TPOD Archive 2017

Dec 29, 2017 Stars are inherently unstable. Heliophysicists believe that there is an electric dynamo inside the Sun. Two forces are conventionally thought to power it. One is the stretching of magnetic fields due to the Sun’s rotation (change in rotation rate), caused by differences in latitude. The other force ...

Dec 28, 2017 Black holes are said to heat galactic nuclei while at the same time cooling down their radiant emissions. Over the last century, laboratory investigations established the fact that plasma is electrical in nature. The flow of electricity through plasmas form Birkeland filaments, double layers, and electric current ...

Dec 27, 2017 Nebulae are not what you may think they are. The prevailing opinion about planetary nebulae is that they are created when shockwaves "blow" through them. Those shockwaves are said to be “winds” from exploding stars. In some cases, a nebula might be described as “star forming”, because ...

Dec 25, 2017 "My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It's just not December without that movie in my house." --- Tom Hanks ...

Dec 22, 2017 Black hole physics can never explain the Universe. Recently, the Picture of the Day addressed cosmic filaments connecting vast galactic structures. The formations could mean that the visible Universe is a braided filament that reaches from the Virgo supercluster to the Fornax supercluster across billions of light ...

Dec 21, 2017 Is there water ice on Ceres? The dwarf planet Ceres adds weight to an electrical theory of the Solar System long proposed by Electric Universe advocates. Formations on moons and planets conform to that theory far better than they do to conventional ideas. On September 27, 2007 ...

Dec 20, 2017 Earth and Saturn are similar in some ways. Earth exhibits a periodic oscillation in its atmosphere called, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO). The QBO involves winds at high altitude above the equator. Stratospheric winds circle the planet, changing direction about every 14 months. This means that the QBO ...

Dec 19, 2017 Martian formations are similar to those found elsewhere in the Solar System, including Earth. Lichtenberg figures are discussed many times in previous Picture of the Day articles. They are forking shapes that lightning bolts make when they strike Earth or some man-made object. Their unique configuration can ...

Dec 18, 2017 More electric biology. A previous Picture of the Day described the way that some single-celled organisms make use of charge exchange in order to drive their flagella. Rather than the conversion of ATP, they move protons along special cellular structures, converting that flow of electric charge into ...

Dec 15, 2017 Rotating motors propel some bacteria. Editor's note: The Picture of the Day will be on a brief holiday until December 19. In the interim, please enjoy these articles from the archives. Some bacteria can swim through their tiny worlds. They accomplish this feat with the aid of ...

Dec 14, 2017 Why do coronal holes accelerate the solar wind? Recently, the Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a coronal hole as it moved across the Sun's photosphere, causing a storm of charged particles to blast toward Earth. Heliophysicists believe that coronal holes are regions of "open magnetic fields". The thermonuclear ...

Dec 13, 2017 Matter in the plasma state is electrically active. According to a recent press release, collimated jets result from matter falling into the putative gravity field of a black hole. As stellar matter orbits closer, it is said to accelerate, causing violent collisions among the jet particles, generating ...

Dec 12, 2017 Vertical cliffs around the world are not easy to explain. The Karakoram mountains are one of the largest mountain ranges on Earth, extending from Pakistan to India and into China. Among its largest peaks is K2, an 8600 meter massif that once was considered impossible to climb ...

Dec 11, 2017 Dark theories challenged again. “It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien Previous Picture of the day ...

Dec 8, 2017 How long it takes things to form in space is a complete mystery. Black holes continue to elude detection by the most powerful telescopes and radiation sensors, but the consensus community insists that they exist, because they say that they can be inferred by their effect on ...

Dec 7, 2017 Cameras orbiting Mars provide data that confirm Electric Universe theories. NASA launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) August 12, 2005 on a mission to map the surface of the Red Planet. Along with its primary topographic goal, planetary scientists continue to search for water in the barren ...

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 in ...

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 to ...

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 space ...

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 a ...

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. The ...

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 were ...

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 ...