Slashdot Mirror
Supernova 1987A Decoded
bluevector writes "Electric Universe News is reporting that scientists claim to have proof that 'supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star' and not the result of giant stars undergoing gravitational collapse and subsequent explosion after having spent all of their nuclear fuel as previously thought."
Come on this is big news and I'm an astronomy student help me out here.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
Slashdot, setting new lows in first posts, conspiracy theories, and bad editing!
Is this April 1? I'm so confused.
Welcome our new electric overlords
having trouble buying this with no fa, especially since it seems to go against all current astronomical data regarding supernovae.
so... does it run linux?
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
Where's the goddamned link?
Who put metal in the microwave?
Supernova 1987A Decoded
Ohh sure, and my ass farts perfume.
I haven't heard about anything like this before and will likely remain skeptical until a link is provided.
I hate the one hundred and twenty character limit for signatures with an all-enveloping, all-destroying, incredible pass
This is ridiculous. Is there really no link?
If anyone knows the where abouts of one Tolian Soran UFP Security is looking for him in connection with the artificial supernova 1987A. Soran is considered armed and dangerous and may be responsible for previous supernova, which can only be caused by external electrical forces directed at stars, and not their own gravity.
Poor sci-fi writers. Half of the (bad) sci-fi deals with supernovas being collapsed stars. What will they do now, use them as a power station?
And I for one welcome our new... electro-magnetically generated Supernova 1987a overlords.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
So instead of stun gunning a burglar, you can also stun a pretty big object like a star? That is one heat resistant stun gun!
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Would it have killed the poster to come up with an fa?? I mean, seriously...especially for a claim of this significance, they'd better have some heavy shit to back this up!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Electric Universe is a well-known crackpot site, built on the most absurd pseudoscience. They're the same outfit that predicted a large explosion when Deep Impact hit Tempel 1.
As usual, the /. editors display their utter inability to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Idiots.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
...those stars are being blown up by the Death Star.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Chemical Brothers are reporting that they are now able to convert water into gold.
Whre is the article?? Oh, wait, the nes is that some /.'er posted such a wild baseless claim?
It must be the Death Star!!
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Since the submitter didn't bother including one, and the editor didn't do any better, here's one:
n z1
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=re6qx
It's already running so slow it's useless. What I managed to get screams crackpot:
24 August 2005
Supernova 1987A Decoded
13 July 2005
Comet Tempel 1's Electrifying Impact
03 July 2005
The Deep Impact of Comet Theory
26 March 2005
The Dragon Storm
08 February 2005
Columbia downed by Megalightning
05 February 2005
Saturn's Strange Hot Spot Explained
30 January 2005
Titan - A Rosetta Stone for early Earth?
25 December 2004
Megalightning at Saturn
25 November 2004
Titan puzzles scientists
27 October 2004
The True State of the Universe
24 August 2005 Supernova 1987A Decoded
Supernova 1987A is the closest supernova event since the invention of the telescope. It was first seen in February 1987 in the nearby Magellanic cloud, a dwarf companion galaxy of the Milky Way, and only 169,000 light years from Earth. Close observation since 1987 has now provided proof that supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star.
>> IMAGE CAPTION: The enigmatic and beautiful structure of SN1987A with its three axial rings. The brightening of the equatorial ring is obvious. The two bright stars are just in the field of view and are not associated with the supernova.
A supernova is one of the most energetic events witnessed in the universe. The accepted explanation is that it occurs at the end of a star's lifetime, or red giant stage, when the star's nuclear fuel is exhausted. There is no more release of nuclear energy in the core so the huge star collapses in on itself. If sufficiently massive, the imploding layers of the star are thought to rebound when they hit the core, resulting in an explosion, and the blast wave ejects the star's envelope into interstellar space. The bright equatorial ring is caused by the collision of exploded matter from the star with the remnants of an earlier stellar "wind." The two faint rings are a problem. The best that theorists have been able to manage is to postulate some kind of rotating beam from an assumed supernova remnant, sweeping and lighting up a shell of gas expelled at an earlier epoch. The ad hoc nature of these explanations is obvious.
The detection of a pulsar remnant after some supernovae is explained by the implosion of the stellar core to produce a neutron star. Pulsars emit bursts of radiation up to thousands of times a second. It is believed that a pulsar must be a super-collapsed stellar object that can spin up to thousands of times a second and emit a rotating beam of X-rays (like a lighthouse). Commonsense suggests that this mechanical model is wrong when some pulsars rev beyond the redline, even for such a bizarre object.
A recent example of conventional thinking can be seen on the Chandra website. On August 17, a news story was posted: Supernova 1987A: Fast Forward to the Past.
Recent Chandra observations have revealed new details about the fiery ring surrounding the stellar explosion that produced Supernova 1987A. The data give insight into the behavior of the doomed star in the years before it exploded, and indicate that the predicted spectacular brightening of the circumstellar ring has begun.. The site of the explosion was traced to the location of a blue supergiant star called Sanduleak -69Â 202 (SK -69 for short) that had a mass estimated at approximately 20 Suns.
Subsequent optical, ultraviolet and X-ray observations have enabled astronomers to piece together the following scenario for SK -69: about ten million years ago the star formed out of a dark, dense, cloud of dust and gas; roughly a million years ago, the star lost most of its outer layers in a slowly moving stellar wind that formed a vast cloud of gas around it; before the star exploded, a high-speed wind blowing off its hot surface carved out a cavity in the cool gas cloud.
The intense flash of ultraviolet light from the supernova illuminated the edge of this cavity to produce the bright ring seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the meantime the supernova explosion sent a shock wave rumbling through the cavity. In 1999, Chandra imaged this shock wave, and astronomers have waited expectantly for the shock wave to hit the edge of the cavity, where it would encounter the much denser gas deposited by the red supergiant wind, and produce a dramatic increase in X-radiation.
The latest data from Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope indicate that this much-anticipated event has begun. Optical hot-spots now encircle the ring like a necklace of incandescent diamonds. The Chandra image reveals multimillion-degree gas at the location
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/0 3/1246254&tid=160
Summary of the previous discussion: the electric universe theory has as much scientific support as geocentrism.
This should not be news on slashdot I suppose, but since it is, I guess we're going to spend some time bash.. I mean challenging the electric universe theory once more...
Where's the FA so I can do the usual skip RTFA operation? I'm hanging here!
The page seems to be down and it's not in the Google cache. However, browsing Google's cache of other pages on that site caused my Quack Sense to tingle. A Google on "Electic Universe" gave me this. It seems to be somewhere between protoscience and pseudoscience. However, since the announcement of the new "proof" doesn't seem to come from a trusted journal, I'm going to bet on the latter.
Article is slashdotted.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
(from Google's cache, text-only version: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:2FYbHIvbi1YJ:ww w.holoscience.com/news.php%3Farticle%3Dre6qxnz1+&h l=en&lr=&strip=1)
Supernova 1987A Decoded
Supernova 1987A is the closest supernova event since the invention of the telescope. It was first seen in February 1987 in the nearby Magellanic cloud, a dwarf companion galaxy of the Milky Way, and only 169,000 light years from Earth. Close observation since 1987 has now provided proof that supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star.
>> The enigmatic and beautiful structure of SN1987A with its three axial rings. The brightening of the equatorial ring is obvious. The two bright stars are just in the field of view and are not associated with the supernova.
Credit: NASA/STScI/CfA/P.Challis.
A supernova is one of the most energetic events witnessed in the universe. The accepted explanation is that it occurs at the end of a star's lifetime, or red giant stage, when the starâ(TM)s nuclear fuel is exhausted. There is no more release of nuclear energy in the core so the huge star collapses in on itself. If sufficiently massive, the imploding layers of the star are thought to âoereboundâ when they hit the core, resulting in an explosion, and the blast wave ejects the star's envelope into interstellar space. The bright equatorial ring is caused by the collision of exploded matter from the star with the remnants of an earlier stellar "wind." The two faint rings are a problem. The best that theorists have been able to manage is to postulate some kind of rotating beam from an assumed supernova remnant, sweeping and lighting up a shell of gas expelled at an earlier epoch. The ad hoc nature of these explanations is obvious.
