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Best of the Blog - Space & Cosmology

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"I leave open the possibility that black holes do exist in some form, and that a part of the astronomical data has been read correctly. But the greater part of current speculation could be called wild, and a significant part is demonstrably illogical."

“It is interesting that the roots of the 17th-century mechanistic world view can be found in ancient mystical religion. Indeed, the mechanistic view was a synthesis of two traditions of thought, both of which were based on the mystical insight that reality is timeless and changeless. One of these traditions stems from Pythagoras and Plato, who were both fascinated by the eternal truths of mathematics. In the 17th century, this evolved into a view that nature was governed by timeless ideas, proportions, principles, or laws that existed within the mind of God. This world view became dominant and, through philosophers and scientists such as Copernicus, Kepler, Descartes, Galileo and Newton, it was incorporated into the foundations of modern physics.

Basically, they expressed the idea that numbers, proportions, equations, and mathematical principles are more real than the physical world we experience. Even today, many mathematicians incline toward this kind of Pythagorean or Platonic mysticism. They think of the physical world as a reification of mathematical principles, as a reflection of eternal numerical mathematical laws. This view is alien to the thinking of most of us, who view the physical world as the “real” world and consider mathematical equations a man-made, and possibly inaccurate, description of that “real” world. Nevertheless, this mystical view has evolved into the currently predominant scientific viewpoint that nature is governed by eternal, changeless, immutable, omnipresent laws. The laws of nature are everywhere and always” [5].

The dominant belief in immutable, universal mathematical laws keeps us in the dark, as witness the reification of hypothetical mathematical constructs like ‘dark matter,’ ‘dark energy’ and ‘black holes.’ In the words attributed to Artemus Ward: “The researches of many eminent scientific men have thrown so much darkness upon the subject, that if they continue their researches we shall soon know nothing.”

Toward a Real Cosmology in the 21st Century, Wallace W. Thornhill, The Bentham Open Astronomy Journal, 2011, 4, (Suppl 2-M5) 191-210 link

And the researchers say this raises doubts as to whether other so-called black holes are really that, either. [...]

Instead, the researchers are picturing a body with a definite size, and a surprising property: it gradually crams itself into a smaller space forever, but never achieves a black hole’s infinitely small size. [...] Schild’s group studied a quasar designated Q0957+561, about 9 billion light-years away in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year.

The quasar holds a central compact object weighing the equivalent of 3 to 4 billion Suns. Most scientists would call it a black hole, but Schild said his findings suggest otherwise: surprisingly, it’s magnetic, unlike a black hole. [...] The problem vanishes, Schild and colleagues argue, with the new type of compact object that they propose, called a Magnetospheric Eternally Collapsing Object, or MECO.

This body, a variant of an object whose existence was first proposed by the Indian physicist Abhas Mitra in the late 1990s, is one that not unlike a black hole, continually shrinks into an ever-smaller space. But it never becomes a black hole. Instead, its shrinkage slows down until it becomes imperceptible, but goes on steadily—so slowly, it could go on for many times the lifetime of the universe. Unlike a black hole, a MECO also has definite size. Moreover, objects sucked in can theoretically go back out, albeit with extreme difficulty.

A MECO, essentially a dense ball of plasma, continually generates magnetic fields through surface currents, explaining the magnetism, Schild said. His team’s research appeared in the July issue of The Astronomical Journal.

It won’t be easy for the MECO theory to gain wide acceptance among scientists, astronomers say, given that black holes have been the accepted scenario since Einstein. But Mitra and a few other theorists claim black holes don’t exist at all—only Eternally Collapsing Objects.

No black holes after all? Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics & World Science, August 11th 2006

The New York Yimes Book Review described 'The Big Splash' as, "A savage tale of how science works" and you have to read the book to believe it. In 1981, Dr Louis Franks made this discovery in ultra-violet imaging from NASA's Dynamics Explorer satellite as part of his scientific research on the aurora. His images were being constantly marred by black spots that he first put down to technical factors, but after years of trying he could not irradicate them. In his images, these spots were actually 30 miles across and so he reasoned that the dark spots revealed the presence of water from an extraterrestrial origin.

