Thanks for the shot/photo of the eye in space. Too scarey though to think it is looking at us, like a real eye would be doing. Kind of unnerving? I guess I prefer to think of it as an eye-like image. Shot from different angels it might not look that way.

They should have turned the flash off, that's classic red-eye.

I agree with Neil.

Wow! Awesome picture, never knew anything about this nebula and now I am facinated by it. I agree with Neil, somebody get it some visine!

Who are these freaks who think its an eye???? GET a life people!

Wow how beautiful that is, beyond mans imagination of what is out there and what is yet to come...

Truly a beautiful pic, an astounding view, even if it is in artificially applied coloring.  The evident amout of energy released in the explosion of the star is just phenomenal and the fact that we can get such a clear and highly detailed pic of it, in whatever wavelenths we choose, is an amazing feat in itself.  Kudos to the researchers, the builders of the telescopes and the operators of them, without which we would be blind to the greater beauties of the mysteries of our physical Universe!! 

 That being said, I wonder why the researchers feel that the cometary material is what is the cause for the redder glow, one would think that such material would have been blown away by the intense light pressure as well as the initial shock wave of the nova (Supernova?) incident as the initial assumptions suggested. Could the dust and gasses instead be from planetary materials, torn apart by the intense gravitational and physical pressures of the stellar explosion be the culprits instead??  Given a system like our own, with several gas giants, there might be plenty of material for such a dust cloud if the shock and heat from the explosion were able to pulverise the solid planets, and asteroidal materials, and boil off the atmospheres of those gas giants as well as slower moving mass from the tail end of the explosion itself.  Just a possibility from a layman in the field, but it is fun to be able to add ones conjecture in this forum. Thank You Alan, for providing it!!!

They usually travel in pairs....where's the other one?

It's kind of funny seeing the Helix nebula.  When I was thinking about the photo of the volcano/impact on Titan, I thought the only other photo I have questions about is the Helix nebula.  If you look at a magnified image of the inner part of the blue-green outer ring, you see what looks to be "the pillars of creation" all over.  This is a photo of what I mean:

http://www.spacetoday.org/images/Hubble/
HubbleBeauty/HelixNebulaTadpolesNASA.jpg

I read one caption that mentioned in passing that they are 'cometary knots' but if the red eye is the cometary shell, could not these 'knots' be free floating planets?  The expanding gas from the star seems to have reviled that space is totally full of free floating planets that we just can't see.  Does anyone else have any insights as to what these are or how far away they are from the central white dwarf?

In looking at this and various other photos - whether in artificial colour or not - I always have the impression of two parts of the explosion which is the subject of the photo, one part blowing out of the polar regions of the star, north and south, in more or less straight lines, the faster the spin of the star the straighter and more obvious the lines become. The second portion of the expansion would involve the atmosphere and surface gases bursting away from the body of the star, followed by the more internal layers from the nuclear workings of the star. We see different views of the event in each picture, some edge-on, some vertically, some horizontally, and every point of view otherwise. I see similar details in pictures of other galaxies, too, with two spiral arms twisting in a St.Catharine's Wheel of fireworks, emanating from the north and south polar regions of the central black hole, or a plain globe of stars slowly accumulating without a back hole centre.

Chris, I myself thought that these likely represented the 'Oort Cloud' around that particular star. And if that is Not the case, that these are not the various comets, planetoids (the new pigmy class) and loose floating clouds of icy/rocky material left over from the creation of the star and possibly planetary system, then these may well represent various icy and/or rocky pigmy planetoids, full sized planetary sized bodies and even (frozen?)gas giants that are indeed floating thru free, interstellar space. And if That is the case, that space is indeed full of such bodies, it may well be another chunk of the "Dark Matter" equation. However, one would think that we would have seen greater numbers of them or had more evidence of their existence. Just some free floating thoughts mind you...

I can't believe you didn't call this column "The Mote in God's Eye" after the book!

It's an unfortunate fact that astronomy press releases today overwhelmingly refer to "gas and dust" when in fact they should be referring to matter in the plasma state.

 Many cosmologists who are aware of the role of plasma in the universe believe that 99.99% of the visible universe consists of matter within the plasma state.  You'll actually find this stated within astronomical plasma textbooks.  And yet, press releases like this one are written by people who consistently fail to mention this fact.

 Perhaps they don't want to confuse the public since few people understand what plasma actually is, but it's a big problem because plasma is very different than gas and dust.  Plasma physicists use completely different equations to represent plasma within the laboratory than they do for gases because plasma can conduct electricity.