The detection of a pulsar remnant after some supernovae is explained by the implosion of the stellar core to produce a neutron star. Pulsars emit bursts of radiation up to thousands of times a second. It is believed that a pulsar must be a super-collapsed stellar object that can spin up to thousands of times a second and emit a rotating beam of X-rays (like a lighthouse). Commonsense suggests that this mechanical model is wrong when some pulsars rev beyond the redline, even for such a bizarre object.
A recent example of conventional thinking can be seen on the Chandra website. On August 17, a news story was posted:
âoeSupernova 1987A: Fast Forward to the Past.â
>> Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/S.Park & D.Burrows.; Optical: NASA/STScI/CfA/P.Challis
Recent Chandra observations have revealed new details about the fiery ring surrounding the stellar explosion that produced Supernova 1987A. The data give insight into the behavior of the doomed star in the years before it exploded, and indicate that the predicted spectacular brightening of the circumstellar ring has begun.. The site of the explosion was traced to the location of a blue supergiant star called Sanduleak -69Â 202 (SK -69 for short) that had a mass estimated at approximately 20 Suns.
Subsequent optical, ultraviolet and X-ray observations have enabled astronomers to piece together the following scenario for SK -69: about ten million years ago the star formed out of a dark, dense, cloud of dust and gas; roughly a million years ago, the star lost most of its outer layers in a slowly moving stellar wind that formed a vast cloud of gas around it; before the star exploded, a high-speed wind blowing off its hot surface carved out a cavity in the cool gas cloud.
The intense flash of ultraviolet light from the supernova illuminated the edge of this cavity to produce the bright ring seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the meantime the supernova explosion sent a shock wave rumbling through the cavity. In 1999, Chandra imaged this shock wave, and astronomer
It's to slashdot the site, nuking it off of the face of the earth.
/. editors display their utter inability to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Idiots.
Electric Universe is a well-known crackpot site, built on the most absurd pseudoscience. They're the same outfit that predicted a large explosion when Deep Impact hit Tempel 1.
As usual, the
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
The proper link is here. While checking on this, I took the opportunity to have another look around the website. These guys really are chewing the carpet; for instance, their page on the CHANDRA X-ray observatory shows a failure to grasp even the most basic aspects of X-ray emission in astrophysical plasmas.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
en tee.
FTFA:
The crucial evidence for the electrical nature of supernovae must come from experiment and observation. Anthony L. Peratt, Fellow, IEEE, published a seminal paper in the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, Vol. 31, No. 6, December 2003. It was titled Characteristics for the Occurrence of a High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity. In it he explained the unusual characteristics of a high-energy plasma discharge. He discussed mega-ampere particle beams and showed their characteristic 56- and 28-fold symmetry. He wrote: "A solid beam of charged particles tends to form hollow cylinders that may then filament into individual currents. When observed from below, the pattern consists of circles, circular rings of bright spots, and intense electrical discharge streamers connecting the inner structure to the outer structure."
*sigh* I seriously doubt that 'supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star', and think that this is instead more unsubstantiated guesswork on the part of the Electronic Universe Theorists.
While we're at it, can we please get some reliable investment opportunities in Nigerian oil firms?
I'm sure that's why they didn't post a link to the article then.
I am a black hole stage of a former class O supergiant you insensitive clod!
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
This article for me is the last straw when it comes to slashdot. The occasional duplicate I could live with. Then we started having articles from The Onion. Now we have articles from a crackpot website. Slashdot has just been deleted from my bookmarks.
Our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut, and pleases us mightily - Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
a story without a link
a fringe crackpot theory on the front page
no monty python foot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Fools! They fail to understand that a supernova is caused by shock waves emitted when the turtle at the bottom of the stack of turtles that make up the universe is squashed by all the turtles above it. As new turtles come into being at the top of the stack, their weight eventually crushes the bottom turtle, causing the whole stack to drop jarringly. The resulting compression wave is felt by all the turtles, and sometimes causes the familiar flash of light mistakenly interpreted as a stellar explosion. Stars can't "explode" because they are merely holes in the firmament. Whoever heard of a hole exploding! Such foolishness!
Electric Universe is a well-known crackpot site, built on the most absurd pseudoscience. They're the same outfit that predicted a large explosion when Deep Impact hit Tempel 1.
/. editors display their utter inability to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. Idiots.
As usual, the
Actually, you would appear to be the troll here. I read a bit of their material, and although I can't get onto their site to check right now, I believe most of their predictions about Deep Impact were correct.
Pseudoscience, my friend, is a word used by those who feel that their "scientific facts" are threatened. I'm sure those who dared say that the earth was round hundred of years ago were marked as practicing "absurd pseudoscience". I don't know if these electric universe guys are right or wrong, but it seems VERY scientific to me to come up with new theories about how things work...especially something like how our universe functions. It's very UNSCIENTIFIC to brush of a theory by labeling it "crackpot", rather than testing to see if it's valid.
Idiot.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
And I suppose that the discharge is the result of an alien "nuclearite war?"
(for those who haven't seen Grease 2, one of the main chars. seduces a girl into a fallout shalter after his friends blare the air-raid sirens. He then unsuccessfully attempts to get laid, based on the premise that the world is about to end and he about to go out and die in the fight for glory... But he is so out of touch that instead of "Nuclear War", he calls it "Nuclearite war")
Seems kinda like the same deal here!
bash: rtfm: command not found
Yikes, this changes quite a few things. I wonder how much our computer models are wrong since supernova are what keeps the universe alive. Were we wrong all this time? :)
--gks
Look. This is Slashdot, where no one reads the f-ing article. The only reason we click the thing is in the hopes that we can see the mushroom cloud go up when some poor bastard's server gets nuked.
So the editors figure they'll save the site the agony since no one's reading the page anyway, and you go and throw it back up on the page. Way to go, moron. I hope you're proud of yourself!
So I guess if this is even true, that instead of waiting 5 billion years + until our sun runs out of fuel, the sun can have one of these discharges at any seocoGI'WOIQF+IHWJFW>F(&"&)"#$')"'#(%
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
When I went to college, they taught some stuff in biology, chemsitry, and physics that is wrong. They graded our papers, and gave us low marks. Why? They did it to everyone. In my Chem class, and "A" was a 38.7%. That is about 4 out of 10 points on a test. The curve was fucking rediculous.
God said they would persecute us. And they are doing that.
I would rather take comfort with God than with the here_today, gone_tomorrow of science.
Why not live in a happy moral time, with good families, and worthwhile occupations. Why live in horrible times, working for in the factory of an atheist for minimum wage?
THINK ABOUT IT. WHAT IS DIFFERENT TODAY? NO PENSIONS AT JOBS. NO GOOD JOBS. And there is less of God too. He is letting us know.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I thought we had agreed that Slashdot should stop posting stories from the Onion. Looks like they've picked up feeds from any number of other wacky humor sites to compensate.
Good prank, ScuttleMonkey, but next time don't forget the Monty Python foot. You seem to be a new guy so I guess you're allowed a couple mistakes.
[Wheeze]Your lack of faith is disturbing[Wheeze]
"I am Heisenborg. You will probably be assimilated"
However this new concept is interesting, but leaves a lot of questions. How are these "catastrophic electrical discharges" occur and funciton? Why and how do they stars to supernova?
I attampted to conduct some research on the subject, but only found concepts on ESD (Electrostatic Discharges), which pretty much is static. I did find out that it is capable of more than just shocking and irritating you. Though possibly relating to this subject, it is not what I seek.
Here are some interesting articles that I found:0 predictions-scarring.htm
http://www.reade.com/Safety/esd.html
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/04123
http://www.fixedearth.com/electric.html
e x.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/mccanney/ind
Yeah, these people are total crackpots
Stop judging so fast !
