A recent Scientific American article aroused a letter of protest from some prominent cosmologists, including renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who dispute the article’s challenge to the Big Bang theory. In this episode, we explore the many theoretical problems for the Big Bang, and we highlight alternatives available in the Electric…
“Science today is about getting some results, framing those results in an attention-grabbing media release and basking in the glory.” —Kerry Cue, Canberra Times, 5 October 2011 On October 4, 2011 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists for “THE ACCELERATING UNIVERSE.” Prof. Perlmutter of the University of California,…
Oct 11, 2011 Consensus astronomy proposes that thunder causes lightning. Infrared images of the “clouds” around the Cocoon Nebula reveal “networks of tangled gaseous filaments.” The filaments tend to have constant width and extend for many light-years. They appear to be stellar counterparts of the “stringy things” found in…
Oct 06, 2011 Converging radial filaments indicate an interstellar Birkeland current “pinching down” into an hourglass shape. According to a recent press release, the longest lasting gamma-ray source ever recorded has been found by the Swift satellite’s Burst Alert Telescope. “Swift” is so named because it can quickly identify…
Oct 5, 2011 The Milky Way is connected to the rest of the Universe. According to a recent press release, astronomers have found “…evidence for the cosmic thread that connects us to the vast expanse of the Universe.” By examining the positions of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters around…
Oct 04, 2011 What drives star formation in various nebulae? Australian astronomer Colin Stanley Gum compiled an extensive catalog of nebulae before his death in 1960. A Study of Diffuse Southern H-alpha Nebulae comprises 85 images that reveal intense activity within a variety of objects and structures embedded in…
Sep 29, 2011 Are there dark matter galaxies orbiting the Milky Way? Sometimes, clues can be hidden in plain site. The key to solving a particular puzzle might simply be clouded by a layer of presumptions that obscure its true import. Such appears to be the case according a recent…
Sep 22, 2011 Some stars are said to be surrounded by haloes of hot water mixed with carbon dust. According to a recent European Space Agency (ESA) press release, the Herschel infrared space observatory discovered a cloud of hot water surrounding a giant star in constellation Leo known as…
The New Picture of Space Now more than ever, the exploration of our starry Universe excites the imagination. Never before has space presented so many pathways for research and discovery. New observational tools enable us to “see” formerly-invisible portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the view is spectacular. Telescope images…