 Unbeknownst to much of the public, mainstream astrophysicists actually believe that these electrical plasmas play little to no role within the universe.  In other words, astrophysicists have taken the unfortunate position of arguing that laboratory plasma experiments do *not* apply to large-scale galactic plasmas.  They *assume* that space plasmas are in fact ideal conductors, meaning that they can instantaneously neutralize any charge imbalances -- even when those space plasmas are light years in distance.  This is a very big deal because electrical plasma that has resistance is governed by completely different equations than the non-resistive plasmas.  Few people are aware that the guy who invented this concept of "frozen-in" magnetic fields for plasma where charges instantly neutralize themselves (Hannes Alfven), recused himself from this idea many years ago when he received the Nobel Physics Prize.  Astrophysicists, however, ignored him and continue to assert that even though laboratory electrical plasma phenomenon bear striking resemblances to many things we see through our telescopes, they assert that electricity does *not* flow through space.  This is a bold assertion that gets little attention within astronomical circles these days.  To assert that we are somehow smarter than nature in that we figured out an efficient way to transmit energy over great distances and yet nature could not have figured the same thing out is increasingly common in our technological society.

 We give ourselves more credit than we're due.

In this particular instance, the article mentions mysteriously strong x-rays.  In the electrical plasma view, there is no mystery at all.  What the article fails to mention is that nebulae with strong x-ray emissions tend to have x-rays with synchrotron components to them.  Synchrotron x-rays *only* result from strong electrical activity.  When astrophysicists assert that the x-rays *must* be the result of comets, they can only draw this conclusion because they have made earlier assumptions that have ruled out the right answer -- that electricity does in fact flow through space over electrical plasmas.

Astronomy, Geology and Archaeology are unique sciences in that we cannot perform input-output experiments with them.  For this reason, it's important to realize that we can never achieve full certainty of our understanding in those realms.

 Whenever you read an article like this that asserts a good deal of confidence about what *must* be causing an observation, it's healthy to maintain a good deal of skepticism and try to understand alternative explanations.  If you delve beneath the surface of astronomy press releases today, you will be very surprised by what you find.  There are numerous anomalies with astronomy today.  Nearly every week, another press release comes out where astrophysicists proclaim "surprise" at an observation and then posit a speculation about its cause.  Over time, many of these speculations end up in textbooks and are oftentimes presented as facts.  Making matters worse, astrophysicists have lost their ability to maintain a humble attitude about interpreting observations.  Many astrophysicists refuse to admit that they might be wrong about their interpretation of observations like this one even though the mysteries of the observation disappear when they drop their assumptions that electrical plasmas do not exist in space and even though they understand very little about dark matter and dark energy, which supposedly represents something like 95% of the universe's mass.

I highly recommend Don Scott's new book "The Electric Sky" for anybody who is interested in astronomy.  It will forever change your view of press releases like this one.  There is an alternative, cohesive explanation for all of our modern space observations that explains nearly all of the anomalies that our standard paradigms have so poorly addressed lately.  When you get down to it, there's no excuse for us being "surprised" on a weekly basis these days.  If we're still making anomalous observations with all of the data that we have available to us today, it would be wise to go back and check our early assumptions.  There are numerous questionable assumptions that have been made over time, but the assumptions regarding electricity over plasma in space are especially dubious.

Is it just me, or is there a real truth behind my perception that an atheist--apart from being someone who is terrified by the verb 'to believe' despite his constant and adamant recourse to it--is a person with no sense of humor who marches in protest against only those metaphors that he pretends not to see?

John

How close is this to what we precieve as the center of the universe?

After seeing such magnificent pictures of our universe, it's impossible to believe that our President would have let the Hubble Telescope "die" in space.

"pigmy planetoids?"  God, that's funny!  But... yeah!  If there were THAT MANY free floaters, maybe that would account for a few more percent of the missing matter they cannot find.

Maybe this is for another thread but you now got me thinking about dark matter.  The only really heavy matter that might exist in really significant quantities but that doesn't shine like a star would be really big “iron-worlds.”  Supernova happen when you get to the element of iron because iron cannot be fused together any further in a star.  When a star explodes, maybe it sends off extremely large chunks of iron that have far more mass than say Jupiter (maybe 70 X - maybe 1000 X more) but that never would turn on (despite there mass) because the property of Iron would not allow it...  Sure, the earth has a small iron core but maybe we’re just assuming that supernova mainly create (more or less) a “cloud” of heavy elements which then distills into a planetary system.  A cloud is the only thing that really would lead to a star with planets orbiting it as free floaters would be more like pin balls out there never to be able to slowly distill into a central system with other things orbiting it.  Such iron planets might outnumber stars 500 to one and yet would never bee seen… Now THATS something to sleep on!

i am with motie.

