Slashdot Mirror
Astronomers Again Baffled by Solar Observations
SteakNShake writes "Once again professional astronomers are struggling to understand observations of the sun. ScienceDaily reports that a team from Saint Andrew's University announced that the sun's magnetic fields dominate the behavior of the corona via a mechanism dubbed the 'solar skeleton.' Computer models continue to be built to mimic the observed behavior of the sun in terms of magnetic fields but apparently the ball is still being dropped; no mention in the announcement is made of the electric fields that must be the cause of the observed magnetic fields. Also conspicuously absent from the press releases is the conclusion that the sun's corona is so-dominated by electric and magnetic fields because it is a plasma. In light of past and present research revealing the electrical nature of the universe, this kind of crippling ignorance among professional astrophysicists is astonishing."
...a mass of incandescent gas in a giant nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is converted to into helium at temperatures of millions of degrees.
capcha: mammal (Alrighty! Yet another song by TMBG.)
Sorry, too angry reading the latter half to look at the first links. The St. Andrew's stuff is legit. The electric stuff is crap
I submit that this kind of crippling ignorance in a story submission is...well not astonishing. What was he smoking???
Did you see the electric universe team? One retired professor of engineering. One guy who claims "university training" in astronomy. A "physicist" who dropped out of grad school because "the lack of curiosity and the frequent hostility toward this challenge to mainstream science convinced Thornhill to pursue an independent path outside academia." The rest appear to be comparative mythologists.
This is the crew that's calling modern astronomers crippled by ignorance? Excuse me while i die laughing...
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Please Mr. Slashdot, stick to the computer stuff! There is nothing wrong (or even inaccurate) in the cited articles. The structure of the solar magnetic field is complex, and these simulations are probably going to help a lot in understanding them. Personally, I'm looking forward to reading their article ( http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007astro.ph..2604H ).
A number of interests feel it is important to undermine confidence in science by teaching bogus controversies. Slashdot gets quite a bit of this in both submissions and comments. This one is so bogus that it is suprising it slipped through but you'll notice its is attracting its share of global warming is non-anthropogenic posts. Unltimately, this kind of thing teaches us to look more closely at the sources of information. The attempts to manipulate us through our skepicism will eventually be recognized as dishonest: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion-c ould-be-paid-for-by.html.s -selling-solar.html
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Real Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
'Astronomers baffled;' yeah, right. This is a fringe 'theory' that was deleted from Wikipedia in January.
This article reminds me of a famous editorial in the NYT. It took them almost 50 years to print a correction. Excerpted from Wikipedia: On January 13, 1920, a New York Times editorial on page 12 entitled "A Severe Strain on Credulity" ridiculed Robert Goddard and his claim that a rocket would work in space: That Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react - to say that would be absurd. Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
It's a crackpot theory.
-mazarin5, physicist
Fnord.
Last year, The Onion did a great writeup on this guy.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Sure; it's not a fringe theory because it was deleted; it wasn't even deleted for being a fringe theory - Wikipedia has plenty of pages about those. It was deleted for being "notable primarily in the minds of the advocates," among a few other reasons. It's presence on, and removal from, Wikipedia is for comparison to its posting on Slashdot and the recognition by readers that this is an effort at self-promotion. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
The DePalma N-Machine is described on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_DePalma
It is supposed to be a free-energy machine. Which is weird, because DePalma taught physics at MIT for 15 years. But it appears he came up with this N-Machine concept near the end or after of his teacher career. Anyways, here is the punchline of the wikipedia article:
"This single test failed to demonstrate the over-unity potential of the N-machine - most of the output energy being lost as heat - and the project was immediately dissolved."
"The right to do something does not mean doing it is right." William Safire
The so-called "missing neutrinos" were found five years ago. Look it up:e m
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_neutrino_probl
As for the rest... dude, you're not only barking up the wrong tree, you're barking mad as well. Mass shield? Solid surface? Electrical comets? Give me a break.
Paranoia is simply reality on a finer scale.
Ian,
what does the electric sun model predict that is in conflict with "mainstream" theory? This would be the perfect way to prove that it is correct and the fusion model is incorrect. Conversely, if there is no measurable difference between the models, then it becomes a matter of philosophy about which is the truth.