Headline screams Supernova 1987A Decoded
/.
tfa extrapolates to supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges
a few? most? or just this one on our say so?
Stuff that matters like truth in journalism? Oh sorry, this is
Who but the Flying Spaghetti Monster could possibly have a hair dryer powerful enough to destroy a star when He drops it in His Noodly Bathtub?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Some ludicrously misapplied scientific terms come to the front when Googled, too. Take "Birkeland current," one of the ideas put forth as some sort of power transmission line throughout the galaxy; a brief bit of research indicates that the phenomenon is referred to solely in a terrestrial context (at least, on non-out there sites)
Another one? The paper referenced towards the end, entitled "Characteristics for the occurrence of a high-current, Z-pinch aurora as recorded in antiquity," and published in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, relates solely to a large terrestrial aurora discharge.
Still, it would be great if we could get a pro in here to thoroughly debunk this. Any astronomers want to step up to the challenge?
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
This is crazy talk. I studied gravitational collapse TypeII supernova explosions in grad school. It's not an electrical phenomenon: it's a gravitational bounce outward from the solid (neutron) core after fusion peters out at Iron burning. From there, for sufficiently massive stars, you either get a neutron star or a black hole. Hans Bethe got the Nobel for explaining process the energy release(~10^51 erg). Aside from some of the 3d fluid dynamics of collapse and ejecta composition, the important parts of the process are fairly well understood.
Why do I have the image of Cartman going home, eating his rug, and saying "Well, I've been lickin' this carpet for 3 whole hours and I don't feel like a lesbian"?
I just read Robert Heinleins 'Tunnel in the Sky'. Heinlein wrote the now quote famous Starship Troopers.
This book is in the same vein. Using 'stargate' type technology (but without silly jelly effects) a simple door can be created between worlds, and pioneers are set out to try and reduce the strain on the worlds population growth.
---SPOILER WARNING---
Anyway, a supernova occurs [millions of light years away, but reaches them at that point] in a survival experiment at a school - and this knocks the focus of the gate, and after 5-10 days the kids are supposed to be picked up (those who survived). Yet they end up starting their own colony.
OK
So read some Heinlein books.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Well clearly this disproves Evolution, then.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
After you RTFA and think to yourself "I haven't heard that much non-sensical technobabble since Star Trek!" head over to Wiki's Plasma Cosmology page. Or this more detailed page. Its contested, mainly because this is a contested field and the article is overly broad, but I think it fills in some of the holes.
Honestly if their predictions are true it will change everything in cosmology. And if my predictions are true I'll win the Lotto. I'm not sure who has better odds....
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/ 10/0341237&tid=198&tid=164&tid=137
I mean - it's on the internet - it must be true - right?
.. theories saying "supernovae are caused by giant stars undergoing gravitational collapse" are dying.
Art Makers Just an excuse to show photos of naked women !!
Robert Heinlein's 'Tunnel in the Sky'.
must have more typo/mental errors too. wow. slashdot editors suck don't they... I mean, no link... just a 'oooh weird title, lets use it'. Laaazy.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
If they did not manage to publish in a reputable physics journal, it is not physics, not even science fiction!
So does this mean we have a new easy to use torrent site?
No?
Darn.
Hacker Media
say hi to timothy and cowboyneal for me.
Here's what looks like the abstract of their precious journal article (it's a PDF):http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/downloadsCo smo/peratt2004ICPS.pdf
As far as I can tell, there's no reference to any sort of interstellar events - just a very strong aurora, which would exhibit certain symmetries according to current research in plasma physics; ancient societies might then be inspired to inscribe this auroral event in petroglyphs. The paper then puts forth support for this idea by showing that the positions of these symmetric ancient drawings are well oriented with a theorized auroral event.
I'm no plasma physicist, but I would be very suprised if even the extreme forces of a supernova, located many thousands of light-years away, would be able to do a fraction of what the solar wind of a star eight light-minutes away could achieve. If the conclusions of this paper are correct, and there was some sort of massive auroral event in antiquity, I would expect a better explanation to lie in variations the Earth's own magnetic field or in high solar activity; after all, that's what well-confirmed theory tells us produces the aurora.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
I'm impressed. The link to The Onion that was marked Google instead of Humour was a bit of a low point for Slashdot. But a story about a bunch of cranks that doesn't even include a link is a whole new record. Are you guys having a competition?
Tomorrow's Stupid News article: RocketRainbow writes about a staggering discovery: "Some guy in a bar told me that he made a time machine". The implications are astonishing.
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
Finally, a Slashdot post (not an Ask Slashdot or a book review) where I don't have to RTFA, because there is no TFA!
From TFA..."Stars are an electrical plasma discharge phenomenon. Electrical energy produces heavy elements near the surface of all stars. The energy is transferred over cosmic distances via Birkeland current transmission lines. The energy may be released gradually or stored in a stellar circuit and unleashed catastrophically. It is these cosmic circuits that are the energy source for the supernova explosion not the star."
Even if TFA was mildly belivable there is still the problem of where does all the electrical energy come from, where is the "power station" at the other end of the "Birkeland current transmission lines".
Skip to the end of the article and it starts dribbling on about the geometry of Stonehenge. The fact that it was posted seems to indicate that slashdot will soon have an astrology section.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
it's a gravitational bounce outward from the solid (neutron) core after fusion peters out at Iron burning.
Actually, recent models show that the bounce doesn't cause the explosion, since the outward-propagating shockwave stalls at some point within the stellar envelope. The current idea is that the explosion is caused by the neutrinos from the core, that get absorbed by the outer envelope and heat it up to crazy temperatures. Sure, the cross section for an individual neutrino to interact is miniscule; but with so many neutrinos being produced, enough of them interact to cause the explosion.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
but i also recently learned that the earth has a harmonic simultaneous 4-day time cube!
it's amazing what you learn about astronomy from teh intarwebs
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I sent an email on this subject to Phil Plait at www.badastronomy.com, someone I consider an authority on astronomy and in particular supernova 1987a (it was the subject of his PhD).
Hopefully Phil will have the time to examine the claims and comment on their truth or falsity on his web site.
If you ever have a few hours to kill and want to read about some fascinating astronomy topics check out his web site. He spends a lot of time debunking claims made by "scientists" regarding such things as the face on Mars, the moon landing "hoax" and many other hugely engrossing topics.
it's a space station!
COALITION FORCES ENTER THE MEGELLANIC
Allied forces put an end to the continued Magellanic resistance to peace keeping troops in the Middle Magellanic, a million years ago.
"Once again the significant investment in Deathstar technology is proving itself in the field." a coalition spokesperson told GNN.
Coalition commanders in the Magellanic say their troops are still meeting some resistance but it is very patchy. "We have struck a devastating blow to their terror network. The ability of their terror cells to function have been severely limited, now they have no nuclear-terror storage facility." quoted one high ranking commander.
A Milky way journalist who has visited 1987A say resident worlds there told him they were prepared to surrender to advancing Coalition forces, rather than lose their nuclear energy reserves (the sun).
A journalist from the Earth Solar System news agency EFP said a tribal world leader near 1987A told him to convey a request to the Coalition troops to stop blowing up suns and allow local leaders time to negotiate the surrender of Magereenic fighters still loyal to Zaphod.
UGS marines are reported to be fighting Magellanic forces, including Y fighters, on the southern outskirts of SK-69, about 140 light years (822,444,234,277,022.1 miles) north of 1987A. SK-69, once the pleasure capital of the Magellanic , is believed to be a possible remaining stronghold of Zaphods's regime and there has been speculation that troops loyal to the deposed leader might be planning a last stand there.
A Milky Way journalist with the UGS forces told GNN: "It's a very, very significant attack. They've brought forward a great number of Vipra assault X wings and the Deathstar (large round peace keeping spaceship) is in orbit."
Helium 3 and Gigarod mining operations and new mining construction in nearby worlds has been unaffected by the latest fighting.
