Top Ten Scientific Facts

I got banned for posting this on Richard Dawkins Forum. Once again we see that for those people who are ignorant of the facts and have no logical or scientific argument, censorship = science. Not only did they permanently ban me but they deleted the post because they are literally terrified of the power of words and afraid of the obvious persuasiveness of the truth.

Here are my top ten scientific facts in no particular order.

Top Ten Scientific Facts

1. Space and time are not material objects (Anaxagoras, Zeno, Leukippos, Demokritos, Aristotle, Leibniz 1689, 1695, 1716, Maupertuis 1750, Kant 1781, 1787, Davisson 1927, Heisenberg 1958).
2. Hydrocarbons are abiogenic (Von Humboldt 1804, Bakewell 1813, Berthelot 1866, Mendeleyev 1877, Kudryavtsev 1951).
3. The mantle is cold and its rigidity increases with depth (Tassos and Ford 2005, Tassos 2008).
4. The Pacific Ocean was entirely enclosed during the Cretaceous and did not exist (McCarthy 2003, 2005).
5. The diameter of the Earth has increased over time (Drayson 1854, Mantovani 1909, Carey 1976).
6. Earthquakes are electric (Freund 2002, 2003, 2007, Tassos and Ford 2005, Thornhill 2005).
7. The universe is electric (Maxwell 1857, 1873, Thomson 1897, Tesla 1900, 1904, Lodge 1904, Birkeland 1913, Velikovsky 1946, 1950, Alfvén 1970).
8. Gravity is electromagnetic (Kepler 1609, Faraday 1845, 1865, Poincaré 1908, Velikovsky 1946, 1950, Thornhill 2008).
9. Redshifts are intrinsic and non-cosmological (Hubble 1947, Arp 1966, 1987, 1998, 2003).
10. The Big Bang is a myth (Hubble 1947, Hoyle 1949, Arp 1966, 1987, 1998, 2003, Lerner 1991).

Al Gore and Venus Envy

Great post on Velikovsky and Venus via Louis Hissink's Crazy World: Al Gore and Venus Envy.

Steven Milloy of the Junkscience site has just posted an interesting development - Al Gore has publicly stated what drive's his, and therefore Jim Hansen's, belief that CO2 is a dangerous greenhouse gas - Venus.

Jim Hansen's PhD was on the atmosphere of Venus and it is from this work that his belief in CO2 being a significant greenhouse gas is based.

The theory is wrong as was Carl Sagan who postulated that Venus was hot because of a runaway greenhouse mechanism.

This raises the ghost of Velikovsky for it was Velikovsky who initially proposed that Venus would be hot because of it's youthfulness based on historical evidence from many sources.

Mainstream science believed Venus was an earth-like arcadia, our sister planet! As Sagan could not admit that Venus was a young planet, he therefore had to come up with an ad hoc explanation to make this new discovery fit the "standard model", hence the runaway greenhouse effect.

Hydrocarbon Rain May Fill Titan's Lakes

CYCLOPS: Cassini Finds Hydrocarbon Rains May Fill Titan Lakes. (Hat tip: Universe Today)

Recent images of Titan from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft affirm the presence of lakes of liquid hydrocarbons by capturing changes in the lakes brought on by rainfall.

For several years, Cassini scientists have suspected that dark areas near the north and south poles of Saturn’s largest satellite might be liquid-filled lakes. An analysis published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters of recent pictures of Titan's south polar region reveals new lake features not seen in images of the same region taken a year earlier. The presence of extensive cloud systems covering the area in the intervening year suggests that the new lakes could be the result of a large rainstorm and that some lakes may thus owe their presence, size and distribution across Titan’s surface to the moon’s weather and changing seasons.

The high-resolution cameras of Cassini’s Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) have now surveyed nearly all of Titan’s surface at a global scale. An updated Titan map, being released today by the Cassini Imaging Team, includes the first near-infrared images of the leading hemisphere portion of Titan’s northern "lake district” captured on Aug. 15-16, 2008. (The leading hemisphere of a moon is that which always points in the direction of motion as the moon orbits the planet.) These ISS images complement existing high-resolution data from Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and RADAR instruments.

