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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."
Supernova 1987A Decoded
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.
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.
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...
The news is almost certainly at http://www.holoscience.com/, which is currently Slashdotted in spite of there being no link. Electric Universe proponents are generally considered to be crackpots by the wider astronomy community, but who knows - they may be on to something.
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.
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.
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!
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...
I have a new theory: jim_v2000 is an ignorant fuckwit who is incapable of assessing the validity of pseudoscientic claims. There you have it, folks: science in action.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
No, no, it's psuedoscience. Thier explanation of the behaviour of comets shape simply does not match reality. Nor does thier explanation of the solar wind (which they claim is positively charged if I recall, it is infact electrically neutral).
Thier predictions about Deep Impact were so vaguo they would make a astrology cringe, so to claim they got that right is absurd.
These people don't open themselves up to peer review. We aren't talking about a bunch of little Einstiens the world wont accept. These are genuine crackpots.
http://www.fixedearth.com/electric.html
e x.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/mccanney/ind
Yeah, these people are total crackpots
Wikipedia has a lengthy article on the Electric Universe Model, although there is a warning at the top that "The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed."
It'll give you some background. I have to say that a cursory reading does suggest a level of kookdom.
There is also a site put together by the László Körtvélyessy - the original proponent of the theory here: http://www.the-electric-universe.info/
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.
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....
200 years ago, most of the USA was filled with people who could not read or write ... And they believed in GOD.
Exactly. The uneducated, stupid people believed in god. You put it perfectly.
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!
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
2 1234547.htm
Actually, real scientists have used this event to prove a hypothesis. In 1999, Chandra X-Ray center suggested that the shape of the rings resulted from a cavity, caused by the explosion, in the dust and gas surrounding the star. They predicted that the supernova explosion would produce a shock wave which would hit the edges of the cavity and produce a dramatic increase in X-Rays. This is happening as predicted. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/0508
You see, that's the difference between science and superstition. Science makes predictions which can be tested. That's why it sometimes changes. Superstition is not testable. That's why it stays the same.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
That's true. No matter how long human civilization lasts, the Bible will always hold an accurate record of God's chosen disciple, Lot, fucking his daughters. Nice choice, God - you picked a winner there!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same.
That's funny. The Koran stays the same, the Hindu Vedas stay the same, and many other religious texts which have nothing to do with the Christian god stay the same too. Does the quality of being static mean something to you?
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.
What, exactly, does this have to do with anything? Hundreds of years ago Christians believed the earth was flat and that women should be burned alive. And you're complaining that either you couldn't learn or that your professor couldn't teach?
God said they would persecute us. And they are doing that.
Who are "they"? And what are "they" doing exactly?
I would rather take comfort with God than with the here_today, gone_tomorrow of science.
That's fine. Kids take comfort in teddy bears and imaginary friends too. Would you prefer a static stock market if change is too difficult for you to understand?
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?
False dilemma much? Why not live in a happy non-religious time, where everybody gets along? Why live in the constant fear and guilt that Christianity teaches?
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.
Ah yes... that *clearly* is the *only* thing different today. Yes, *nothing else* has changed in history. Any other pearls of wisdom to share, oh swine of knowledge?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
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.
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.
"Yet, they formed a country with great prosperity. And they believed in GOD."
Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick. That neocon bollocks is really sinking in, isn't it?
THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF THE US WERE NOT CHRISTIANS!
Read some history! The US was not founded on christian principles! The signers of the declaration of independance where mostly freemasons, and it is not a coincidence that there is only one reference to god in the constitution, one which is best attributed to 'habit' and 'the way things were done at the time' than any religious thought.
Shit, 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 rest of your post is fine, but thgis one point has been spouted by the neo-con movemenet so often that now it looks like a lot of americanss actually are starting to really beleive it.
Just like it was the americans who captured the first Enigma machine.
*grumble*historicalaccuracy*grumble*
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
This link goes to a Wikipedia article about the German psychedelic trance project "Electric Universe". I think you mean this link.
Clearly we need to start some classes in trolling. This is a perfect example of the decline in trolling quality that we've seen at slashdot in the last few years.
How, in the name of all that is holy, can you have a Bible troll like this without at least one direct reference to male homosexuality or bestiality! And there isn't even an attempt to blatantly steer the debate to make it a debate on abortion or prayer in schools.
At long last, do you have no sense of troll decency sir? Oh usenet trolls of alt.athiesm, why have you abandoned us?
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
Therefore, "gags" like this are actually more damaging.
No. It's not. It's actually a fairly prudent argument. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a good parallel as a lot of people's idea of religion. Making up stupid arguments against evolution is a lot like making up stupid arguments that the world is flat. There's really not much left to disprove, in a lot of these places. If people wanted prudent arguments they could just ask. But, as even the most prudent arguments have been ignored... Welcome our new Noodly Overlord.