COALITION FORCES ENTER THE MEGELLANIC
Allied forces put an end to the continued Magellanic resistance to peace keeping troops in the Middle Magellanic, a million years ago.
"Once again the significant investment in Deathstar technology is proving itself in the field." a coalition spokesperson told GNN.
Coalition commanders in the Magellanic say their troops are still meeting some resistance but it is very patchy. "We have struck a devastating blow to their terror network. The ability of their terror cells to function have been severely limited, now they have no nuclear-terror storage facility." quoted one high ranking commander.
A Milky way journalist who has visited 1987A say resident worlds there told him they were prepared to surrender to advancing Coalition forces, rather than lose their nuclear energy reserves (the sun).
A journalist from the Earth Solar System news agency EFP said a tribal world leader near 1987A told him to convey a request to the Coalition troops to stop blowing up suns and allow local leaders time to negotiate the surrender of Magereenic fighters still loyal to Zaphod.
UGS marines are reported to be fighting Magellanic forces, including Y fighters, on the southern outskirts of SK-69, about 140 light years (822,444,234,277,022.1 miles) north of 1987A. SK-69, once the pleasure capital of the Magellanic , is believed to be a possible remaining stronghold of Zaphods's regime and there has been speculation that troops loyal to the deposed leader might be planning a last stand there.
A Milky Way journalist with the UGS forces told GNN: "It's a very, very significant attack. They've brought forward a great number of Vipra assault X wings and the Deathstar (large round peace keeping spaceship) is in orbit."
Helium 3 and Gigarod mining operations and new mining construction in nearby worlds has been unaffected by the latest fighting.
... 'supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star'...
Someone pointed the Matrioshka brain in the wrong direction again!
I know I should try to respond to that with some sort of "ass" joke. Butt, at this late hour, all I can think of is getting my booty sleep. So, I'll have to pass on that for now.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Capella has gone supernova! Repeat, Capella has gone supernova! Get to the jump node NOW!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Of course first Enigma machine was not captured and decoded by Amewicans...
It was famous Wussian scientist that cweated first decoder for Enigma, in same facility where they kept nuclear wessels.
- Pavel Checkov
... to metamoderate ScuttleButt out of existance as an editor? Please?
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Mental note - don't let anything pointed at our sun run on Windows. Just in case we've got a doomsday virus just trying to disprove the electrical discharge supernovae theory.
Yes it's a cooky theory, but just in case...
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
They make a decent attempt in sounding scientific, and one would almost be inclined to consider it a viable hypothesis...untill they start introducing Stonehenge.
That was just a wee bit over the top, guys. Next time, try to hold back on that, and some people might actually be fooled.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Electric Universe News is reporting that scientists claim to have proof that 'supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star' and not the result of giant stars undergoing gravitational collapse and subsequent explosion after having spent all of their nuclear fuel as previously thought.
Well, they would, wouldn't they?
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
A time machine?! WOW!
Somebody submit this! Slashdot has got the scoop of the century! Quick, before someone goes back in time and submits it first!
Similar to a rape victim having sex with the rapist. Lot's daughters got him incoherently drunk and getting themselves knocked up. It makes your post seem kind of silly.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
That's no moon....
Unless you believe the US filem crap.
Polish scientists were the main cracers of the Enigma system, though their techniques would not work well enough for the Navy version. The UK kept updating the work the polish had done for earlier versions of the Enima machine, so it was quite a joint effort.
How the heck am I supposed to know which way to mod you if you don't take clear sides?
<G/D/R>
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Does it always have to be so serious that everything they do, they do it with their reputation on the line? What kind of tightasses are there that don't allow any kind of playing or fooling around once in a while?
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
Next thing you know they'll be saying that the Big Bang never happened.
Oh wait, Alfven already said that.
There's serious work going on detecting and characterizing solar-, nebular-, galactic-, and galactic-supercluster- scale current flow that the Electric Universe people are happy to co-opt. Regardless of how supernovas happen, what you end up with really are huge clouds of electrically-conductive plasma at widely-varying densities, compositions, and degrees of ionization, that spontaneously organize. Forms routinely observed in laboratory plasma experiments, scaled up many orders of magnitude, are unmistakable in such nebulae, just as is also seen on a smaller scale in our own solar system (e.g. the aurora), and on an immensely larger scale in the galactic core.
I think Pastafarianism is great! It's a high-humour way to get people thinking about origins for real.
Another one I like to point out is Periannan Senapathy's warm little pond, which is mathematically far more reasonable than Gradualism. It approaches the abundant inconsistencies in both Atheist and Theist viewpoints from the serious end, and can make people really stop and think. My goodness, how that must hurt some of them. (-:
Perhaps next year's funny randomness cult can revolve around a Holy Hamburger Patty engraved with the powerful sigil IHS ("In Hot Sauce") and served with spinach as a testimony to Pope I?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Come on, give the guy some karma...
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Well, if you want to be really dull about it, the Polish smuggled the original 3-disc Enigma out of the factory piece by piece before the war even started. Top move, and the most vital break of the lot.
The 4-disc Naval update was first seized by the British, along with a codebook. They subsequently got another after the scheme had been modified.
The US finally managed to blag the third naval variety, which is the event that U-571 is very, very, very loosely based off.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
When Jayne shot out the breakers on that 'net they were headed for, I just KNEW there was something bad that was going to happen - all that electricity must've refocused on a nearby star and crushed it just like they wanted to crush Serenity. If he hadn't shot out the cockpit, too, then the baddies could have just gone on wrecking firefly class transports, not inadverently blowing up an entire gorram star.
Heck, makes about as much sense as the article.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
- supernovae just happen to match what would happen to a star under gravitational collapse when it runs short of fusion to support itesf.
- we just happen to have the distribution of elements that would happen to a star under runaway fusion in spherical shells....
- supernovae just happen to put out scads of neutrinos, just what would happen under runaway fusion.
- supernovae just happen to push waves of matter in front of them, at the speeds and in the quantities expected under runaway fusion.
I'm an astronomy news bottom-feeder, and even I see the problems with an "electrical" theory of supernovae.I'll admit... I couldn't make it through this entire beast of an article, but this should stuck out:
"Stars are an electrical, not a thermonuclear, phenomenon."
Is this for real?
aoeu
- American (the USA) was not "filled with" people; there were far less Americans of any kind than there now are Australians.
- The Americans who could not read and write did not need to. They were Indians, and had more effective and complete ways of passing along information. The Americans who could read and write brought them whiskey, rifles and venereal diseases -- what a brilliant combination!
- America's literacy rate has never recovered since mandatory, factory-style formal schooling was introduced. Today, their (Western society's, basically) illiteracy rate is at least five times as high as it was then.
What education is doing is teaching us to not believe in God; or to put it another way, that nothing we do, cosmically speaking, matters. Big surprise, we have steadily increasing social problems to match our steadily longer and more rigorous educations.Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
what the fuck is this crankpot bullshit doing in my "news for nerds?"
'supernovae are catastrophic electrical discharges focused on a star'
But will these discharges provide the 1.21 Gigawatts I need for my time machine?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
As it turns out, the Founding Fathers generally did believe in God. This is not a big achievement; according to James 2:19, the demons also believe. I don't think this is referring to Apache or BIND.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The sight of those taut young thighs and that soft, warm chest behind the tantalizing veil of a thin night-dress... well!
..when I read an article which starts by saying that [some | many| a group of| concerned] scientists are claiming that $SOME_NONSENSE, I reach for my Browning.
No but, yeah but, no but...
I remember reading that the flux of neutrinos is enough to kill a human out past the range of Jupiter's orbit. (And heavy lead jammies aren't going to help.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This appears to be the Birkeland in question. Nobel Prize nominee seven times, figured out how the polar aurorae worked, invented the gadget we use to manufacture nitrate fertiliser, and so ons.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Slashdotters are lucky to get out of bed, much less actually read the f'in article. Now they're all bent outta shape when it's missing.