Yes, John A, it is just you.

For those who do not see the eye, you are missing out. No one really knows what these nebula's are really made of. We haven't gone that far yet but anyhow its a wonderful piece of God's creation.

Oh, Dear!  Here we go again!  A-theists (literally "without gods")  tend to use "I believe..." to indicate an unsubstantiated or partially substantiated idea.  Those who operate on the basis of "faith" tend to neglect to require proof of statements.  Please note the use of the word "tend".  I know that there are the usual proportion of extremists on both sides.

Motie beat me to it!  If you want some very interesting aliens, go read "The Mote in God's Eye".  Very good.  "One one hand, on the other hand and on the grasping hand...!"

Since we tend to percieve the Earth as the "center of the Universe or Cosmos" if you re-phrase the question that way you can get an answer:  700 LY, give or take a few thousand clicks.

Perception is limited by what you can percieve.  Since we don't see infra-red, ultraviolet, x-rays or gamma rays we are now having our consciousness expanded, literally.  These are good times!  Questions, questions everywhere!

I spy with my flaming lidless eye...

Something that begins with the letter 'H'!

Why are you surprised, Jerry? Our President is quite good at letting things, and people, die unnecessarily.

The dust is what got caught in the fabric of space when it was compressed during the explosion. most likely starting to form into sphere's already. for it to show up at this distance there must be at least a few planets worth.

Is this not a take on (I believe Larry Niven's) "A Mote In God's Eye"?

THE GOD ,AND GREAT CREATOR , OF THE HEAVENS AND EARTH IS SO AWESOME THAT MORTAL MANKIND CAN NOT BEGIN TO COMPREHEND HIS GREATNESS. AMEN

To Jerry: the raw image used for this picture was captured by the Spitzer 'scope, not Hubble. And in case you haven't noticed, HST is having pretty major problems on its own and may not, in fact, survive until the next servicing mission. Also worth noting that many people who know more than both you and I believe the servicing mission is a waste of resources that should go towards Hubble's replacement. In any event, what I'm trying to get at is while I respect your opinion, this really isn't the proper forum for irrelevant, political non sequiturs.

John A,

That was the most poignant and properly descriptive phrase I've read in a long time.  It's nice to come across such philosophical clarity in the haze of post-modern thought.  Thank you!  I have written that down and will share the thought.

Wouldn't you all just be dumb founded if it truly was "The Eye of God". Never doubt the miracles that happen everyday in this world regardless of science.

The Helix Nebula is wonderful.I'm sure there are many more sights out there that are even better.Great moments in the theory of randomtivity.

god's creation?

Apart from the pulverized comets bit, which is pretty funny actually, our sun is not going to explode. Not in a few billion years. Not ever. We on planet earth circle a star too small to ever grace the galaxy with a sparkly light show. The best our neighbors can hope for is a bloated red light for a few million years. You might say we'll all be at the center of the local Red Light district. The good part is that earth might live through it, to endlessly circle a slowly fading white dwarf.

I'm agnostic. Wake me when it blinks.

Chris, there may at least be a hint of more evidence of such free floaters. Several years ago, a few astronomers noted that many of the comets entering into the inner solar system were coming from roughly the same location. Based on who knows how many calculations, they speculated that there was a large Jovian-sized planet orbiting 50,000 AU from the sun. We need to remember that the sun’s influence does not end at Pluto, a mere 40 AU from the sun. It extends out – from what I know – half way to the nearest star, some 100,000+ AU. It is VERY LIKELY that our star has ‘captured’ some of these free floaters. From what I know we are still outside of the main plain of the galaxy so things may be a lot more hectic once back inside it.

Oh... forgot. Try to think of these gaseous nebulas like dusting for the fingerprints of such free floaters. After thinking about it, I also realized that my size estimate of my proposed iron balls (of 1000 Jovian masses) was probably a bit much… Maybe a few hundred though…?

Eye? what eye? Looks like a flying spaghetti monster's noodly appendage to me, not some white flowing bearded wish-bringing wizard's eye. That's just silly.

I'm presuming that Mr Eldridge's comments were directed at my post (it's too bad that this blog doesn't have the ability to attach responses to particular postings).

I challenge you to investigate Electric Universe Theory as proposed by Don Scott in his book before blindly accepting the speculation of traditional astronomers in regards to invisible planets that may be shooting comets at us.

