{"id":10536,"date":"2013-05-15T23:11:57","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T06:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thunderbolts.info\/wp\/?p=10536"},"modified":"2013-05-16T07:30:23","modified_gmt":"2013-05-16T14:30:23","slug":"explanations-that-dont-explain-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thunderbolts.info\/wp\/2013\/05\/15\/explanations-that-dont-explain-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Explanations That Don\u2019t Explain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The planetary nebula Fleming 1 seen with ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope
Credit: ESO\/H. Boffin<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

May 16, 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPlanetary nebulae\u00a0are glowing shells of gas around white dwarfs,\u201d according to the standard explanation. This is a better description of dogma than of the image.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAstronomers have long debated how these symmetric jets could be created,\u201d the\u00a0press release<\/a>\u00a0continues. \u201cStars are spherical\u201d; the jets not so much. In fact, not at all. But astronomy has a long history of not letting facts get in the way of good explanations.<\/p>\n

The nebula is \u201clikely to have\u2026two white dwarfs at its centre\u2026. As the stars aged, they expanded\u2026, one\u2026sucking material from its companion. This material [formed] an accretion disc.\u201d Gravitational interaction with the binaries caused the disc to precess, or wobble, and the wobbling disc then shaped the jets into knotted twists. The observations \u201ccombined\u2026with existing computer modeling to explain in detail for the first time how these bizarre shapes came about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fascinating. But the question was \u201chow these symmetric jets could be created.\u201d How could a spherical star that \u201cblows off its outer shells\u201d create not just collimated jets but bipolar bubbles as well? Gravity doesn\u2019t do that. This Question of the Century is passed over with a specious excuse for later morphological minutiae. The elephant trumpeting in the living room is answered with talk about dirt on the carpet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis study now confirms that precessing accretion discs within binary systems cause the stunningly symmetric patterns around planetary nebulae\u2026.\u201d Rather, it confirms that modern astronomy is adept at distracting attention with computer games.<\/p>\n

By this logic, an electricity-free meteorology could explain lightning by modeling the gravitational interaction of the discharge channel with wobbling clouds. That wouldn\u2019t explain what caused lightning, but the concentration of effort on computer simulations would allow meteorologists to forget about the troubling larger question of how lightning\u2014both terrestrial and galactic\u2014is created.<\/p>\n

Mel Acheson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  May 16, 2013 \u201cPlanetary nebulae\u00a0are glowing shells of gas around white dwarfs,\u201d according to the standard explanation. This is a better description of dogma than of the image. \u201cAstronomers have long debated how these symmetric jets could be created,\u201d the\u00a0press release\u00a0continues. \u201cStars are spherical\u201d; the jets not so much….<\/p>\n

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