Is this irony?
...that article links to a description of Birkeland currents, which might give you a big tip about what the relatively coherent parts of the article are on alluding to. If Earth's Birkeland currents routinely hit a million amperes, can you imagine what the Sun's must be like? Nice shot of Jovian aurorae, too.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Several years ago, I read an Isaac Asimov novel called The Currents Of Space, written in the 1950's or 60's, which dealt with a planet whose star was about to undergo a supernova event, thanks to (you guessed it) a Birkeland Current. If I remember correctly, the current was deviated and missed the star, saving all involved.
Curiously, there was an author's foreword that discredited the scientific content along lines like this:
"The Birkeland Current theory was in vogue during the time this novel was written. However, science advances and astrophysics is no exception, as current theories better explain the origin of supernova events".
Goin' full circle, everything old is new again! However, in the novel, any star could go supernova if hit by the Birkland Current, so these guys today have done quite a bit of fine-tuning.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Oh, by the way, who exactly is prosecuting us? Y'know, I don't have enough ammo to kill 'em all, so I thought I'd ask.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
The sad part is I had to go with an old article since /. already posted their current front page story.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Playing around is fine - you don't have be be serious all the time, of course not. But playing around and pretending you're serious is another matter.
It's here.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
There is no "W" sound in the Russian language, and they are perfectly capable of pronouncing both "R" and "V" sounds.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
For those of you interested in what supernovae core collapse might look like, there are some simulated animations in the link below. Very pretty too.
http://www.astro.le.ac.uk/~rt53/work/index.html
Cheers,
Roger
Do you have any better hostages?
Following this story, I was thinking about this gravitational collapse thing this morning.
It seems odd to me that falling matter can bounce back into a big explosion under gravitational power. Naively, you'd expect it to bounce back to the same "height". I guess some/most of the matter is staying at a lower potential energy, so that a small amount can be ejected with a large amount of energy?
Could you or anyone else give me a hint as to what I'm missing here? If it is the above scenario (most matter staying 'low'), could a similar effect be achieved on a smaller scale, in (a zero-g) lab (by allowing some fluid to collapse in on itself?).
What *do* we see when a star undergoes gravitational collapse and subsequent explosion after having spent all of its nuclear fuel?
Scientists don't like to play with theories that are obviously wrong, as this one is. Science is a search for how the universe really works, and bullshit purporting to be truth is deeply offensive to that goal.
To answer your post with a quote from it: "science changes". As our understanding of the universe increases, so does our understanding of what has already been learned. The bible is absolute. Its denotation is firm and un-changeable. The only flexibility is in connotation that those who preach its word give.
My point is: It is a grievous error to state fact when you should be proposing hypothesis.
If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into your own beliefs?
you don't want to accept responsibility for anything
I'm certainly not accepting responsibility for somethihng that happened two hundred years before I was born.
African blacks captured rival tribes and sold them to the Europeans, who resold them to the Americans (both North Americans and South Americans).
Yet most people, whether African, European, or American, did not own slaves.
It was the rich people who owned slaves. It was the rich people who owned the sweatshops. And it has always been the rich people who owned and ran governments - - ALL governments from Australia to Canada.
The love of money is the root of all evil. The rich are not Christians, whatever they may think.
With the electrical charge being directed at the star, are they saying that it is being shot by something/someone in some manner? Perhaps by ET's or a evil rival star? Or perhaps it is a planet much like Jupiter that wants to be a star, but the star it is revolving around doesn't want to be a binary?
okay message is coming in...let me pull out my super secret decoder ring..
. ..T....I...N...E...
D..R..I..N..K.....M...O..R...E......O...V...A...L
drink more ovaltine?! what a jip!
www.omglolh4x.com
Please! Isn't far simpler to think of stars being part of some invisible array of high power lines (we'll have proof some day, don't worry) and that neutrinos and heavy elements are being generated by some sort of electrical thingy. Stars explode and discharge mass through an electrical discharge which means the vacuum of space has an electrical potential of some sort that varies from place to place, once again we can't prove it but we know you are wrong.
Now compare this to the misguided THEORIES of those scientists who try to suppress us! Instead of our wonderfully complex and gap riddled ideas they would have you believe it is as simple as gravitational compression. Arrogant fools! Common sense demands that the simpler explanation be dropped.
Stop being fooled by MAINSTREAM scientists with their experiments, controls, peer reviews, data, exhaustive studies, hard work, successful predictions, working theories, revisions, and hard evidence.
Next week, how refrigerator magnets can cure arthritis.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Maybe as it rushes inwards, the increasing compression causes a burst of fusion. The extra energy causes the material's bounce to overcome gravity and spread out.
Just a guess.
Read my post above; the explosion is due to absorption of core-generated neutrinos, causing the outer envelope (which does not collapse) to heat explosively.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
SBB writes "Green Universe News is reporting that scientists claim to have proof that 'supernovae are the direct catastrophic result of Global Warming on Earth' and not the result of giant stars undergoing gravitational collapse and subsequent explosion after having spent all of their nuclear fuel as previously thought."
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
HOWEVER, it is certainly reasonable to act on the assumption that this article is false as it is the more complicated theory and fails to explain a significant range of observations regarding supermassive stars. As such, it does seem to fail the litmus test.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...mention of a Tesla coil and aliens. So disappointed.
That static cling's a real bitch. Ever get a pulsar stuck to the back of a sweatshirt?
About your sig:
>> "Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?"
A base pair has four combinations. E.g., A=T != T=A
It's a double helix, but the two strands contain the same information. That's why they count the base pairs, not the bases. It's basically like using RAID 1.
So that should make 12 GBit right? ( 12 20 so your arugment still stands, of course. )
Lets get real people! When people start using Stonehenge as evidence in their modern astronomy papers they you have a real crackpot. I mean this guy uses a preface from H.P. Lovecraft in his preface!
Next think you know this guy is going to be claiming that the moon landing never happened. Oh, wait.... Perhaps calling his website hollow-science would be more appropriate.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Ah, thanks for that. That seems to make more sense.
It does leave the question as to what people were thinking when they thought a post-fusion model the best explanation, but "thats not important right now".
First of all, let me just say that despite my earlier posts, I am a fan of modern science. Though I feel that it is sometimes too quick to dismiss those ideas that run contrary to popular opinion.
But mainly, I want a better explanation for this photo, other than NASA's assertion of "comera wobble."
That'd be a lot more useful than debunking yet another "fake moon landing"-level article. This is like making fun of the "intertial dampeners" on Star Trek, or complaining that pro wrestlers couldn't really inflict "pile drivers" without neck injuries.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
All talk about crackpots and kooks, etc. makes me wonder don't the scientist ever want to relax a little and just play around with numbers and alterantive theories just for fun?
Nice troll. I almost took the bait.
If this is true about electrical discharge what is this is a weapon?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Slashdot has been taken in by yet another bunch of kooks, proving that the editorial crew are either about as knowledgable as dodos, if somewhat less extinct, or they're just a bunch of hit-mongering crackheads. You decide.
crackpots and very sad it got /. cybertime.
This was hysterical, I had lots of fun debunking it for myself and I'm not even an astronomer. This anti-science (or late April Fool's joke) is bad for science though.
:)
It suggests to people that this is how science actually is conducted and reported, and therefore contributes to Intelligent Design, Scientology, and other modern pseudo-scientific religious movements (or as some of us say, tom-foolery). Or is this a narrative trying to show how ID is similarly silly?..
Anyway they are mainly linked to from UFO sites and a site that looks for wacky pseudo-scientific explanations of interesting astronomical photos.
They went a bit too far when they say:
Stars are an electrical plasma discharge phenomenon. Electrical energy produces heavy elements near the surface of all stars.
and they somewhere note I believe that stars are bright because they are lightbulbs strung on interstellar wires.
They finally give up with smiles with the last masterful paragraph which imperceptibly and yet oh so achingly, sexily, *glides* right from descriptions of particle physics into discussion of ancient stone circles, which finally proves their point!