Such observations have documented greater stores of liquid methane in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere. And, as the northern hemisphere moves toward summer, Cassini scientists predict large convective cloud systems will form there and precipitation greater than that inferred in the south could further fill the northern lakes with hydrocarbons.

Some of the north polar lakes are large. If full, Kraken Mare -- at 400,000 square kilometers -- would be almost five times the size of North America’s Lake Superior. All the north polar dark ‘lake’ areas observed by ISS total more than 510,000 square kilometers -- almost 40 percent larger than Earth’s largest “lake,” the Caspian Sea.

However, evaporation from these large surface reservoirs is not great enough to replenish the methane lost from the atmosphere by rainfall and by the formation and eventual deposition on the surface of methane-derived haze particles.

“A recent study suggested that there's not enough liquid methane on Titan's surface to resupply the atmosphere over long geologic timescales,” said Dr. Elizabeth Turtle, Cassini imaging team associate at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Md., and lead author of today’s publication. “Our new map provides more coverage of Titan's poles, but even if all of the features we see there were filled with liquid methane, there's still not enough to sustain the atmosphere for more than 10 million years.”

Combined with previous analyses, the new observations suggest that underground methane reservoirs must exist.

Electric Clouds

Stephen Smith: Electric Clouds.

Cloud formations often exhibit structure that could be the result of something other than blowing winds. Does ionized plasma actually shape the clouds?

"Thunderstorms are not electricity generators, they are passive elements in an interplanetary circuit, like a self-repairing leaky condenser. The energy stored in the cloud ‘condenser’ is released as lightning when it short-circuits. The short-circuits can occur either within the cloud or across the external resistive paths to Earth or the ionosphere. The charge across the cloud ‘condenser’ gives rise to violent vertical electrical winds within the cloud, not vice versa." --- Wal Thornhill, 2004

...

The Earth is an electrically charged body within the stream of ions permeating space and holds an electric field at its surface of 50 – 200 volts per meter. The electricity from space is carried by the barrage of ionic particles emitted by the sun as the “solar wind” and speeds along massive Birkeland currents through the circuit. Because water molecules are electric dipoles and are attracted to an opposite polar charge, such as that on another water molecule, they will clump together and align themselves within the Earth’s “fair weather field”. No “seeds” are necessary for water vapor to form clouds.

The electromagnetic field beneath a thunderstorm increases (up to 10,000 volts per meter) because it acts like a capacitor, storing energy from the surrounding environment. Observations have shown that a "wind" of charged particles blows toward the developing storm, which could be interpreted as a current flowing into the base of the clouds. The surrounding air is pulled along with the current flow and creates the powerful updrafts that sometimes rise into the stratosphere.

It might be the flood of ions into and out of clouds that is forming the “twilight zone” of unidentified particles that so mystifies the scientific community.

Plasma Jets = Black Hole?

Scientists have observed jets of electric plasma but they call it a black hole: Black hole outflows from Centaurus A detected with APEX.

Astronomers have a new insight into the active galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128), as the jets and lobes emanating from the central black hole have been imaged at submillimetre wavelengths for the first time. The new data, from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile, which is operated by ESO, have been combined with visible and X-ray wavelengths to produce this striking new image.

Centaurus A is our nearest giant galaxy, at a distance of about 13 million light-years in the southern constellation of Centaurus. It is an elliptical galaxy, currently merging with a companion spiral galaxy, resulting in areas of intense star formation and making it one of the most spectacular objects in the sky. Centaurus A hosts a very active and highly luminous central region, caused by the presence of a supermassive black hole (see ESO 04/01), and is the source of strong radio and X-ray emission.

I hearby offer a million dollars to anyone who can see the black hole in this picture: Black Holes Light Up.

But what you won't see -- even with a telescope -- black holes! In fact, Miller doesn't even use one to study black holes. He uses his computer.

So much for observation and the scientific method.

Another 10 Billion Barrels in Brazil

An Exxon/Hess/Petrobras consortium may have found another 10 billion barrels. Yawn...this IS getting old: Exxon, Hess Oil Field May Hold 10 Billion Barrels, Estado Says (Hat tip: Ghawar Guzzler).