If you take the time to investigate it, you will learn that *both* of our recent missions to comets -- Stardust and Deep Impact -- have returned results that would cause any rational, objective person to question our assumptions about comets themselves.  NASA scientists and astrophysicists alike are aware of this, and yet it does not interrupt their desire to publish additional speculative press releases in the media because these press releases gain them notoriety within the media, which in turn garners them additional funding for their work.  To speculate about the actions of comets at a great distance when we cannot even understand the data that we've received from our close encounters is reckless.  People like you and me then digest these articles believing that we're getting quality information when in fact the scientific method demands that we focus on trying to understand the anomalous data that's been coming back from our cometary probes before we continue to speculate about other things involving comets.  It is the only responsible course of action for us to follow.

The truth about comets, in fact, is that Wallace Thornhill, an Electric Universe theorist, was the *only* scientist to accurately predict the results of the Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel 1.  There is a very good summary of his predictions and their theories at http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf.  To this day, NASA scientists continue to be mystified by the same data that he very accurately predicted.  If you read that document, you will learn that comets are not in fact dirty snowballs.  Comets are just like asteroids in composition.  The only difference is their orbital paths.  Comets travel elliptical orbits, which cause them to pick up the electric charge of deep space while they are away from the Sun.  The coma and tail appear as a result of electrical stress upon the comet as it approaches the Sun.  It is not the result of any sublimation inspired by heat from the Sun, and we know this for several reasons -- because we've seen comets flare up near the gas giant planets far from the Sun where this heat is negligible; and because we've observed intense x-rays being emitted from comets.  Very interestingly, the Great Chicago Fire was most likely caused by the Earth passing through cometary debris after a comet broke apart.  The cometary breakup was actually observed to exhibit an apparent "bridge" connecting two different pieces of the comet (which would best be described as electrical filamentary plasma), and when the debris hit the Earth, the event was highly electrical in nature.  One unfortunate man was actually killed because he had coins in his two pockets and the lightning bolt that connected the coins through his torso killed him.  Can you imagine?

As you can see, there are the press releases, which would have you believe that our search for the truth in space is both scheduled, predictable and reliably efficient -- where scientists pretty much already "know" what they'll find before even looking through the telescopes.  And then there is history itself, which any student of will tell you involves many surprises.  One of the greatest surprises of the 21st century will be that much of our speculation about space in the 20th century was wrong.  This comes as no surprise to plasma physicists because our planet exists in a protected pocket of non-plasma space.  We're in that minuscule percentage of matter in space where plasma is a rare phenomenon.  You don't hit plasma until you get to the ionosphere.  But once you hit it, the various interacting plasmas never end until you run into another asteroid or planet.  We likely owe our very existence to this fact.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that intelligent life would have a difficult time understanding the universe.  Intelligent life would naturally believe that its surroundings would be representative of the entire universe.  This philosophy is actually called uniformitarianism.  It is the underlying philosophy of much of our speculative sciences (astronomy, geology and archeology), but there are many things that uniformitarianism cannot explain (like rilles on the rocky planets that travel both up and down with the topography!).  And we should be greatly troubled by this because that means that our primary underlying assumption may be wrong.  In other words, it's very likely that our immediate surroundings and the laws that govern them may not actually have a lot to do with those energetic events we're observing in deep space.  But there is something that we can do: we can investigate plasma phenomenon in the lab and see if it corresponds with our observations in space.  If you do this, you will find that electrical plasmas can explain all of the mystery of dark matter, strange supernova remnants, the flickering of "neutron stars", the rotational properties of spiral galaxies, the cosmic microwave background, the anomalously high temperatures of nebulae, the fact that the solar wind continues to accelerate even as it passes the planets, the high temperature of the Sun's corona (2 million K) as compared to its surface temperature (6000 K), and even the strange results returned by our cometary probes.

Once again, I highly encourage you to read Don Scott's book.  So long as you are just listening to the mainstream astronomers, you have nothing to compare your reading materials against.  Once you understand how plasma works, things make a lot more sense.  You'll be able to read between the lines of these press releases.  You'll thank me afterwards.

A wonderful reminder of the ceaseless recycling events that keep our galaxy and universe working.
In  a few billion years some of that material will make it's way into the formation of new solar systems and maybe even life.

Oh, and the red "eye" looks more like Terminator's!

Coincidance? or did God put it there? also, one word: WOW.

Chris Reeve of San Francisco writes well explaining much.  Plasma is frequently mentioned as an integral part of the 'material' involved in star-making in the works I have read (not as many as I would like to have read) but I understand the media's penchant for substituting 'gas and dust' as a more comprehensible phrase to describe the pictures telescopes provide.  The visible light by which we see our surroundings is far too dim to see those pictures by, so telescopes must use infra-red radiation (heat) and ultra-violet radiation above the top of our spectrum (x-ray,gamma ray, etc.) to get impressions of the Helix Nebula and other astronomical subjects into frames of reference we can 'see.' I don't think we can use plasma as yet to take pictures but wouldn't it make a great medium if we could?