The author is obviously sane, though perhaps at times not so due to substance abuse, has not a qualm about mixing metaphors, has a poet's sense of timing, a matador's bravado and ice-cold calculation, a bard's sense of infinite majestry, and a joke-teller's need for a punchline. Did I miss any? I think it's all there!
Yep, they definitely sound like quacks to me. I'm sure that electro-magnetic forces play an important role in what goes on, but anyone who thinks that stars give off light because of electrical currents and NOT fusion is an idiot.
Many scientific breakthroughs began as heretical views. Obviously this does not imply that all heretical views are scientific breakthroughs. However, an idea should not be derided as a quack because it is heretical. Even Galileo was forced to abjure his views that the Earth rotated around the sun. Any scientific idea, outlandish or otherwise, should be peer-reviewed, tested (as empirically as possible, whether it be by laboratory means, or otherwise).
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatea rthsociety.htm
Water. Regardless of which train of thought you follow, it covers over seventy-five percent of our planet's surface. And the atmosphere, also a fluid, covers the entire surface. The difference is why. While flat-Earthers know that the ocean is really just a large bowl, (with great sheets of ice around the edges to hold the ocean back), and the atmosphere is contained by a large dome, the backwards "round-Earth" way of thinking would have you believe that all those trillions of gallons of water and air just "stick" to the planet's surface.
Conventional thinking would suggest that the water would just run down the sides of the Earth (to use the analogy again, like droplets running down the sides of a beach ball) and fall into outer space, while the air would dissipate. Using the earlier mentioned idea of "gravitational charge" gives some credibility to the theory. If the fluids were static, then exposure to the gravitational field for a long enough period of time would allow their molecules to align themselves with and be pulled in by the field.
But fluids are not static, especially not in the atmosphere and oceans. Great ocean currents run both at the surface and deep below, carrying water across huge basins, keeping the solution far from stagnant. Jet streams of air travel at hundreds of miles per hour through the atmosphere. And windblown rainclouds carry vast quantities of evaporated seawater across miles of ground, releasing their load far from its starting point. Water or air that (according to "round-Earth" theory) starts on one side of the planet could end up completely on the other side in a matter of only a few days. With all this turbulence and motion, if the world were round, the oceans should all fall "down" into the sky, leaving the planet dry and barren, and the atmosphere would simply float away. Why, just look at the moon. It is round, like a ball, and yet it has no atmosphere at all.
And that's the way it is, for September 6, 2005...
and how are you so sure that this is so wrong? what conclusive proof is there of that fact. in fact the current Electrical Universe theory makes far more sense than the gravity-based model. Seeing as how astronomers have had to invent black holes, dark matter, dark energy and many other exotic particles just to make their theory fit, while the electric universe thoery can explain events without making up some bizarre matter, I'm personally more inclined to go with them.
"Supernova 1987A Decoded"
Have you learned nothing from your time here on Slashdot? Everything is hacked around here. Cars. Toasters. Clock radios. Come on, follow the rules man.
"Supernova 1987a Hacked" is by far a cooler sounding story anyway.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I'm just being a pedantic idiot here, but there is no such thing as a theory that is obviously wrong. There are only theories that do not fit well with observed conditions.
You can have any number of competing theories and none of them are obviously wrong. There will, however be those that best fit the majority of our observations and will be considered the best theory. Those that have a hard time time explaining observed conditions will not be accepted by the majority of scientists, but no theory is ever obviously wrong.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
OK, so "soon" either the main shock wave will hit the inner ring and we'll see a lot of X-rays or "I do not expect the ring to grow as a shock-wave-produced ring would be expected to. Some bright spots may be seen to rotate about each other and to merge. It is an opportunity more rare and valuable than a diamond to be able to verify the electric discharge nature of a supernova."
This particular theory was first applied to Unreal Tournament 2004, but I believe it can be generalized for much of the IntarwebNet.
sudo eat my shorts
Science is not about how the universe REALLY works, it is about coming up with new models when the old are found not to match new empirical data. New models have replaced old, NOT because the old were wrong and the new correct, but because the new models simply had greater predictive power or predicted a wider variety of phenomena. There are no theorems in the natural sciences - only theories.
Splitting hairs maybe, but dogmatism about science grates on me just as much as in the religious context.
That doesn't have pseudo scientific nonsense I recommend going here, http://www.bautforum.com/ No I'm not trying to plug a forum but the electric universe theory is nonsense
google the article and you will be directed to religous websites.
the electric universe theory has as much scientific support as geocentrism
and more scientific support than Young Earth Creationism.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
In 1984 it is said "He who controls the past controls the present, and he who controls the present controls the past".
the Theofascist movements of various religions around the world are trying to exercise this concept - grandparent is an example.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Real men use vi, slimy emacs lusers!
Exactly!
I would add that a thousand experiments "proving" a theory right are useless, but it takes only ONE experiment to a theory wrong. In fact, if there is one fault with scientific research as it is practiced today, it is that most experiments are designed to prove a theory correct, not to prove it wrong. The assumption should be that a theory is correct and the experiment should be designed to prove it wrong. Einstein did that when he proposed a test of his Special Theory by predicting that if his theory is right the position of a distant star would be shifted by a certain angle as the starlight grazed the limb of the Sun during an eclipse. If his theory was wrong the expected shift would not be observed. His proposed experiement allowed for falsification. Many theories, both scientific and religious, cannot be falsified because appropriate experimental conditions cannot be setup or deduced from existing data. Adherents on both sides accept their theories on faith if they cannot be falsified.
This idea isn't being dismissed because it's heretical. It's being dismissed because it's crap.
We detected neutrinos from SN 1987a with the thermal spectrum expected of a cooling neutron star. From the number of neutrinos detected, we know that the energy released in neutrinos was enormous (about the gravitational binding energy of a neutron star). Emission of neutrinos with a thermal spectrum requires an emitter that is at least one neutrino scattering length thick. This requires extreme density, which means a core collapse must have occured.
That electromagnetic bullshit wouldn't have produced neutrinos like this. The observation falsifies this theory. Indeed, any competent astrophysicist would have realized this almost instantly, which is why we can confidently label the theory as obviously wrong (in the same sense the Flat Earth theory, or the 'I'm the Pope' theory, are obviously wrong.)
And everyone has missed the obvious.
The star was destroyed to make way for a galactic superhighway.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
I submitted this controversial article, and I suppose I ought to poke my head up and offer a few observations.
/.'s main page, was missing a link to the article hosted by holoscience.com, it's not my fault, as I did include one, but the story as submitted (expectedly) underwent heavy editing before it was displayed for public consumption, and the editor must have accidentally dropped the link. By the time I visite Slashdot today, the mistake was corrected.
/. that pointed to thunderbolts.info's "Deep Impact predictions" page. I'd never heard of "plasma cosmology" and the "Electric Universe" theories before . . . and so began to read about them. I discovered that there is quite a spectrum of thought that makes up this fringe scientific camp.
First, if the story, as it showed up early this morning on
I've seen many replies under this story crying "crackpots!" and "quacks!".
But I haven't read even one yet that suggests some simple principles or facts which can be used to debunk the basic claim of the plasma cosmologists and the Electric Universe proponents: that plasma physics (i.e. electrodynamics as embodied in the behavior of plasmas) is not given enough credit when scietific models and theories that attempt to explain stellar and interstellar phenomenon.
And I am all ears. I studied physics in college and was well on my way towards a B.A. in that discipline when I decided to try my hand as an entrepreneur during the dot-com boom. I think I've developed a fairly sensitive internal "b.s. meter" over the course of my lifetime. And I try to "keep up" in my personal (albeit hobbyist) study of science, with space physics and cosmology being my dominant interests. I read stuff on the "popular science" level and I am also comfortable reading papers of a more technical nature. I self-admittedly have a more philosophical bent in my musing upon these matters, but that is not a variant of the excuse, "I'm not so good at math" -- I am actually fairly competent when it comes to advanced mathematics.
