling? Betelgeuse is one of the 10 largest stars. If it occupied the Sun’s position, its outer envelope would exceed Jupiter’s mean orbital diameter. It is so diffuse, however, that the orbits of the inner planets might not be affected. Red…

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Blue-White

January 23, 2020 Most astrophysical models about stars rely on mechanical action. The collapse of cold gas under gravitational influence is thought to be the force that shapes stars. Common viewpoints see stars as collapsed whirlpools of gas and dust heated to fusion temperatures by pressure, alone. Gravity, it is…

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Muddy Mars

January 22, 2020 NASA officials recently announced that there is water on Mars. Again. That idea builds upon ideas that are embedded in the philosophy of Martian exploration: the search for life on other planets. As most theories state, for life to exist, liquid water must exist. Oceans, lakes and…

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Obscure Visualization

January 20, 2020 Dark energy does not exist. In 1997, two astronomers were studying Type 1a supernovae, when they found that there was “something wrong” with their data. They were shocked to discover that the recessional velocity (redshift) of the most distant Type 1a supernovae indicated that they were accelerating….

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Stellar Mass

January 17, 2020 High-velocity particles in orbit around some stars seem to indicate relativistic effects. Part of what physicists are trying to understand is the observation of spectral lines from “hot iron atoms” that appear to orbit close-in to the surfaces of neutron stars. As interpreted by conventional theory, the…

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