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp., Hess Corp. and Petroleo Brasileiro SA’s BM-S-22 offshore block in Brazil’s so- called pre-salt area may hold as much as 10 billion barrels of oil, O Estado de S. Paulo reported, without saying where it got the information.

The block operated by Exxon Mobil in Brazil’s Santos Basin may have more potential than the nearby Tupi field, which contains as much as 8 billion barrels, the newspaper said, citing unidentified people with access to results of some studies.

If confirmed, Exxon Mobil could become the operator of the biggest oil reserve in Brazil, the newspaper said. Based on crude prices around $40 a barrel, the oil may be worth as much as $400 billion, Estado said.

Cosmic Rays Detected Inside The Earth

More evidence for positive electron holes (p-holes) as the mechanism for accumulation of matter and growth at the core of astronomical bodies: Cosmic Rays Detected Deep Underground Reveal Secrets Of Upper Atmosphere.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2009) — Cosmic-rays detected half a mile underground in a disused U.S. iron-mine can be used to detect major weather events occurring 20 miles up in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, a new study has revealed.

Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and led by scientists from the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), this remarkable study shows how the number of high-energy cosmic-rays reaching a detector deep underground, closely matches temperature measurements in the upper atmosphere (known as the stratosphere).

Israel Finds Natural Gas 3 Miles Deep

Jerry Corsi: Israel finds huge natural gas reserve. (Hat tip: Music Row Blogger)

NEW YORK – A huge deep-water natural gas find off the coast of Israel promises to be a boon to the Jewish state's economy as well as a stimulus to other developers searching for offshore oil and natural gas in the Mediterranean.

Noble Energy, a New York Stock Exchange-listed company, has discovered an estimated more than 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in three high-quality reservoirs drilled in the company's Tamar No. 1 well in the Mediterranean Sea, about 56 miles off the Israeli northern port of Haifa.

Noble Energy drilled the Tamar No. 1 well to a depth of about three miles, beneath 5,500 feet of water.

The find is significant for those who believe the Bible indicates Israel is sitting on a massive oil reserve that would reshape the geopolitical structure of the Middle East.

The find also lends support to the abiotic theory of the origin of oil that holds oil is created naturally within the mantle of the earth, not by biological origins. ...

"This is one of the most significant prospects that we have ever tested and appears to be the largest discovery in the company's history," he continued.

"We are witnessing an historic moment in Israel's energy market," Israel's National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer told Reuters. "If it turns out in a few weeks that the indicators received in recent days are true, then we are talking about the biggest find in Israel's history."

Obama Allows Offshore Drilling

I wonder how his followers feel about this: Offshore drilling plan to go ahead: Interior Dept.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A proposal issued in the final days of the Bush administration to expand offshore drilling in previously banned areas will move forward under the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, an Interior Department spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday.

Shortly after being sworn in on Tuesday, Obama ordered all federal agencies and departments to halt pending regulations until they can be reviewed by incoming staff.

Hugh Vickery, a department spokesman, said the department has been notified by the White House that it will be able to proceed with a proposed draft of a five-year plan to lease areas in the Atlantic and Pacific waters for oil and natural gas drilling.

Biogeography of the Tuatara Dispells the Zealandia Myth

Another Plate Tectonics myth in the toilet where it belongs: Unusual fossil may rule out ancient flood.

It is said that in the mists of time, the islands of New Zealand were lost, Atlantis-like, beneath the ocean. But a newly discovered fossil reptile suggests this [so-called] theory does not hold water.

Marc Jones of University College London, UK, and colleagues found the portions of fossilised reptile jaw on New Zealand's South Island.

The wear patterns of the teeth suggest its owner had two parallel rows of upper teeth, and a single row of lower teeth that slotted in between. The only reptile known to have this type of jaw is the endangered tuatara and its ancestors.

With its spiny crest and unique jaw, the lizard-like tuatara is remarkable even among New Zealand's extraordinary wildlife. But what is most exciting about Jones's fossil is its age: it dates to just 3 million years after a time when some researchers have suggested the land mass that forms New Zealand sank beneath the waves.

Another Obvious Discordant Redshift Association

This is the Whirlpool Galaxy M51a aka NGC 5194 and it's companion NGC 5195.

