TPOD Archive 2012

Dec 31, 2012 Problems with various theories could be resolved if mistaken identity were considered. It has been demonstrated over the centuries that the worst possible witnesses in court are often those who were present at the scene of the crime. There are documented cases of people being held for ...

Dec 28, 2012 The light from remote globular clusters should be blue according to theory because the farther away one looks the farther back in time one sees. It seems as if each new observation from the Hubble Space Telescope or the Chandra X-ray Observatory adds fuel to the Electric ...

Dec 27, 2012 The MESSENGER spacecraft has recently been approved for an extended mission in Mercury orbit. The Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on August 3, 2004. On March 17, 2011 MESSENGER entered orbit, initiating a yearlong study of the Solar System's innermost ...

Dec 26, 2012 NASA computer simulations are not able to correctly model supernova explosions. Contemporary astrophysical models of stellar evolution rely on the mechanical action of cold gas collapsing from gravitational impetus. Stars are seen as whirling vortices of compressed matter heated to fusion temperatures by pressure, alone. Clouds of ...

Dec 24, 2012 Glass, plastics, and various metal oxides are efficient dielectric insulators. Dry air is another example. Lightning is not well understood. The most common interpretation involves the circulation of water vapor up and down through clouds in a process called convection. Water is heated by the Sun until ...

Dec 20, 2012 Thoughts on the Origins of the Mayan Calendar The sacred Mayan calendar based on cycles of 260 days and 360 days can be traced back to the Olmecs living in 800 BCE but the cycles themselves have no known counterparts in the real world today. The nearest ...

 Dec 19, 2012 Images of the Coma Cluster from the Subaru Telescope reveal galactic filaments connecting bright "knots" of ionized gas. According to redshift calculations, the Coma Cluster is a sphere of galaxies 3.5 million light years in diameter over 300 million light years from Earth. The cluster is one ...

Dec 18, 2012 Science and folk tradition are supposed to be strictly separate domains of knowledge, but in practice they often shade into each other. The image shown above right attempts to map the entire visible universe. The galaxies tend to collect into vast sheets and superclusters of galaxies surrounding large voids ...

Dec 17, 2012 Is planetary science correct to use Earth as the basis for explaining other planets? “Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; ...

Dec 14, 2012 Volcanoes on Mars should not be found in chains, since no crustal plate movement exists either there or on Earth. According to a recent press release, Mars experiences plate tectonics, just like Earth does. As An Yin, a UCLA professor of Earth and space sciences wrote: "Mars ...

Dec 13, 2012 Wind socks, bow shocks, shockwaves and collisions are often used to describe the phenomena that create high-frequency electromagnetic radiation in the cosmos. From gamma rays down through X-rays and extreme ultraviolet, conventional theories have relied upon gravity and acceleration as the only way for them to be ...

Dec 11, 2012 The Sun's nearest neighbors do not share a similar chemical composition. There are ten stars within 11 light-years of the Sun: Star Name                   Distance Proxima Centauri            4.2 light-years Rigil Kentaurus         ...

Dec 10, 2012 X-rays in space are an electrical phenomenon According to a recent press release, the most distant X-ray jet ever observed is spewing from a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in the center of a quasar known as GB 1428+4217, extending for an estimated 230,000 light-years from the source ...

Dec 07, 2012 Electric double layers are like waterfalls that energize charged particles falling through them. "We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture." --- Hannes Alfvén A double layer forms in plasma when ...

Dec 06, 2012 In parts of the Amazonian rainforest, traditional costume included a headdress consisting of a circular arrangement of feathers. The ring of 36 feathers, most of which are white, lacks an obvious counterpart in the skies we see above us. The above example was collected in c. 1910 ...

Dec 05, 2012 Electric planets exist in an electric Solar System. "The main aurora oval on Jupiter we think should dim when the solar wind blows harder, but what we see is that actually gets brighter, which is totally counter intuitive and we still don't know why.” --- Jonathan Nichols, ...

Dec 04, 2012 According to astronomers, a cloud of gas with the mass of a small galaxy is approaching the Milky Way. A cloud of hydrogen gas known as Smith's Cloud, massive enough to be considered a galaxy itself, may have collided with our own Milky Way galaxy at some ...

Dec 03, 2012 Is there frozen water on Mercury? Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say ...

Nov 30, 2012 Static electric charge might help to explain the glowing haze sometimes seen rising 100 kilometers above the Moon’s horizon. Between May 1966 and January 1968, NASA launched the Surveyor missions to the Moon. Each Surveyor spacecraft weighed approximately 450 kilograms and was designed to soft-land on the ...

Nov 29, 2012 Is hot gas sloshing in a gravitational wine glass—or is astrophysicists’ reasoning going in a circle? A recent press release explains: “Like wine in a glass, vast clouds of hot gas are sloshing back and forth….” The blue image is assembled electronically from x-ray data and superimposed on the ...

Nov 28, 2012 Electric Universe advocates were not surprised by Saturn’s hot poles. In a past press release, NASA scientists admitted their surprise at finding a hot north pole on Saturn, although the term "hot" is relative. The temperature of the pole is around 72 Kelvin (about minus 200 Celsius) ...

Nov 27, 2012 David Pratt's publication in the year 2000 enumerates multiple problems affecting the theory of plate tectonics and seafloor spreading. The above schematic of Alaska reveals regions of rock strata that appear to have "accreted" to an original craton. Southern Alaska is composed of fragments in all shapes and sizes, each ...

Nov 26, 2012 New images of the third largest asteroid reveal etched chasms and deep holes. The Dawn mission continues in orbit around Vesta. Vesta is ranked high among minor planets, with Pallas (531 kilometers) and Ceres (952 kilometers) as its larger cousins. Ceres is also part of the Dawn ...

Nov 22, 2012 Venus will transit the Sun on June 5, 2012. Venus and Earth describe a unique orbital configuration with respect to the Sun. The resonance between the two planets is readily apparent when a plot of their movements is made over the course of eight years. Every couple of centuries, ...

Nov 21, 2012 Rather than being a stellar nursery the famous dust clouds in the Eagle Nebula may already be gone. On November 2, 1995, NASA released the now-famous image of M16, the Eagle Nebula, in the constellation Serpens. Jeff Hester, an astronomer from Arizona State University, was quoted as ...