As NASA’s Cassini spacecraft approached Saturn last July it found evidence that lightning on Saturn is roughly one million times stronger than lightning on Earth. “That’s just astonishing to me!” said University of Iowa Space Physicist Don Gurnett, who notes … Continue reading →

On October 26, NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft swung by Titan at a distance of less than 1200 kilometers, the first of many fly-bys planned in the next few years. Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and the second largest moon in the … Continue reading →

“… almost the entire body of astronomers can go wrong in a way that, in later years, seems absurd. To hear scientists talk today, you would think the first moment in human history in which nonsensical views are not widely … Continue reading →

From NASA and PhysOrg.com comes the following report: Cassini detects Lightning and Radiation at Saturn and Titan’s Glow The spacecraft’s radio and plasma wave science instrument detected radio waves generated by lightning. “We are detecting the same crackle and pop … Continue reading →

“Comets are important, they could be the key to the universe …maybe.” – Burt Lancaster, in the movie Local Hero. From Nature, 5, 174, December 28, 1871: “Encke’s Comet and the Supposed Resisting Medium,” by Professor W. Stanley Jevons. “The … Continue reading →

”Nothing so evokes gasps of delight as Saturn’s ring. The reason I think, is a collision of the expected and the improbable. A ringed sphere is the archetypal planet of our childhood, familiar from a thousand comic strips, coloring books, … Continue reading →

The following excerpts come from a report that appeared in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) magazine, SPECTRUM, for April. The report demonstrates that when science has lost its way, engineers must use their intuition to make progress. … Continue reading →

‘.. it may sometimes be that not to know one thing that is wrong could be more important than knowing a hundred things that are right.’ – Halton Arp, Quasars, Redshifts & Controversies The electrical character of dust devils and … Continue reading →

Everything astronomers can see, stretching out to distances of 10 billion light-years, emerged from an infinitesimal speck. – Martin Rees, Our Cosmic Habitat (2001). “A widely-accepted foundation stone of scientific logic involves a process of elimination, requiring all available possibilities … Continue reading →

‘Before each revolution, all the pegs seemed square and all the holes round. In each case, it was not until it was realized that one had to discard the whole frame of reference and seek another that answers came in … Continue reading →