The Black Hole at the Heart of Astronomy

This image shows the form of the plasmoid at the center of the galaxy (and the particle jets created when the magnetic field begins to collapse).
This image shows the form of the plasmoid at the center of the galaxy (and the particle jets created when the magnetic field begins to collapse).

“Astronomical fads have always involved miracle working to some degree, and their discussion in so-called workshops and in the streams of papers that pour into the journals have affinities to the incantations of Macbeth’s witches on the blasted heath.” —Fred Hoyle, Home is where the wind blows. The so-called “queen” of the sciences, cosmology, is…


It’s Time for Change

Time for change
Time for change

But scientists, who ought to know  Assure us that it must be so.  Oh, let us never, never doubt  What nobody is sure about. —Hilaire Belloc Tumultuous times like these encourage questioning of long-held convictions. Our predicament seems the result of complacent reliance on consensus and a failure of commonsense. But for adventurous, practical souls…


Astronomy has little to celebrate in 2009!

Excerpt from the letter from the telescope allocation committee barring Arp from access to telescopes.
Excerpt from the letter from the telescope allocation committee barring Arp from access to telescopes.

For those who haven’t noticed, this year is “The International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009).” The International Year of Astronomy will involve 135 nations and thousands of events around the world. It marks the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the first use of an astronomical telescope by Galileo Galilei. However, astronomers have little to celebrate…


NASA’s Dim View of Stars

This artist's concept shows the dimmest star-like bodies currently known
This artist's concept shows the dimmest star-like bodies currently known

“..astronomers can tell the temperature of the central regions of the Sun and of many other stars within a few percentage points and be quite sure about the figures they quote.” —A Star Called the Sun, George Gamow. The cone nebula shows a star at the top of a conical-shaped dusty plasma, festooned with lights.…


Assembling the Solar System

Cosmic Tornado HH49/50
Cosmic Tornado HH49/50

“The Genesis team can take great satisfaction not just in having salvaged their mission, but in underscoring once again how little we know about how our strange and wonderful home planet came to exist.” — Kelly Beatty, Sky & Telescope From the NASA website comes the following report: “Kevin McKeegan’s announcement at the 2008 Lunar…


The $6 billion LHC Circus

Miracle cartoon
Miracle cartoon

Science has become an international circus. And opening day for “The Greatest Show on Earth” has arrived. In the 27 km main circus ring we have the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, starting up after $6 billion dollars and thirty years of development. Before the show the clowns have warmed up the audience with fantastic…


Electric Gravity in an ELECTRIC UNIVERSE®

Newton's apple
Newton's apple

“..if a special geometry has to be invented in order to account for a falling apple, even Newton might be appalled at the complications which would ensue when really difficult problems are tackled.” — Sir Oliver Lodge, FRS, 1921. [1] [This news item is shortened and modified from a presentation given in Cambridge, England, in September…


Twinkle, twinkle electric star

Primary and secondary electric currents in the Sun.
Primary and secondary electric currents in the Sun.

Twinkle, twinkle electric star  Astronomers don’t know what you are! “Sit down before facts like a child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.” — T.H. Huxley An undergraduate textbook on the structure and evolution of stars makes a…


Electric Galaxies

Electric galaxy
Electric galaxy

“The conformist propensity of social institutions is not the only reason that erroneous theories persevere. However, once embedded within a culture, ideas exhibit an uncanny inertia, as if obeying Newton’s law to keep on going forever until acted upon by an external force.” —Henry Zemel. “One fact that strikes everyone is the spiral shape of…


Whatever happened to real science?

The Einstein Cross.
The Einstein Cross.

Just as much of modern science has become self-serving in striving for status and funding, the theory of how science should be done is similarly afflicted. An assessment of a theory based on ‘degrees of belief’ might be useful if scientists didn’t routinely ignore, minimize or dismiss falsifying evidence and twiddle the countless knobs on…