
In August 2001 a high-altitude balloon was sent aloft to ride far above the great storms of the mid-west USA. Researchers had sent the balloon, like a Dark Rider out of Tolkien, riding into the moonless night, seeking sprites, gnomes and the ring of the elves. << Gnomes, sprites and elves stretch into space…

“The operation of removing a problem from its traditional context and placing it into a new one, looking at it through glasses of a different color, as it were, has always seemed to me of the very essence of the creative process. It leads not only to a revaluation of the problem itself, but often…

“The ultimate objective of comparative planetology, it might be said, is something like a vast computer program into which we insert a few input parameters (perhaps the initial mass, composition and angular momentum of a protoplanet and the population of neighboring objects that strike it) and then derive the complete evolution of the planet.” Carl…

[The blockquoted text in brown is from an original news story. The highlighted text is a statement of the “core beliefs” held by astronomers. The regular text is my commentary with short quotations in brown.] The above headline accompanied the news item in the Sydney Morning Herald of 9/27. Comet Borrelly has been visited by…

The ELECTRIC UNIVERSE® model has made some capital from the fact that the key evidence for a nuclear engine in the Sun, the neutrino count, failed to live up to expectations. In Physics World, July 2001, [see http://physicsweb.org/article/world/14/7/10 ] an article appeared that asserted that the solar neutrino puzzle is now solved and that it…

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION March 29, 2001 Original Caption Released with Image: Two tall volcanic plumes and the rings of red material they have deposited onto surrounding surface areas appear in images taken of Jupiter’s moon Io by NASA’s Galileo and Cassini spacecraft in…

NASA/JPL NEWS RELEASE Posted: March 29, 2001 Kinks in the Sun’s magnetic field have puzzled scientists since they first started studying the solar wind, and now researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have found the reason: they are caused by the evolution of a type of magnetic wave called Alfven waves. Scientists measured…

The following message is from Reuters: On February 12, the world’s first spacecraft will land on an asteroid – Eros, named after the Greek god of love – and stream a series of photographs in nearly real time. That equates to two images a minute, which will be streamed to the Web site www.near.jhuapl.edu At…

A Brown Dwarf Solar Flare From NASA Science News for July 12, 2000 Astronomers were surprised when NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory detected an x-ray outburst from a failed star only 60 times more massive than Jupiter. NASA’s latest observatory, designed to see the most violent and stunning cosmic phenomena, captured something unexpected. The Chandra X-ray…

Forget the glossy astronomy books and magazines – the Big Bang is pure fiction. The discoveries that prove it will also bring about the end of science-as-we-know-it. Of course, many books and articles have been published recently heralding the end of science – meaning there is little left to learn. The truth is the opposite.…