Chris Eldridge, once we get far enough from sol, I think his gravity is balanced and then overcome by the gravity of whatever is there.  It is like jumping from one stone to another to cross over a stream.  Our astronauts talk of zero-gravity in the shuttle and the space station, and that's what they experience, but in reality they live in a balance between Earth's gravity pulling them down and centrifugal force throwing them outwards.

Chris, WOW, that artical is a real eye opener!! I did have just a small extrapolation from the Electrical Comet information though, it would suggest that one should be able to develope a manner of propulsion based on magnetic fields of some sort and use the magneto-electrical charge of the sun itself as the actual propulsive force instead of using a chemicalally reactive fuel or nuclear driven mass as the means of propelling oneself. Since the earth itself would have to have an electrical field that is balanced against the solar field it may not be actually that hard to find a method of magnetic suspension akin to 'antigravity' that would serve to transport us here near the planetary surface as well as put us into interplanetary and interstellar space, the hardest part would seem to be the managing of the capacitance over the distances involved and the changes in voltage, but that then just becomes an engineering problem. Once the proper theories become well enough understood; OF COURSE the Earth has an electrical charge to it, it does have a magnetic field, a metal core, and orbits within a magnetic field itself, so why dont we have technology available to us that takes advantage of it? It would seem that there is energy enough to use profligately without depending upon any form of fossil fuel....so why dont we have it???

Sorry for not attaching a last name to that Chris R.  I was responding to something Chris Sweet was saying about free floating planets.  I do have an observation, though.  Water has been found to be fairly common in star forming regions of space.  If comets were just like asteroids, why do they grow tails?

John W, Chicago, IL.: Agnostic or not, that was funny! 'Jesus', AL wrote: "...not some white flowing bearded wish-bringing wizard's eye. That's just silly." How true in regards to such a silly concept of God. How completely foolish to think of naming an astrological phenomenon for such a concept. Hopefully, their conception of the nickname was a little more grounded in the truth.

If a super nova did generate large Jovian chunks of iron instead of just a cloud, could such iron worlds achieve escape velocity from the galaxy? If these heavy, non-fusion worlds outnumbered normal stars, say, 500 to 1, many if not most might have left the galaxy and utterly fill the space between galaxies. Escape velocity for our solar system doesn’t seem to be too high. In fact they say an asteroid impact may very well have sent a bacteria ladened chunk of earth out into interstellar space. If a mere impact can do that, I’d be quite certain that a supernova could break the bounds of our galaxy altogether. Maybe this would better explain dwarf dark galaxies?

> If comets were just like asteroids, why do
> they grow tails?

This is probably a bit more than you asked for, but I'm guessing you guys don't mind ...

Plasma is a very unique state of matter compared to the others.  Matter is in the plasma state when it contains some number of mobile charged particles.  In other words, something has caused some electrons and/or protons to become unbound to their molecules.  This is why plasma can conduct electricity.  In fact, plasma can conduct electricity even better than copper.

But that's not all.  Plasma has three distinct states of excitation, depending on the current density: the dark mode, the normal glow mode and the arc mode.  You are already familiar with the last two.  The glow mode is how we generate neon lights and fluorescent tubes and the arc mode is how we create arc welders and HID lighting.  Lightning is also plasma in the arc mode.  So, when current passes through plasma in space, it can become illuminated.  Whether or not this is what's happening with comets depends on who you ask.  Like I said, astrophysicists can be a stubborn bunch.  They are *unanimously* taught in college in a course called magnetohydrodynamics that plasmas in space can be treated ideally as fluids.  This is most likely a huge mistake because real life non-idealized plasma in our laboratories is definitely electrical in nature.  They know this; they just refuse to believe that these lab results scale up to space phenomenon.  These electrical plasmas obey Maxwell's equations and tend to form filamentary strands called Birkeland Currents.  Birkeland Currents will tend to pair up and twist around one another with such a great force that it makes gravitational forces negligible.  You already understand this on a basic level because you already understand that lightning and sparks do not obey gravity.  Anyways, modeling plasmas in space like fluids is kind of like modeling lightning as fire.  Maybe it works under some ideal scenarios, but under the vast number of situations, the two are very different.