Dr Louis Franks gives us great personal insight into how his ideas met harsh opposition and how he acquired heretic status after previously being considered a well respected scientist. Infact, Dr. Frank comes with impeccable credentials. He was a full professor at 32 and at the time of writing the book was reputed to have "more instruments on more spacecraft than anyone else on the planet." Yet, as Frank found and he reported in the New Scientist, “if you propose that something from out there is affecting us here and now, rather than millions of years in the past or millions of years in the future, beware the wrath of orthodox science. Science guards our isolation well.” Therefore, even good colleagues, refused to reconsider their existing beliefs and the antics that he endured are quite an eye-opener.

Truth, Lies, Fiction & Peer Review , 4th March 2009

"We all believe in the aether, but we call it space-time" Dr. Dennis Sciama

COMET GARRADD MEETS M71: This weekend, amateur astronomers around the world are watching the green tail of Comet Garradd (C/2009 P1) sweep across golden star cluster M71. Nick Howes sends this picture of the encounter from Cherhill in Wiltshire UK:

Discovered two years ago by Gordon Garradd in Australia, the 8th-magnitude comet is currently visible through small telescopes in the constellation Sagitta inside the evening Summer Triangle (finder charts). The comet is approaching the sun and brightening; recent projections place it at peak magnitude 6 in February 2012, just at the limit of naked eye visibility. Because Comet Garradd is a first-time visitor to the inner solar system, however, it could behave in unexpected ways. Stay tuned for surprises.
Spaceweather.com, 28th August 2011

COMET GARRADD MEETS M71: This weekend, amateur astronomers around the world are watching the green tail of Comet Garradd (C/2009 P1) sweep across golden star cluster M71. Nick Howes sends this picture of the encounter from Cherhill in Wiltshire UK:

Discovered two years ago by Gordon Garradd in Australia, the 8th-magnitude comet is currently visible through small telescopes in the constellation Sagitta inside the evening Summer Triangle (finder charts). The comet is approaching the sun and brightening; recent projections place it at peak magnitude 6 in February 2012, just at the limit of naked eye visibility. Because Comet Garradd is a first-time visitor to the inner solar system, however, it could behave in unexpected ways. Stay tuned for surprises.

• "Cosmic Ray" Belt Around Earth Verified
  Daily Galaxy, 8th August 2011
  Italian researchers, led by Piergiorgio Picozza from the University of Rome, using data from the satellite PAMELA have proven that theories showing there ought to be a ring of antiprotons, called the Van Allen radiation belt, encircling the Earth due to cosmic rays colliding with nuclei in the upper atmosphere are correct.
  
  Physicists have theorized that the constant stream of cosmic rays generated by the sun and other little understand sources must produce a shower of sorts of smaller particles when they collide with other nuclei in the Earth’s upper atmosphere and break apart. Some of those smaller particles have been assumed to be antiprotons, many of which would be annihilated when colliding with particles of ordinary matter.
  

"...a procession of vast cosmic rubble and dust that snakes around the Sun and out towards Jupiter, will swing through Earth's orbit for the first of its bi-annual crossings.

Within the stream are probably thousands of bodies including asteroids, mountain-and island-sized boulders, smaller meteoroids, Encke's Comet and assorted fragments of celestial refuse."
A cosmic trail with destruction in its wake
The Times, May 24, 1990, Thursday

• NASA Prepares for Potentially Damaging 2011 Meteor Shower
  Space.com, 16th June 2010 -- flashback--
  NASA is assessing the risk to spacecraft posed by the upcoming 2011 Draconid meteor shower, a seven-hour storm of tiny space rocks that has the potential to ding major Earth-orbiting spacecraft like the crewed International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope.
  
  The meteor shower risk assessment is actually more art than science, and there has been some variation in the projected intensity levels of the 2011 Draconids by meteoroid forecasters. But spacecraft operators are already being notified to weigh defensive steps.
  
  Current meteor forecast models project a strong Draconid outburst, possibly<>Ba full-blown storm, on Oct. 8, 2011, according to William Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. [...]
  