They have slightly different redshifts but are obviously connected.

NGC 5194 has a redshift of 463 ± 3 km/s while NGC 5195 has a redshift of 465 ± 10 km/s.

They are two of the galaxies in the M51 Group.

The redshifts in the M51 Group range from 260 ± 5 (UGC 8331) to 593 ± 4 (UGC 8313).

There are also quasars in the Whirlpool galaxy (obviously with extremely high redshift) yet another miracle.



An interesting note: the Whirlpool Galaxy is said to be so bright that the planets near the center never experience night.

The Death of Gravity

Thomas Wilson: The Weakening Gravity-Dominated Cosmos Theory.

Neutron stars and their rapidly spinning pulsar manifestations are among the most outlandish creations bogging down modern astrophysics.

Neutron stars were first proposed as a theoretical possibility in 1933 by Baade and Zwicky. In seeking an explanation for the energy released by supernovae (a term coined by Zwicky), they proposed that a supernova was the result of a normal star transitioning to a neutron star.

They calculated that the supernova energy could be explained by the equivalent transformation of a stellar mass to energy following Einstein’s E=mc^2 equation. Baade and Zwicky's new theory was founded on the assumption that the only energy available to a star is in the star itself. Unfortunately, at that time, no one understood that a star could be part of an immensely long electrical transmission line storing vast amounts of energy.

However, in the late 1930s, Oppenheimer and Volkoff produced a theoretical equation of state that validated the neutron star concept. Ironically, despite this early theoretical work, even today there is no acceptable equation describing the state of neutron stars. Regardless, in 1968, shortly after the first pulsar was discovered, Thomas Gold proposed spinning neutron stars as a mechanical explanation for the pulsed radio emissions.

Over the forty years since the spinning neutron star model has been proposed for pulsars, the astrophysics community has been regularly forced to update the rotational speed limit and has met with a long list of “surprises” in new observations. There have been a number of issues:

* pulsars spinning faster than theoretically believed possible (XTE J1739-285 at 1122 Hz)
* pulsars spinning more slowly than theoretically predicted (PSR J2144-3933, once every 8.5s)
* pulsars with too much mass, in the wrong orbit, and with the wrong binary companion (J1903+0327)

All these observations were contrary to predictions but have not been credited as falsifying the accepted theory of pulsars. However, some of the most important predictions with neutron stars and pulsars concern their role as gravitational wave generators (as predicted by the General Theory of Relativity). ...

LIGO will never detect gravitational waves. Black holes and neutron stars do not exist. There are no mass densities great enough to test General Relativity at that scale. And what is to be gained from testing General Relativity when it merely describes gravity in unphysical geometric terms and doesn’t explain it?

LIGO II (or its equivalent) will likely be built and it will not detect gravitational waves. If the gravity-dominated view of the Universe collapses, it will be from failures on many theoretical fronts. One key theoretical front will be the failure to detect gravitational waves. Another will the failure of General Relativity.

There is no cosmological electromagnetic event hitherto explained by black holes, neutron stars, or their various collisions that is accompanied by gravitational waves. In addition, over the next few years there will be increasing evidence of electrical currents at an immense scale in our own solar system. Probes like Cassini and others continue to amass large quantities of data and images substantiating the role of electricity in space. Change is coming.

Infinite Methane On Mars

NASA: Martian Methane Reveals the Red Planet is not a Dead Planet.

The first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars indicates the planet is still alive, in either a biologic or geologic sense, according to a team of NASA and university scientists.

"Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas," said Dr. Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif."

Methane -- four atoms of hydrogen bound to a carbon atom -- is the main component of natural gas on Earth. It's of interest to astrobiologists because organisms release much of Earth's methane as they digest nutrients. However, other purely geological processes, like oxidation of iron, also release methane. "Right now, we don’t have enough information to tell if biology or geology -- or both -- is producing the methane on Mars," said Mumma. "But it does tell us that the planet is still alive, at least in a geologic sense. It's as if Mars is challenging us, saying, hey, find out what this means." Mumma is lead author of a paper on this research appearing in Science Express Jan. 15.