When astrophysicists model space plasmas as fluids, they inevitably generate ginormous error terms.  The electrical force that results from Birkeland Currents is something like 10^36 times stronger than the gravitational force.  If electrical plasmas do exist in space, then one would expect that we'd be seeing some very strange phenomenon in the sky that are difficult or theoretically impossible to create with just gravity.  This is what a black hole is.  Astrophysicists *assume* that black holes *must* exist because they observe the presence of insanely huge forces.  They then *extrapolate* the mass based upon this force.  What they don't tell you is that we've actually imaged the center of the Milky Way galaxy using various wavelengths and we can see very clearly what's there.  It's *not* a black hole.  It is identical to the morphology of an electrical plasma phenomenon called a homopolar motor, which is the same exact thing that makes your power meter spin on the side of your house (!).  It's actually a common practice these days for mainstream astrophysicists to try to convince you that you should believe their *math* over your own *eyes*.  I recommend that you be more skeptical than that.

Once charged particles have been stripped from their parent molecules, they don't necessarily remain illuminated.  In fact, it's been our experience that all of space is filled with these charged particles.  But you cannot see them and we possess no way of observing them aside from intercepting them.  Plasma in the dark mode, in fact, can explain how it's possible that we are observing the presence of forces within the universe and the absence of matter, ie dark matter.  Mainstream astrophysicists, on the other hand, would have you believe that with all of our sophisticated telescopes that can now see in nearly every single wavelength, we can only see around 4 or 5% of the universe's mass.  This is completely absurd.  If dark matter is 3x more common than normal visible matter, then why have we not been able to observe it?  People have been trying for *20* years now, and nobody has succeeded.  That's because it does not exist.  Dark matter is the error term you get when you model electrical plasma in space as a fluid.

The most amazing part of the whole story though relates to the Sun.  You've never been told as much, but there are numerous major flaws with our belief that the Sun is a thermonuclear reaction.  The corona is 2 million K, whereas the surface of the Sun does not exceed around 6000 K.  If the core of the Sun is generating the heat, then how does this heat get through the surface without heating it up?  Astrophysicists have proposed a mechanism for this called magnetic reconnections, but the father of plasma physics, Hannes Alfven, and many other plasma physicists vehemently argue against the existence of magnetic reconnections.  Another big big problem is that the solar wind continues to increase as it passes the planets.  The *only* way to cause charged particles to continue to accelerate is with an electric field centered at the Sun.  This is very problematic if the Sun is just a controlled nuclear reaction.  And the biggest problem of all for astrophysicists today is the fact that neutrino production by the Sun inversely correlates with the sunspot cycle.  Neutrinos are a necessary byproduct of nuclear fusion within the Sun.  But the thing is, they are not charged particles and they can travel through just about anything (it takes up to a light-year of pure lead to stop them).  Astrophysicists' models for the Sun require that a complex process of convection occurs within the Sun that takes something like 100,000 years for energy and particles from the core to get to the surface.  But sunspots are on the *surface* of the Sun! ... and they are a *magnetic* phenomenon.  How is it possible that the sunspots can be correlated with something that supposedly happened in the core 100,000 years ago?  It's IMPOSSIBLE.  If neutrinos correlate with sunspots in *any* way, it means that fusion is happening closer to the surface of the Sun.  And for this reason, and numerous other good reasons, one must conclude that the Sun receives its power *externally*.  As breathtaking as this sounds, there is good reason to believe it.  Watch closely the ongoing reports coming back from the Ulysses probe which is monitoring the poles of the Sun *right now*.  It is making observations right now that demonstrate a million mph flow of charged particles *into* the Sun's poles!  Stars do not progress through phases.  They are in fact powered externally.  As absurd as it sounds, the Sun could stop shining tomorrow ... or it could become incredibly bright.  The fact that we exist seems to imply that either this just doesn't happen very often or we've managed to survive events like this *by chance*.

To be honest, I haven't even scratched the surface.  The full story is so amazingly interesting that it's just a matter of time before this alternative Electric Universe Theory goes mainstream.  Keep in mind though that if you try to talk to an astrophysicists about any of this, he will laugh at you and allege that the EU theorists are absurd.  Their confidence, however, only results by *ignoring* all of the various anomalies.  They spend all of their time developing extremely complex proofs for the big bang with things like the cosmic microwave background, and yet, they can't even explain things that are much closer to home -- like comets and rilles on the rocky planets.  Sure, the cosmic microwave background can be used to prove the Big Bang Theory, but that's because we choose to do so.  We could come up with alternative explanations for it, and people have!

Beautiful picture!

Chuck, in regards to thoughts about novel anti-gravity propulsion mechanisms, you're probably right.  But like many worthwhile ideas today, this is currently considered "pseudoscience".  So long as an idea retains this stigma, it will not receive funding.

Through our speculative and even more physical sciences, we've absolutely convinced ourselves that we're on the right track in understanding the universe.  But there are numerous anomalies that remain completely unexplained.  We in fact cannot say that we understand the universe until we have a cosmology that can explain all of these anomalies.

