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."
The universe is clearly electrical in nature, which is why every "spacial anomaly" encountered in Star Trek history causes consoles to spark and power systems to fail. :)
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
What kind of horse shit story is this?
It's St Andrews, not "Saint Andrews", this kind of crippling ignorance is astonishing.
>>this kind of crippling ignorance among professional astrophysicists is astonishing.
Isn't it rather an indication that they're doing their job? Data which challenge our current models are the most valuable things scientists can collect, because they give researchers chance to refine their theories.
If all the astrophysicists and satelite projects were returning information which merely fit their current theories, there would seem to be less need for such research. In scientific research, the known unknowns are difficult challenges, but the discovery of unknown unknowns are the wonderful bits. Definite Ignorance leads to Progress.
Is Slashdot now a forum for random cranks to publish their personal rants? This isn't a story.
Er. Can we have less of the "electric universe" guy? Geez. Next you'll be posting Bearden rants.
It seems that any fringe theorist can now post an apparently topical article to Slashdot as a way of getting hits on their Velikovski-style planetary catastrophe web site.
Codswallop. Everybody knows the universe is powered by good old steam. I'd post a link to the official research site on the prestigious geocities.com server, but space aliens running on diesel stole my bookmarks.
The writer displays a very poor understanding of the scientifical methods used in professional science. And SlashDot should have "filtered" this story.
I am tempted to write: This kind of crippling ignorance among article writers is astonishing.
But I would rather not spoil my positive Karma
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
The Yin: genius multiple-PhD types figure out something about the sun. Good for them.
The Yang: irrelevant mention of a cabal of self-referential mouth breathers who don't know energy is not a discrete thing but is a property of other things.
Maybe Slashdot posts articles like this to give us a poke and see what our reaction will be. That reminds me of a certain thing I can't quite remember, I think it starts with a "t".
One thing I noticed about Slashdot's feigned ignorance as humour (if that's what it is), it's always about things other than IT. For example, let's see an article asserting that integrated circuits are actually an alien technology harvested from flying saucers the US Government has hidden away. Not funny because it's too ridiculous?
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
A bunch of crazy crank muthas want to shift some copies of their crappy book. Strange that /. wants to help them in that. Note to author: Yes, you did go for too big a print run. How about tearing the pages from each copy and using to wipe your ass? They'll obviously already be covered in shit so it'll make little difference to the strength of your arguments.
Take this down. Do it now.
Can we tag this pseudoscience.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Just because I don't have a deep knowledge of the part neurons play in intelligence, doesn't mean I can't be completely certain when somebody is acting like a complete dickhead.
Levels of abstraction. Learn about them, friend.
I submit that this kind of crippling ignorance in a story submission is...well not astonishing. What was he smoking???
Shame on you Slashdot for even letting this touch the front page. I read "this kind of crippling ignorance among professional astrophysicists is astonishing," and wondered who in the hell was who had the balls to say something like that...Is "SteakNShake" a famous physicist I haven't heard of?
Then I clicked that last link. Ooooh. This guy is nuts. Still doesn't explain why he got his rant accepted on Slashdot.
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 ).
I'm not exactly the most savvy Slashdot reader around, and even I know this "electric universe" theory is about as credible as the time cube.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
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
I'm sorry, but any pseudoscientific theory of physics that omits Time Cube is one bound to fail peer review at the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Please, slashdot editors! Do your due diligence for once!
In fact I know a B5 scholar who wrote a dissertation on exactly what you wrote last week.
How the sun sends the massive amounts of radiant energy towards us is not very important to a climatologist. What happens when that energy reaches us and how our environment reacts to it *is*.
By your logic, how can we *possibly* justify doing anything ever unless we are omniscient?
If your house is on fire you don't just refuse to get the fire extinguisher or refuse to call the fire brigade or refuse to LEAVE THE HOUSE just because you don't know exactly which appliance in your kitchen started it.
I have worked with scientists for a number of years from a variety of fields (I am a writer and interviewer). I have witnessed the gamut between arrogance and humility, as one would expect in any profession. Yet, I have never spoken to a single scientist or someone who works extensively with scientists who has said science knows everything there is to know. The very questions raised by the process of science is what drives some of the most dedicated individuals I have met. The idea that some level of "ignorance" on the part of science exists and is "astonishing" is merely indicative of someone who is inherently ignorant OF science. No scientist has all the answers nor, I would guess, does any scientist WANT to know all the answers. When there are no more questions, there is no reason to continue searching. The person who posted this story has, in my opinion, an axe to grind with science as a whole for what has probably been a demolition of some silly superstition or mythology, clung to so desperately by those who still need magic as an explanation for the world instead of the inherent splendor of how things really work.
Whatever questions there are regarding the sun and its structure will most likely be resolved someday, if the past is any indication. So too, will new questions arise and the quest will continue. "CowboyNeal" would do well to educate him/herself on this very basic aspect of human nature instead of issuing the tacit implication that because science hasn't answered some current question or another, its past answers must now be considered suspect.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
...a solid body: http://thesurfaceofthesun.com/ ...the focus of an electric discharge, which powers it: http://www.electric-cosmos.org/sun.htm ...to be respected. The sun doesn't dodge bullets. Bullets dodge the sun. http://passthebrass.com/2005/12/chuck-norris-owns- you/
As an amateur who knows a number of professionals in this area, I have always been surprised that most of the theorizing being published seemed to be sustained by Newton's law of gravity, Einstein's theory of relativity, the observations of particle physicists, and little else. Rarely would electromagnetism enter into the explanations of natural phenomena. This is despite the fact that most of the matter in the universe, as plasma, is subject to a force which is 10 to the 43rd power times more powerful than gravity.
I had questions like: 'how can supermassive black holes, giant sources of gravitational power, emit jets of matter, hot enough to emit X-rays, at nearly the speed of light' and 'how can a diffuse gas cloud of several solar masses and twenty light years across, rotating at the rate of the galaxy it is within, manage to condense into a star with a rotation period of ten hours -- what happened to the angular momentum." They remained unanswered until recently when theorizing involving electromagnetic forces appeared.
I had been told: "Gravity operates only in one direction and is simple to calculate; electromagnetism is actually two separate forces, each in two polarities, and it is very much more difficult to model." I don't think this man was lazy or undereducated, but we are looking at the "old shoes" phenomenon, with a twist.
Everyone cares to use the shoes which are broken in and comfortable, and the tendency is to use them for everything, however inappropriate. But there is more to this than that. Somewhere the plasma- and astro-physicists got into a mud slinging contest. It wasn't science, it was personal. This pointless wrangling militates against good science, because as Mr. Ragle pointed out, nobody has a big enough window to see it all yet. I have seen this "nuts vs. kooks" mentality in the conflict between visual- and radio-astronomers for years. It resembles children arguing about who has the dirtiest socks.
Everybody whose blood is running hot over this matter might want to sit back and consider that if the search for truth requires a majority of time spent proving the other guy wrong, perhaps it is not truth that is being sought.