The pinnacle of pseudoscience in astronomy and astrophysics
Observation of an actual black hole, or more precisely its event horizon, was inevitable with a global collaboration called the Event Horizon Telescope. I think it is safe to say that failure was not an option with hundreds of millions of dollars, thousands of research hours, and petabytes of data on the line. So earlier this month the EHT collaboration finally delivered with its observations of M87* (Powehi). within Messier 87 (NGC 4486). Unfortunately for […]
Satellite galaxy orbits versus cold dark matter
Observed orbits of satellite galaxies around host galaxies continue to be inconsistent with simulations based on the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) model. Mainstream scientists believe that approximately a quarter (25%) of the Universe is made of an invisible and as-yet detected substance called “dark matter”. Dark matter supposedly explains not only the rotation of stars within galaxies but also the rotation of satellite or “dwarf” galaxies around other larger host galaxies. According to the […]
Jovian Auroral Discord
At the end of October a team of astronomers led by the University College London published a paper in Nature Astronomy reporting they had discovered that planet Jupiter’s northern and southern aurorae emit pulses of X-rays independently of each other. They made this discovery by analyzing data gathered by the ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatories in May-June 2016 and March 2007. The astronomers observed that the X-ray emissions at the north pole were erratic […]
Enceladus Hydrothermal Fantasy
An alternative to Enceladus’ “ocean” being heated by hydrothermal vents.
Reionization Revision
A few years ago I questioned the distance of an object whose age placed it during or before what is referred to in modern cosmology as the Epoch of Reionization. This is supposedly a period shortly after The Big Bang when stars and galaxies first started to form and began reionizing the neutral hydrogen in the Universe that was formed even earlier after The Big Bang. I predicted that eventually objects would be found with […]
Pluto’s unexpected surface and moons
The New Horizons mission team reported several unusual findings concerning Pluto this week at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Among the biggest was the discovery of two large and distinct mountains that New Horizons geologists think could be recently active “cryovolcanoes”. So-called cryovolcanoes are thought to spew a semi-frozen slurry of water ice, nitrogen or other gases instead of fire, smoke and lava […]
Dark plasma?
This gizmag article is succinct in its description of a new model of dark matter published by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The LLNL is a United States research facility primarily known for its projects involving nuclear weapons, national security, super-computing and high energy physics. This “stealth dark matter” model proposes that dark matter is currently invisible in our cold universe because it has condensed into giant electrically-neutral super-particles held together under an unknown fundamental force of interaction. But under the extremely high […]
Rosetta spacecraft observes brightest jet from Comet 67/P
The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that on July 29 the Rosetta spacecraft observed the brightest and largest eruption from Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko to date. Several of the spacecraft’s instruments took measurements from a distance of 116 miles (186 km) and the results were very interesting. The Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) detected double the amount of carbon dioxide, quadruple the methane, and seven times the hydrogen sulfide detected just a couple […]
New Horizons spacecraft detects Pluto plasma tail
NASA reports that the New Horizons spacecraft has detected a tail of plasma streaming behind Pluto at a distance between 48,000 miles (77,000 km) and 68,000 miles (109,000 km). This plasma was detected by New Horizons’ Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument and is comprised of nitrogen ions that have escaped from Pluto’s thin atmosphere. It is theorized by NASA that “escaping molecules” are ionized by solar ultraviolet light, “picked up” by the solar wind, […]
New Horizons spacecraft experiences anomaly
NASA reports that the New Horizons spacecraft, now less than 10 days from its fly-by with Pluto, experienced an “anomaly” that resulted in a loss of communications on Saturday, July 4th at 1:54 pm EDT (17:54 UTC). Communications were reestablished a little over an hour later at 3:15 pm EDT (19:15 UTC) but the spacecraft has automatically put itself into “safe mode” because of the anomaly. NASA teams are working on a recovery plan but because the spacecraft is […]
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