For instance, have you ever wondered how it is possible that the dinosaurs were so large?  Investigations into this strange situation have led to inconclusive results.  In our current world, the muscle cell structure that's used to propel all vertebrates and invertebrates is basically the same.  The only difference exists with the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cells.  Elephants have a different number of mitochondria than do mice, and so on, but the remainder of the cell is the same.  But there is a problem when you try to include dinosaurs.  The thing about muscles is that their strength increases as the square of the muscle volume while mass increases as the cube of the muscle volume.  We know this to be the case for all vertebrates and most of the invertebrates currently on the planet.  That implies that there is an upper limit to the size of a land-walking animal.  You can calculate this upper limit and it ends up at around 20,000 lbs -- which neatly corresponds to a weight just slightly larger than our largest land walkers, the elephants.  Where does this leave the dinosaurs though?  Nobody knows.  It's an anomaly.  A complete mystery.  Many of the dinosaurs were absolutely tremendous in size.  It has been postulated that the dinosaurs were all actually water creatures, but their teeth are worn (which wouldn't happen if they were eating kelp all the time) and we can see their footprints on land.

There are other problems with the dinosaurs.  Some of their necks are so long that they should snap if projected horizontally and they shouldn't be able to get blood to their brain if projected vertically.  Bones from flying creatures have been discovered that indicate plane-sized flying creatures.  The pterasaurs, for instance, had estimated wingspans (based upon the bones recovered at Big Bend) of around 50 feet!  We can't get birds to be bigger than 50 lbs right now, even though the Mongolians have been trying to breed their falcons larger for thousands of years.  Bigger birds just can't land without killing themselves.  How can the pterasaurs have been so large?  They must have weighed hundreds or thousands of pounds.  This topic has been debated for decades now with no resolution.

There is only one answer to all three mysteries:  Gravity here on Earth has changed.  And this is where astronomy and physics come into play.  We like to think that an asteroid impact killed the dinosaurs.  But, to some extent, this *assumes* that the Earth has no stored electrical charge because if it did, then any encroaching large body that had a different charge than the Earth's would experience a dramatic charge equalization before impact which would likely break it into lots of smaller pieces.

Have you ever wondered why nearly all craters are round?  Doesn't this seem peculiar given that few asteroids strike at 90-degree angles?  We're told that this is because the kinetic energy of the impact would create an explosion, which would create a round crater.  But did you know that Meteor Crator in Arizona has *undisturbed* sedimentary layers beneath it?  How is that possible if it's an explosion from kinetic energy?  It's *not*.  Meteor Crater and many other round craters are the result of massive electrical discharges between the Earth and foreign bodies.  This is what causes many rilles (canyons) too.  The Grand Canyon was likely created in the same exact way.  That would explain why the Colorado River goes right *through* the Kaibab Upwarp instead of going around it, and that would explain why the debris from the Grand Canyon's excavation is nowhere to be found.  We see similar things on the other rocky planets and the Moon.  Aristarchus Crater on the Moon -- that crater with the extremely long spokes emanating from it -- has no non-electrical explanation because those spokes are not debris fields.  They exhibit all of the characteristics of burn scars.  Not debris.  Furthermore, both that crater and the Tycho crater are approximately centered at high points on the topography on that side of the Moon -- exactly where you would expect a massive lightning bolt to occur.  The discovery of magnetic rocks all over the Moon came as a surprise when we recovered our Moon rocks decades ago, but it was predicted by Velikovsky long before that to be the natural result of energetic electrical events between the Moon and other foreign bodies.  Our solar system is completely riddled with clues that indicate large-scale transient electrical activity.

I can go on and on and on like this literally for hours.  The evidence that electricity is flowing through space is overwhelming.  Astrophysicists just choose to ignore it.  And whatmore, there is something very strange happening with gravity.  The dinosaurs experienced less gravity than we do today.  This should cause us to suspect a link between gravity and electrical charge.  But science moves forward as if none of this is a problem on its pre-ordained path.  Astronomers continue looking through their telescopes for proof of the Big Bang while ignoring the evidence for electricity in space that you can see by just looking up at night time at the Moon with your bare eyes.

So, to answer your question, yes, there probably is a mechanism for anti-gravity and it likely relates to electrical charges and plasmas.  The thing is, we as a society have become so enraptured in our awesome technologies that we've convinced ourselves that our speculative sciences are just as advanced.  But although a complicated cell phone must work in order to be purchased, NASA press releases require no proof of concept in order to be believed by millions.  In truth, the anomalies are still out there, and only by vigorously pursuing those anomalies will we ever fully understand the universe.  You should be skeptical of any theory that tries to sweep them under the rug rather than directly addressing them.  And any scientist that dismisses evidence contrary to their own theories just because that person was educated differently or because that foreign science used different techniques to achieve their results may satisfy a personal desire to prove to the public that they're right, but will not get any closer to finding the truth.