Oil Closes at $36.22

Bloomberg: Oil Drops for Second Day After Gain in U.S. Crude Stockpiles

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell for a second day in New York after a government report yesterday showed slowing demand sent U.S. stockpiles soaring to a 16-month high.

Inventories of crude increased 1.14 million barrels to 326.6 million last week, the highest since Aug. 31, 2007, the U.S. Energy Department said. Gasoline and distillate fuel supplies also rose. Fuel demand fell 6 percent, the largest one- week decline in almost five years, as the Federal Reserve reported the U.S. economy weakened further in the past month.

“The data continues to show that the overall demand for oil is very weak,” said David Moore, a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia Ltd. in Sydney. “The inventory build shouldn’t be surprising given the weakness in consumption.”

Crude oil for February delivery fell as much as $1.06, or 2.8 percent, to $36.22 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $36.25 a barrel at 12:38 p.m. Singapore time. Yesterday, futures 1.3 percent to $37.28 a barrel in New York, the lowest settlement since Dec. 24. Futures are down 61 percent from a year ago.

U.S. inventories of crude oil were forecast to rise 2.5 million barrels in the week ended Jan. 9, according to the median of 15 analyst estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The increase last week left stockpiles 10 percent higher than the five-year average for the period, the department said.

“The stock levels around the world are at 84 days of consumption, which is a record high,” said Jan de Laat, global head of energy, trade and commodity finance at Rabobank International in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “In the short term that isn’t going to change, the demand isn’t there and the economy is still from the financial crisis.”

The Price of Oil

Rebecca Foster at DinochickBlogs has the headsup on the 60 Minutes segment on oil: The Price of Oil.


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NASA: "The Sun Is Earth's Life Blood"

Science Daily: Hazards Of Severe Space Weather Revealed.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2009) — A NASA-funded study describes how extreme solar eruptions could have severe consequences for communications, power grids and other technology on Earth.

The National Academy of Sciences in Washington conducted the study. The resulting report provides some of the first clear economic data that effectively quantifies today's risk of extreme conditions in space driven by magnetic activity on the sun and disturbances in the near-Earth environment. Instances of extreme space weather are rare and are categorized with other natural hazards that have a low frequency but high consequences.

"Obviously, the sun is Earth's life blood," said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "To mitigate possible public safety issues, it is vital that we better understand extreme space weather events caused by the sun's activity."

Besides emitting a continuous stream of plasma called the solar wind, the sun periodically releases billions of tons of matter called coronal mass ejections. These immense clouds of material, when directed toward Earth, can cause large magnetic storms in the magnetosphere and upper atmosphere. Such space weather can affect the performance and reliability of space-borne and ground-based technological systems.

Space weather can produce solar storm electromagnetic fields that induce extreme currents in wires, disrupting power lines, causing wide-spread blackouts and affecting communication cables that support the Internet. Severe space weather also produces solar energetic particles and the dislocation of the Earth's radiation belts, which can damage satellites used for commercial communications, global positioning and weather forecasting. Space weather has been recognized as causing problems with new technology since the invention of the telegraph in the 19th century.

A catastrophic failure of commercial and government infrastructure in space and on the ground can be mitigated through raising public awareness, improving vulnerable infrastructure and developing advanced forecasting capabilities. Without preventive actions or plans, the trend of increased dependency on modern space-weather sensitive assets could make society more vulnerable in the future.

NGC 1073

NGC 1073. Originally photographed by Hubble in 1950. Arp and Sulentic observed it's 3 quasars in 1979.

"This was the first example of multiple quasars very close to galaxies, which, of course, would be very much less likely to occur by chance than single quasars close to galaxies." -- Halton C. Arp, astronomer, 1987

Even Aquinas didn't have to accept this many miracles.

Arp 220

Above: Arp 220 (a very famous Hubble photograph you probably recognize).

Arp 220 has yet another remarkable and miraculous feature: An On-site Demonstration of the Origin of Galaxies.

This ULIRG is reputed to be one of the most luminous galaxies known and extremely active both optically and in X- rays. Investigation of the brighter X-ray sources immediately around the galaxy have identified quasars and quasar candidates (Arp et al. 2001). Most striking are a pair of quasars shown here in Fig. 7 which are exactly aligned across the central active galaxy. By now many such pairs have been identified across active galaxies and they tend to have similar redshifts. But the striking result in Fig. 7 is that this pair have almost identical redshifts of z = 1.26 and 1.25.