Several weeks ago, I read the story on
On the one hand, you have the plasma physicists/cosmologists that believe that the behavior of stars, galaxies, galactic clusters, etc. are governed not primarily by the gravitational force but rather gravity AND electrodynamics, with electrodynamics dominant in many contexts. And they pretty much stop with that assertion and confine most of their work to exploring it.
The Electric Universe enthusiasts go farther, and are trying to develop an all-encompassing framework in which they see every aspect of the universe (from the subatomic to the intergalactic) and its history as governed by the "Electric Force."
Am I true believer in the so-called "Electric Universe?" No. I actually find members of that end of the spectrum in question to be a bit too eager to engage in polemics, and that doesn't impress me. On the other hand, I will say that I find myself highly sympathetic to the work and claims of plasma physicists like Dr. Anthony Peratt.
Here's why, in a nutshell: Since I was a little kid I've been fascinated by ideas like black holes, neutron stars, the "big bang," grand unified theories, etc., etc., etc. In fact, it was my reading Timothy Ferris' Galaxies when I was in the 2nd grade that planted the seeds for my future interest in pursuing physics as a career. I read Hawking's A Brief History of Time in the 6th grade, "understood" it, and from there began a more rigorous self-directed study into more advanced treatments of physics and mathematic
IC XC NIKA
I'd like to see these crakcpots explain the observations of neutrinos generated by a supernova...
even a cursory knowledge of history will show that the US was inhabited by people fleeing religious persicution in Europe and that they really, REALLY did NOT want a country founded on religious principles, but one where there was a seperation of church and state and where no religion could gain so much power that it could encroach upon any other religion.
The people fleeing religious persecution did not want separation of church and state. What they wanted was their kind of church to be in charge.
In their own words:
In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereigne Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britaine, France, and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northerne parts of Virginia, doe, by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just and equall laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the generall good of the Colonie unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd the II. of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereigne lord, King James of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fiftie-fourth. Anno. Dom. 1620.
To make your point, you ought to focus on the Europeans who colonized America not for religious reasons, but to make a quick buck.
... the articles I have submitted which were rejected, and then see this piece... I feel good... like the rejection was a sort of compliment.
THANKS!
-pyrrho
these "scientists" are the ones supposed to test their theory!
we are not obliged to test everyone's theory... and this... this is... well, such obvious crap that...
if they come up with any evidence I'll be shocked and amazed.
slashdot has sunk to a new low! hahahah.
just kidding about that last bit.
-pyrrho
geeks as stupid as humans now. :(
-pyrrho
yes, there is no proof outside of mathematics.
THERE IS however "demonstration".
A theory is worthless without demonstration, except as intellectual play.
Demonstration is what separates good theories from bad... and certainty is not required, only relative certainty.
-pyrrho
if you just make stuff up, anything is "true".
-pyrrho
(PhD astronomy/astrophysics, a practicing observatory operator):
"Bullshit. Supernovae involve way too much energy for that. Now, if you're talking about novae (which are really entirely different from supernovae), then I might at least be willing to read the article before saying it's bullshit."
Myself, I took Astronomy 101. I don't know nuthin' at this level.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
I'm left wing.
But we can agree Europe screwed the world up first... we just carried the ball.
Now Europe is all like, "yes, very sorry 'bout that."
And their empire collapsed like a flan in a cupboard... (thanks Eddie!)
-pyrrho
Lincoln was anti-slavery for years before attaining the Presidency, and has famous debates on the issue... but you know that since you read them written down things.
-pyrrho
... progressives at least.
-pyrrho
just tell me about this TIME MACHINE!
:)
wow!
-pyrrho
I'm not an astronomer or astrophysicist, so a lot of the bullshit in this pseudosicence-y article, I could have potentially fallen for. But then at the very end, they have this choice little piece:
And, for me, that's where they give the game away. They write as though they've somehow conclusively, incontrovertably shown that there's a connection between electric supernovas and frickin' Stonehenge. I mean, if that's not NewAge malarky, then I dunno what is.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
http://www.skepticality.com/ They've had Phil on twice so far, I believe.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
It's called money. Greedy people go where the money is. Conventional views of space are upheld by the government and government funding (in north america). Other countries, through science, have widely differing views. Only americans seem to think it's 'the god's truth'. Then again, they tend to swallow stuff that's pumped through them in school, media, etc...
haha, and the fact that 'gravity' changes depending on scale. Hey, if gravity and inertia are exactly the same force why do we call them different things?
Whose the crack pot who modded this insightful when there is absolutely no insight as to how it's incorrect. This is just baseless opinion.
According to the article stars are powered by an electrical not a thermonuclear phenomenon. The science of thermonuclear phenonmenon that powers stars was tested thoroughly in 1945 with the development and use of nuclear weapons. Stars are driven by thermonuclear fusion and this article is absurd.
It's so much more convenient -- for liberal arguments sake, anyway -- to just ignore history.
Besides, he's just twisting history to improve the lives of those poor, black children anyway. To do otherwise (or to disagree in any other way) is simply to continue this nation's history of racism.
Of course, supernova is manifestation of Flying Spaghetti Monster getting angry or something like that. I can't believe anyone can think otherwise.
We're talking about gravity on a galactic scale dumbass, not here on earth. Once you get out past a certian distance gravity would be too weak to have an effect on distant objects. And example I've seen is this. put a dot on a piece of paper, that is our sun, now put another dot on another piece of paper 3 miles away, that is the distance to the next closest star to ours. Now think of that on the scale of our sun and you can see why gravity would have no effect at that distance.
This is what leads me to completely reject both the intelligent design and global warming theories. I also have my layman's doubts about black holes.
I do believe science invests far too much confidence in what seems to appear on a chalkboard without much in the way of direct physical evidence. Yes, there is some observation, but it's also selective observation (picking one star out of millions that fits a certain 'predicted' profile). Mainly for the seemingly undeservedly high confidence level attributed to much of astrophysical science, I will take time to listen to alternate theories. Doesn't matter to me how many PhD's line up to support something, that alone isn't enough. Peer review in that community is far too monolithic as it is. In it's time, many PhD's have scientifically supported eugenics, race/intelligence links, global cooling, Gaia, and many various global catastrophe theories. A good track record overall, but some dismal misses included.
For example, I have my (admittedly amateur) doubts about the true existence of singularities. I don't doubt relativity or the existence of objects for which light is bent around and/or cannot escape. Many of these things have been pretty much directly observed, and relativity has been well lab-tested. The singularity is the thing however which is the practically 'mystical' aspect of black holes and serve to make them sound so mysterious. I've read alternate theories about matter that state that there could be one more plateau of stability beyond neutronium for which there is no test to detect. It's possible in theory then that a ball of this stuff is what is inside of a black hole, and not a singularity. The matter is so densely packed together that light cannot escape, but it IS still a form of physical 3-dimentional matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_matter
The belief in singularities are based on extrapolations of chalkboard charts and graph trends. Newton made a similar type of mistake thinking his equations and graphs of classical physics extended to the very big, the very small, and the very fast. In reality, the charts don't extend out, other phenomenons take over, namely quantum dynamics and relativity--some new thing just arbitrarily takes over after certain extremes are passed. When we eventually made direct observations that conflicted with the classical theory, we came up with a more refined theory. So, if we somehow get clever and find a way to peek inside a black hole (maybe collide two together or something), then we will have definite evidence. Until then, I have to reserve some skepticism against a 'mystical' claim that isn't based on direct evidence, just charts and graphs that extrapolate out that way.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, however, there is. -Berra
haha, you're dumb :) We're both arguing the same point.
Please tell me when gravity no longer has any effect, can you calculate the distance, and what would be the units. Yes, it's a trick question. ;P
Yes, I said it.
I've been sent from the future to tell you that time machines are the source of all the dupes we've been seeing on Slashdot.