Just because having God compared to a Flying Spaghetti Monster annoys people, doesn't mean that it's not effective. And certainly it's not damaging because it "strengthens resolve". I've listened to creationists speak. They would be hard pressed to get any more resolve. If religious parallels actually were not effective, we wouldn't know what you're talking about. Keep in mind that Bobby Henderson only became a Prophet of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism back in June. And, it's already bigger than most cults (perhaps some divine noodly force is nudging it). In short, it doesn't really matter how strong a person's resolve is, if they are wrong they are still wrong.
So, drawing fun parallels is a great way to get your point across. And I have to admit the FSP people are way funnier than the Invisible Pink Unicorn (mhhhnbs) people. And much more on the ball with Pascal's Wager. The IPU people gave nobody a reason to play the system. The FSM people have had it revealed to them that Heaven (for believers of Pastafarianism) contains a stripper factory and a beer volcano.
RAmen.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
200 years ago, most of the USA was filled with people who could not read or write. Yet, they formed a country with great prosperity. And they believed in GOD.
They also didn't shower regularly. This uncanny association really makes you wonder, doesn't it? Maybe it was poor personal hygiene after all, rather than a belief in GOD, that made them prosperous.
Some of them were Christians. Some were deists. Some were out right atheists. Just as the grandparent shouldn't make vast generalizations neither should you. How do you classify someone such as Jefferson? Jefferson was by most accounts a deist. Is he Christian? He published a red letter edition of the new testament in which all of Jesus's moral teachings were well--highlighted in red. Yet he ignored the "mystical" elements. So was he religious or not? depends on your definition of religion mroe than anything.
Ever read the Declaration of Independence?
You are basically right--the Constitution and future government of the US was meant to be free of religion, and to protect freedom of religion. This does not mean that many of the founding fathers were not deeply religious men, nor that religion was universally reviled.
I'm also curious about your point about "no religion could gain so much power that it could encroach upon any other religion." What about anti-semitic laws, catholic/protestant anti-miscegenation laws, and more, that we've had for years? Until relatively recently even.
One must remember that the early American context was largely white (of Western European extraction), male, protestant. Other groups come into prominence later--be they black slaves, women, Irish, Catholics, Italians, Jews, etc.
This is not to disagree with your basic point, but I would take issue with many of your assumptions (and incidentally, you've been reading too much Davinci Code with regards to masons--my grandfather was a mason, and the man attended church every week of his life--what's the correlation? none..read about freemasonry and you'll see what I mean)
Not when you recall that Lot offered these same daughters to a rape mob, to avoid inconveniencing a couple of angels. Truly a man of God!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
"Did you ever notice how science changes its anwsers so damn often. But the Bible stays the same."
Congratulations! You're one step closer to rational thought!
Unlike religion, science doesn't claim it's explanations to be correct. It claims them to be the best explanation we can find given the current evidence.
Science is a method for trying to explain why something is the way it is best on testing a hypothesis.in a repeatable way.
Unlike religion it does not say "this is the way it is", it says "this is the best explanation we have for why this happens".
The difference is that there's actually evidence involved in science. Religion just has books of mostly unverifiable claims by people long dead with no supporting evidence except... more mostly unverifiable claims by other people long dead!
On the other hand there are many good moral teachings in religion that virtually anyone can agree on. It's just a shame they're mixed in with so much crap.
Ctrl-A is the poor man's CSS ;-)
- 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.Well, untill they get some propper science background (calculations, simulations and predictions to back up the explanations), they'll remain crackpots.
/. put this up; why are these people getting 'airtime' on (what used to be) a reputable techsite?
Which makes me wonder why
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Actually, that is incorrect. The 13 colonies, and in particular the Northern ones, had very high litteracy rates. Massachusetts had universal schooling, even for girls.
Yet, they formed a country with great prosperity.
Again, incorrect. The U.S. was quite poor; it wasn't even considered a nation of importance until the time of Teddy Roosevelt, i.e. the 20th Century. Before then Americans were considered to basically just be country bumpkins by people in the powerful countries of the day (UK, France, Germany). It didn't become a superpower until after the second world war. And that was to a large extent because of the efforts of imported, secular, German and Eastern European scientists.
And they believed in GOD. They thanked him for what they had.
I infer that you think that we should "go back" to a society where religion dominates all political thinking and public life. I would suggest that you look at the Middle Ages, or even the Dark Ages for an example of what life in a theocracy is like... For 1500 years they believed in God to the point of letting the church dominate all life - and lived in total squalor.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
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.
Parent bases his entire argument off presumption, bigotry and blatant falsehood.
You can stop reading the post right here "America is a christian nation founded upon christian principles." as that statement is 100% FICTION.
The Constitution of the United States was written upon ENLIGHTMENT Principles by people that were christian, deist, agnostic and atheist - and the "Seperation of Church and State" [Thomas Jefferson] was universally agreed upon.
So before Parent opens their mouth EVER again I suggest they LEARN HISTORY.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
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
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