From Universe: The Cosmology Quest

Halton Arp to Fred Hoyle: "Matter of fact, I took this Arp 220 pair into the resident expert on gravitational lenses at Max Planck and, well I didn't show it to him I just asked him, I said, 'Uh, I have 2 quasars that are 15 arc minutes apart with a galaxy in the center, uh, can this be a gravitational lens?' and he said, he started calculating in his head and he said, 'Well no', he said, 'it would have to have a dispersion of 6 or 7 hundred kilometers per second and that would be too much.' And uh, he said, 'that couldn't be a gravitational lens.' And then he said, 'did you say 15 arc minutes? I thought you said 15 arc seconds.'"[Laughs]

Fred Hoyle to Halton Arp: "I was going to say, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, [laughing] that's right. Yeah yeah obviously not."

Ballistic Stars

So much for Newton's "theory" of fixed-stars and gravity: Hubble Finds Stars That 'Go Ballistic'.

Even some stars go ballistic, racing through interstellar space like bullets and tearing through clouds of gas.

Images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal 14 young, runaway stars plowing through regions of dense interstellar gas, creating brilliant arrowhead structures and trailing tails of glowing gas. These arrowheads, or bow shocks, form when the stars' powerful stellar winds, streams of matter flowing from the stars, slam into surrounding dense gas. The phenomenon is similar to that seen when a speeding boat pushes through water on a lake.

"We think we have found a new class of bright, high-velocity stellar interlopers," says astronomer Raghvendra Sahai of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and leader of the Hubble study. "Finding these stars is a complete surprise because we were not looking for them. When I first saw the images, I said 'Wow. This is like a bullet speeding through the interstellar medium.' Hubble's sharp 'eye' reveals the structure and shape of these bow shocks."

The astronomers can only estimate the ages, masses, and velocities of these renegade stars. The stars appear to be young— just millions of years old. Their ages are based partly on their strong stellar winds.

Most stars produce powerful winds either when they are very young or very old. Only very massive stars greater than 10 times the Sun's mass have stellar winds throughout their lifetimes. But the objects observed by Hubble are not very massive, because they do not have glowing clouds of ionized gas around them. They are medium-sized stars that are a few to eight times more massive than the Sun. The stars are not old because the shapes of the nebulae around aging, dying stars are very different, and old stars are almost never found near dense interstellar clouds.

Depending on their distance from Earth, the bullet-nosed bow shocks could be 100 billion to a trillion miles wide (the equivalent of 17 to 170 solar system diameters, measured out to Neptune's orbit). The bow shocks indicate that the stars are traveling fast, more than 112,000 miles an hour (more than 180,000 kilometers an hour) with respect to the dense gas they are plowing through, which is roughly five times faster than typical young stars.

"The high-speed stars were likely kicked out of their homes, which were probably massive star clusters," Sahai says.

There are two possible ways this stellar expulsion could have happened. One way is if one star in a binary system exploded as a supernova and the partner got kicked out. Another scenario is a collision between two binary star systems or a binary system and a third star. One or more of these stars could have picked up energy from the interaction and escaped the cluster.

Assuming their youthful phase lasts only a million years and they are moving at roughly 112,000 miles an hour, the stars have traveled about 160 light-years.

NGC 4319 and Markarian 205

Above: Galaxy NGC 4319 and it's associated newborn quasar with higher redshift Markarian 205 connected by a plasma umbillical chord.

Sulentic, J.W., and Arp, H.C., The galaxy-quasar connection - NGC 4319 and Markarian 205. I - Direct imagery. II - Spectroscopy, Astrophysical Journal, Part 1, Volume 319, Pages 687-708, Aug 1987

New direct-imaging data are presented for the disturbed spiral galaxy NGC 4319 (z = 0.005) and the apparently connected quasar-like object Markarian 205 (z = 0.072). Image processing of this CCD data reveals (1) an almost continuous luminous connection extending from Mrk 205 into the nucleus of the spiral galaxy; (2) a corresponding feature on the opposite side of the disk, appearing to link a bright UV knot with the nucleus; and (3) extensive morphological peculiarities in NGC 4319 that are consistent with hypothesized explosive nuclear activity. These data support the conclusion that NGC 4319 is an active spiral galaxy that recently ejected Mrk 205 from its nucleus.