Slashdot really needs some more scientifically literate editors. You guys keep jumping on crank bandwagons and making yourselves look foolish.
and how are you so sure that this is so wrong?
By the way it is utterly incapable of explaining the neutrino observations.
If that's your theory of science, it is obviously wrong.
Newton's theory was not obviously wrong for a few centuries, but once a few very precise measurements were made, it was obviously wrong. A vast array of other examples could be provided by someone more patient than I.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
No, he offered them a slave, actually. A slave-wife (concubine) to be more exact. You do know what those are, right?
And, err, as for "inconveniencing" the angels, they meant to rape them, as is *quite* evident in the story. You do remember that they managed to kill the poor concubine, right? I can't imagine his guests doing much better (well, save that they might've gotten the fire & brimstone [brimstone == sulpher, for those wondering] sooner...).
Granted, I don't think what he did to the concubine was right, but I still blame the mob, not the poor guy beset by the rape mob.
Perhaps you ought to read that story again? Your understanding of it appears to be distorted.
95.2% if you count ability to do any kind of reading and writing as "literate", which I don't.
Literacy correlates fairly directly with income, rather than with intelligence. Evidently, belief in God is not driven by material largesse.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...and at least some of the the Kuiper belt, too.
The direct answer is: not AFAIK, but if Velikovsky is anywhere near right about Venus, Birkeland currents might have had a hand there even if only as a catalyst or secondary destabiliser. It'd be an interesting question to study. Jupiter's weather's gone all funny since Shoemaker-Levy slapped it about, maybe we'll get to see a re-enactment? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Traditionally, Atheistic regimes have been responsible for several times the death tally of all Theisms combined. Your point was?
I understand that the correct answer for this is:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I don't quite follow.
We don't want to waste our time constructing experiments to test crack-pot theories, but if a prevailing theory can be justified or refuted by an experiment then that is a perfectly valid way to make scientific progress.
Consider the Michelson-Morley experiment. Aether is a good theory or it's not. The experiment was done, the theory went down the tubes. A fundamental scientific breakthrough was the result. A null result can be a very powerful scientific argument.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
If I can see a rainbow, that is a fact. Theory is what explains how that rainbow got there.
One theory might say that millions of tiny water droplets in the sky act like prisms and create a rainbow. Another theory might state that rainbows are painted on the sky by the Jolly Green Giant using a giant rainbow roller brush. After further observation and gathering of facts, one theory will fit the observations better than the other, but neither is obviously wrong.
Like I said, I am being a bit of a pedantic fool here. But you cannot state that a theory is wrong without showing how it is wrong. Conversely, a theory is never obviously correct; it has to explain the world around us better than any competing theory to be accepted as generally correct.
Your example is actually the perfect proof of this. Newton's Laws did the best job of explaining why we saw what we saw in the heavens. His explanation of gravity did a very good job of explaining the movement of the planets. But when we started getting more detailed measurements, his theory no longer provided the best explanation. Thus, when Einstein's theories of space/time came along, they provided a better explanation of the observed facts.
You can still use Newton's laws to calculate planetary orbits or a flight path for a spaceship. If his theories were obviously wrong, then they wouldn't provide answers usable in the real world. The theory isn't obviously wrong. It takes a lot of detailed observation to see that it doesn't provide the best explanation. Nothing obvious about it!
Check out the debate between the Steady State and the Big Bang theories. Which one was obviously wrong sixty years ago? And which one do most cosmologists say does the best job of explaining the universe today? But even now, you have some scientists that do not believe the Big Bang does the best job of explaining the universe, so something is not obvious to them...
If the answers were obvious, we wouldn't need science.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
The very existence of this article, and the holoscience.com article which it references, is an example of social engineering and underhanded advertising, trying to give their debated-and-rejected ideas more credibility by publishing and thus claiming a "controversy" that doesn't (or no longer) exists. I'd fully expect this tactic from people emotionally invested in, say, Intelligent Design "theory", but this is coming from an unexpected quarter. The motivation here should be ridiculously obvious.
I'm very ashamed for the integrity of Slashdot at the moment.
well that's all nice and stuff, but i think i'll stick with Process Physics.
cf the Correspondence Principle: a new theory has to account for all the measurements made in support of the accepted theory. It's not enough just to cover the areas in which the accepted theory is inelegant. A theory that doesn't meet this basic criterion can be ignored without requiring debunking.
In the case of the Electric Universe theory I would ask its proponents to explain why decades of Space Physics experiments have failed to find and measure the kind of charged-particle flows to and from the sun that would be required to convey enough energy to power it. Until they've adequately explained where they are, I don't feel the need to take them seriously.
Yeah, right. People go into science because it's a great way to get rich. [rolls eyes]
Explain again why the government, or any religion, has a stake in the core-collapse theory of supernovas?
Seems to me you prefer facile, but ridiculous, conspiracy theories as a substitute for actual understanding.
Pardon my hubris, but I am sure I am not confused in any way. Perhaps you have confused proof with disproof, right with wrong. (Sorry, that's a bit heavy.)
Sure, no theory is ever proven right. Newton looked mighty good until the scope and accuracy of the tests were able to prove him wrong. Once we could measure the different between 5600 and 5557 seconds of arc per century, Newtonian gravity was obviously wrong. The claim I'm arguing against is your statement that "there is no such thing as a theory that is obviously wrong."
I wouldn't have thought that my powers of perception were extraordinary, but if I see a rainbow form (which I have) and don't see a Jolly Green Giant, then to me the latter theory is obviously wrong. (Any appeals to an invisible JGG will be directed to the definition of "green.")
I'm not claiming Einsteinian gravity is right (let alone "obviously right"), but it's more accurate in some regimes and no less accurate in others.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
This is an alarming load of crap, even for Slashdot. Are you guys going to start covering actual science any time soon, or can I safely stop reading altogether?
Um...how so? check this page for some explanations: http://www.electric-cosmos.org/sun.htm
Scientists know most theories are wrong. They are tools to help us understand things, not rules the universe follows. Quantum theory? Models, not laws. Speed of light? Even that's just a model - it's often violated on the quantum level.
"Toy" models are very helpful in getting a handle on a situation, and even fully developed models that are clearly "wrong" (e.g., radiation-reaction) can provide very useful results and very useful ways of looking at things.
--LWM
To me something is obvious when it needs no further proof. The dog is wet; ice is cold; rainbows are in the sky; there are millions of different species on this planet.
The explanations for the obvious are what are not obvious to me. They require observation and reproducible results to verify they are our current "Best Theory". So, because it is not obvious to me that we got the plethora of species on this planet today from Natural Selection, it requires observation to make me believe it is the best theory.
To me, saying some theory is obviously wrong without any examination is a subjective decision, and subjectivity should have no place in science. Objective, rational observation should be what determines if a theory is more or less correct. Thus, I can't say that a theory is obviously wrong, but I can say that it is obvious that it does not explain what I observe. I just have to prove that first!
BTW, you don't see the JGG because he paints so fast it is not possible to see with the human eye...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Status quo is status quo, figure it out. EVERYONE has a stake in keeping the status quo. Can you believe what would happen if say 90% of the population found out that their jobs really are totally meaningless and unnecessary? That it wasn't necessary to suffer? (both science and mainstream religion are big on suffering).
Read again, i'm not suggesting a conspiracy theory, it's just what is. Why the hell are people always so big on science and then start infering things without any basis. Stop trying to read between the lines when there isn't anything there!
there is a degree of uncertainty in everything.
There is a degree of uncertainty in the statement "The Sun will come up tomorrow"... uncertainty introduced semantically and uncertainty introduced because of astrophysics.
But it's a good bet. The theory of evolution will be futher refined, but that something of an evolutionary mechanism is in play is very well demonstrated.
Demonstration is possible. Proof is not.
But... we don't need proof. We don't need proof the sun will come up tomorrow to place our bets on it.
-pyrrho
I was following the article and trying to understand what it was saying.....then I got to the Stonehenge part and my Bullshit alarm went off!!!