  Cooke said that a significant fraction of spacecraft anomalies produced by shower meteoroids are caused by electrostatic discharges when meteoroid meets satellite.
  
  And while no spacecraft electrical problems were reported during the strong Draconid outbursts of 1985 and 1998, he said that the lack of past anomalies should not be taken as carte blanche for satellite operators to ignore in 2011. [...]
  
  "Because we can now forecast them, we have a way of putting it. If you are hit by a sporadic [meteor], it's an act of God. If you are hit by a shower meteoroid, it's an act of negligence," Cooke said.
  
  Comment: OK, I have come across this old article and I am wondering: why the concern? Well, we are given a hint here that the conditions in space have changed. From this article, I wonder if these pre-existing meteor 'streams' can actually grow because they are hinting at how hard it is to estimate "intensity levels", and a variation in the order of magnitude is significant. If you want an analogy, think in terms of a spoon stiring soup. The soup of space has recently got thicker so there is more of a disturbance and more being carried on the spoon. But, as the article states, the world's communication satellite infrastructure is under threat, so I presume there are major players who will be holding their breath until it's all over and damage can be assessed. It is likely that Earth will be a graced with delicate sprinkling of aetheric energies too, alongside the meteor shower!
  

Josie Says:
July 25th, 2011 at 3:07 pm

Neato! Yet another astronomical comparison to what I get to see at work everyday. That bubble looks amazingly like a very cystic teratoma caused by undifferentiated stem cells (I advise not googling images for that if you are at all squeamish…not all teratomas are umm…that clean).

The other thing I see every day is ‘galaxy in a petri dish’ . Growing cells in rotational culture makes little clusters of cells. if you alter the rotation the clusters develop little spiral arms.

I really enjoy seeing similar forms under my microscope and then through a telescope. It gives me a comforting sense of perspective and continuity

“SWIFT had never seen another object outside of our galaxy appear to act this way. It is quite unlike anything we've known before, except maybe blazars.” - Andrew Fruchter, Ph.D., Astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute

LAST WATER DUMP: At the end of the day on March 8th, a strange curlicue-shaped comet appeared in the twilight skies of Europe. It was space shuttle Discovery performing a dump of waste water. Crystals of flash-frozen urine and other substances glistened in the sunlight, putting on an impressive show. Click on the image to view of a movie of the event recorded by Jens Hackmann of Weikersheim, Germany:

Discovery is circling Earth just a few more times before it lands--and retires--at the Kennedy Space Center on March 9th. If it's dark where you live, you might be able to see Discovery one last time.

more images: from Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands

"If you keep twisting a straight elastic string, at some moment it starts kinking in a wild way. Something similar occurs when one increases the electrical current flowing in a magnetized plasma doughnut: it takes on a wild helical shape, which spoils its performance. This phenomenon concerns scientists exploring fusion power, who use powerful magnetic fields to confine plasma during their experiments. [...]

Moreover, the helical state appears to be the preferred one at high current and is spontaneously chosen, or self-organized, by the plasma."
Upping the power triggers an ordered helical plasma,
Physorg.com, 2nd November 2009

"For plasmas immersed in strong magnetic fields, electric currents tend to flow along the magnetic field lines, which act like wires guiding the current. The field-aligned current creates its own magnetic field, and, when added to the original magnetic field, results in a twisted or helical magnetic field."
Twisting With Plasma On A Magnetic Field
SpaceDaily.com, 13th December 1999

The ~800 km separation of the two observers rules out an event near Earth and reinforces the association of the fireball with Jupiter. The most likely explanation: A small comet or asteroid hit the giant planet.

This is the third time in only 13 months that amateur astronomers have detected signs of impact on Jupiter.

"Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at Cambridge University, believes that planets resembling Earth may be discovered in the next two to three years - although it may take a further 20 years before we are able to capture an image of them. Rees also believes that the need for manned space exploration is rapidly diminishing in the face of new technologies and advances in robotics, an that explorers walking on the surface of planets like Mars in the future are likely to be adventurers of the sort who conquered Everest, rather than astronauts on state-backed missions of the type NASA undertake."
"The Era of Robotic Space Exploration is Here": World-leading Astrophysicist

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