Arp, H.C., NGC 4319 and Markarian 205 - Why Hide a Cosmic Bridge?

In 1971 with the 5 meter telescope on Mt. Palomar a luminous bridge was discovered between the low redshift galaxy NGC 4319 and the much higher redshift quasar, Markarian 205. Because this contradicted the assumption that redshift was invariably a measure of velocity and distance, it invalidated the hypothesis of an expanding universe. Conventional astronomers fiercely resisted this evidence but as it accumulated for this and numerous other similar examples the results were increasingly suppressed and ignored.

NGC 7603

This is Galaxy NGC 7603 and it's newborn galaxy connected by 2 quasars and a plasma umbillical chord. The plasma umbillical chord has the same redshift as NGC 7603 whereas the two quasars and the newborn have higher non-velocity redshifts.

The chances of the above occuring by accident are said to be 1 in 3 billion. I suspect the reality is more like impossible.

"What's really happening in these systems is the centers of galaxies are the places where the creation is taking place...." -- Geoffrey Burbridge, astronomer, 2004

Newborn Stars Forming At Center of Galaxies

Stars have been observed forming near alleged black holes thus proving that black holes and gravity do not exist: Stars Forming Just Beyond Black Hole's Grasp At Galactic Center.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2009) — The center of the Milky Way presents astronomers with a paradox: it holds young stars, but no one is sure how those stars got there. The galactic center is wracked with powerful [imaginary] gravitational tides stirred by a [imaginary] 4 million solar-mass black hole. Those [imaginary] tides should rip apart molecular clouds that act as stellar nurseries, preventing stars from forming in place. Yet the alternative – stars falling inward after forming elsewhere – should be a rare occurrence.

Using the Very Large Array of radio telescopes, astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy have identified two protostars located only a few light-years from the galactic center. Their discovery shows that stars can, in fact, form very close to the Milky Way's [imaginary] central black hole.

"We literally caught these stars in the act of forming," said Smithsonian astronomer Elizabeth Humphreys. She presented the finding today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif.

Relativity Violated (Again)

Possible Abnormality In Fundamental Building Block Of Einstein's Theory Of Relativity.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2009) — Physicists at Indiana University have developed a promising new way to identify a possible abnormality in a fundamental building block of Einstein's theory of relativity known as "Lorentz invariance." If confirmed, the abnormality would disprove the basic tenet that the laws of physics remain the same for any two objects traveling at a constant speed or rotated relative to one another.

IU distinguished physics professor Alan Kostelecky and graduate student Jay Tasson take on the long-held notion of the exact symmetry promulgated in Einstein's 1905 theory and show in a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters that there may be unexpected violations of Lorentz invariance that can be detected in specialized experiments.

"It is surprising and delightful that comparatively large relativity violations could still be awaiting discovery despite a century of precision testing," said Kostelecky.

Solar Geomagnetic Ap Index Now At Lowest Point On Record

Via: Watts Up With That? (Hat tip: jblethen).

The last time the Ap index was this low was 1933. The December 2008 Ap value of 2, released by SWPC yesterday, has never been this low. Further, the trend from October 2005 continues to decline after being on a fairly level plateau for two years. It has started a decline again in the last year.

This Ap index is a proxy that tells us that the sun is now quite inactive, and the other indices of sunspot index and 10.7 radio flux also confirm this. The sun is in a full blown funk, and your guess is as good as mine as to when it might pull out of it. So far, predictions by NOAA’s SWPC and NASA’s Hathway have not been near the reality that is being measured.

The starting gate for solar cycle 24 opened ayear ago today, when I announced the first ever cycle 24 sunspot. However in the year since, it has become increasingly clear that the horse hasn’t left the gate, and may very well be lame.

Strongest Evidence Yet For A Link Among Sun, Climate, and Culture

CO2 Science: An Eighteen-Hundred-Year Climate Record from China.

