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."
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Yes, what a horrible tactic, using facts to prove anything that's even remotely true! Yay internet and yay slashdot!
It is true that the process of science involves getting data that puzzles you, which should force you to reexamine your model. Institutional inertia inhibits anything but tinkering and ad hoc modification of existing beliefs. When data arrives that falsifies a popular belief, we get to watch a lot of post facto justification for why the models fail to predict what we observe. We've seen this happen with comets. Close-up images and spectral analysis of comets shows they are not made of "volatiles" and ices but of rock. Data from the "Deep Impact" mission suggests the ratio of rock to hydroxyl (seen as evidence that water had been present, not is present) is about 99:1. This "shocked" astronomers all over the world, who did not challenge their beliefs that comets are made of ices, they simply looked harder for the water they knew must be there. After a while the bafflement led way to the calm surety that all was well with comet models and we just "didn't see" all the water that must be in every comet. If we believe the evidence we follow a different path. 1. hypothesis: comets are made of ice; 2. evidence: data says comets are about 99% rock; 3. conclusion: abandon icy comet model, comets are in fact rocks