"Is it just me, or is there a real truth behind my perception that an atheist--apart from being someone who is terrified by the verb 'to believe' despite his constant and adamant recourse to it--is a person with no sense of humor who marches in protest against only those metaphors that he pretends not to see?"
John A, San Diego, CA

Athiests are hardly "terrified by" the phrase "to believe". We tend to be afraid of those who "Believe". I use the term "belief" and "Belief" to represent two different concepts as illustrated by these two different meanings of the word belief (from M-W http://209.161.33.50/dictionary/belief ):

Belief =
1: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing
2: something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group

belief =
3: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence

Athiests believe that meaning 3 is the positive & appropriate way to believe. In other words, belief is based on the testing of evidence.

Those who Believe only have any interest in meanings 1 & 2.

Evidence has shown that the Beliefs of Believers are contrary to the test of evidence, both to the external world and to the internal consistency of the body of Beliefs. For monotheists it is not necessary to look farther than Genesis 1 & 2 which tells two different & conflicting stories about the creation of man & woman. God says the value of pi is 3 in 1 Kings 7:23 (if you want to argue a cabbalistic interpretation of the meaning of this tract, pleas check my responses at

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/
archive/2007/02/09/53659.aspx

... to this idea). For members of the christian sect, try & make a coherent  & non-contradictory account of what happened on the first easter sunday. You will find it impossible to reconcile the accounts in the 4 gospels.

As an athiest, I do see your metaphors. I actively reject most of them as nonsense. The primary idea, the existence/rulership of "The Big Fairy", I most specifically reject. I prefer my metaphors to be testable by reality. I prefer my metaphors to be flexible enough to accomodate new information. I prefer my metaphors to reflect truth rather than "The Truth".

I take positive ideas regardless of the alleged source of the ideas. I have always been quite fond of many of the statements attributed to the Galilean rabbi Yeshua/Eshoo (sorry if you don't like my use of his probable real name rather than the usual Greek pun of Jesus), but the metaphor of "Christ" I find to be nonsense.

I have learned much from Chuang Tzu, but I am not a "Taoist".

I have learned much from Guatama Siddhartha, but I am not a "Buddhist".

I have learned much fron Yeshua bin Joseph, but I am not a "Christian".

As to lacking a "sense of humor" and "march(ing) in protest against  only those metaphors that he pretends not to see", I will leave that to you & your fellow Believers.

I see your metaphors and I reject them based on a universe of evidence.

My universe appears to be laughing at the arrogant little monkeys rather than proclaiming them to be the epitome of "Creation".

Chris R. and Chris E. -- The site recommended by Chris R. is very interesting, I will have to watch for Electric Universe explanations of other events. Chris E., we have been told that comets, like those 'free floaters' in the pictures you provided, are composed of water/snow/ice holding together with 'dirt,' 'dust,' or grainy stuff, and the tails are the water blowing off the comet in streaks when the comet's orbit swings near the Sun. In that case, asteroids like the ones in the Belt between Mars and Jupiter should not possess tails, because they are rocky remnants confined to their own orbits. But some of them do. And there are pictures of known comets out around Jupiter and Saturn, with tails. So comet theory must be revised to co-incide with that information. Plasma does that. And I just read that in Brazil researchers have figured out that ball lightning is plasma discharge when lightning heats silica in soil,vaporizing it into an aerosol that glows from the silicon re-combining with Oxygen. The researchers placed wafers of silicon between two electrodes, zapped it with electricity, and produced a small explosion with small shards of silicon and small tennis-balls of glowing orbs floating around. Why not project that theory onto comets? Plasma is neutron-stripped electricity, abundant in nova- and supernova-spawned nebulae and should be the subject of more research.

There is one serious problem with the "Electrical Comet" theory which casts doubt on the whole "Electric Universe" theory.

Numerous satellites, which are made of metal & hence conductive, have traveled within the solar system with a substantial radial element to their travel. In other words they have, similiar to a comet, approached & retreated from the Sun during their travels. Various forms of gravity assist (gravitational slingshot effect) have been used on a variety of space probes, including orbits which have traveled near  Jupiter's orbit and within the inner solar system.

These probes are all heavily instrumented and they would easily detect any so-called "Electrical Comet" effect. In fact, they would probably be immobilized if such a phenomenum occured. The described effects in the reference listed above include high-voltage arcing, which would destroy electronic devices with ease.

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