astrophysics ← the digital glebe

Black Holes & Relativity

Mar

2013

Stephen Crothers delivers a resounding critique of the most popular dogma in the theoretical sciences, all given at a level of common sense, free from mathematical elaborations.

Production values are certainly up, but I do wonder where the EU people are going to go with this in 2013? Mixing plasma cosmology with comparative mythology was always going to be a risky strategy: “This brief video clip is a quick-draft giving first glimpses of a major project for 2013. The project will be ...

Time’s Arrow 5

Dec

2012

We are mortal beings. Our lives are linear and each of us have had a beginning and will have an end. Because of this, we -in the west- tend to interpret the world in the same way; we assume the Universe had a beginning, and therefore, will also have an end. To my mind this ...

Sunspots, the Market & the Price of Cornflakes. 16

Jun

2011

In 1801, the eminent British astronomer William Herschel reported that when sunspots dotted the sun’s surface, grain prices fell. When sunspots waned, prices rose. He suggested that shifts in grain prices were a stand-in for shifts in climate. Large numbers of sunspots led to a warmer sun, he reasoned. With more warmth reaching Earth, crop ...

Electromagnetism 10

Jun

2011

Visible electromagnetic radiation (Light) Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. The other three are the strong interaction, the weak interaction and gravitation. Electromagnetism is the force that causes the interaction between electrically charged particles; the areas in which this happens are called electromagnetic fields. Electromagnetism is responsible for practically all the ...

Filamentary Nature 2

Jan

2011

filament (fl-mnt) n. 1. A fine or thinly spun thread, fiber, or wire. 2. The stalk that bears the anther in a stamen. 3. A chainlike series of cells. 4. A fine wire heated electrically to incandescence in an electric lamp. 5. Electronics: A high-resistance wire or ribbon forming the cathode in some thermionic tubes. ...

Flat Universe = Flat Earth thinking. 5

Jan

2011

A Cosmic Radiation Plot from the WMAP Satellite Credit: WMAP Science Team The red band is our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The Nasa website has the following: “The shape of the universe is determined by a struggle between the momentum of expansion and the pull of gravity.” And: “The simplest version of the inflationary ...

There Was No Big Bang: The Proof 13

Jan

2011

The Big Bang Theory is based on the assumption that a stellar object’s Redshift indicates both velocity & distance. This ‘redshift theory’ is known as the Hubble Constant. There are numerous examples in space that falsify this theory, I’ll use just two as examples. Galaxy NGC7603 In the above image, it is clear that the ...

The Plasma Universe 13

Dec

2010

The Northern Lights: Plasma in action At first, many of us are surprised to learn about the ‘fourth state’ of matter; Plasma. Plasma can be described as ionized gas, and makes up 99% of all matter in the Universe. It is an excellent conductor of electricity. Considering that electro-magnetic forces are many orders of magnitude ...

Why Would Anyone Believe in Dark Matter? 11

Dec

2010

Consider these words of nonsense from the Scientific American: “Dark matter is five times as abundant as normal matter in the universe. But it continues to be an enigma because it is invisible and nearly always passes right through normal matter. Astronomers only found out about dark matter by inferring its presence from the gravity ...