Another point of great interest about the Zhang et al. record is that it "correlates with solar variability, Northern Hemisphere and Chinese temperature, Alpine glacial retreat, and Chinese cultural changes." And since none of the last four phenomena can influence the first one, it stands to reason that solar variability is what has driven the variations in every other factor mentioned. In fact, in a commentary that accompanies Zhang et al.'s article, Kerr (2008) states that the Zhang et al. record is described by other researchers as "amazing," "fabulous," and "phenomenal," and that it "provides the strongest evidence yet for a link among sun, climate, and culture." In addition, we note that it provides equally strong evidence for at least the Northern-Hemispheric-extent of the Medieval Warm Period and its greater and more persistent warmth than that of the Current Warm Period.

Great Trango Tower

Stephen Smith: How Long Ago? Part Two.

Geologists continue to depend on theories that were first proposed in the seventeenth century, or perhaps by the ancient Greeks.

Erosion: the process of eroding or being eroded by wind, water, or other natural agents. From erode, gradually wear away (soil, rock, or land): the cliffs have been eroded by the sea.

Most children are taught simple geological theories when they enter elementary school. The principles of wind and rain are presented as the "natural processes" that take millions of years to create the various landscapes in which we live.

Rain is not the harmless fall of water droplets gently tapping on the windowpane, but is a carbonic acid solution that is dissolving the very bedrock, converting it into atmospheric carbon dioxide and mineral salts that wash down to the sea. This "weathering" is said to have been wearing away the mountains for several hundred million years, since rain began to fall on this planet, much like it is doing today.

The blowing breezes carry minute dust motes that crash into cliff faces, chipping away at their adamantine permanence with inexorable power, slowly reducing them to powder. Vertical walls become long slopes; steep valleys are gradually ground down into meandering river valleys; sharp mountain peaks slump into flattened hills and then slip back into the topography out of which they were formed.

Giant boulders are split into pebbles by water freezing inside cracks, expanding as it freezes and pushing the cracks farther apart with every seasonal cycle. After millions of years the boulders get smaller and smaller, accumulating in riverbeds, piling up into mountains of gravel, creating vast sandy beaches or desert dunes that cover entire countries.

Since the earliest days of Electric Universe theory, a suspicion has existed in the minds of its investigators that something was wrong with the "long, slow" view of geology. Because fossils are dated based on the rock layers in which they are found, a uniformitarian view of geology influences the understanding of how life began and evolved on Earth. If the rock ages are wrong, fossil ages are wrong, as was discussed in part one of this paper.

Great Trango Tower is an example of contradictory morphology when it comes to the consensus view of erosion. It is composed of granite and rises to 6286 meters above sea level. One of its distinguishing features is the world's highest nearly vertical drop—1340 meters. Only Mount Thor on Baffin Island is considered to be purely vertical, with a fall of 1250 meters straight down. These gigantic, supposedly eroded massifs are peculiar because they show little debris at their feet.

Great Trango and some of its tall cousins are thought to be "plutons," magma intrusions that melted their way up into sedimentary rock strata and then solidified before breaking the surface. They have been subsequently exposed because the softer sedimentary rocks layers in which they were once encased have been eroded away. The reason that they appear to be so sharp and new is thought to be due to the overburden of sediments that kept them "protected" from weathering.

The idea seems reasonable, but it suffers from logical inconsistencies. First, the sediments are nowhere to be seen. The lakes in the area are not filled with silt, although they are refreshed each year by snowmelt and have no outlets. If they have been the catch basins of runoff containing eroded particles for "millions of years" one would expect them to have been clogged-up eons ago.

Second, the peaks have to have been exposed for millions of years by now, because they are completely unburied. They have been acted on by freeze and thaw, feeling the full force of hurricane winds, subzero temperatures, and bombardment by sandy grit for thousands of centuries, yet they appear as if they emerged from their stone prisons a short time ago.

In a previous Picture of the Day about the mountains of Patagonia, similar oddities were examined. Lakes with no outlets; vertical cliffs accentuated by terraces stepping up their sides; multiple layers; flat-topped mesas with shotgun-patterned potholes on top; clean-floored, narrow valleys; amphitheater-like "blind canyons"; and mountain ranges in concentric rings are manifestly contrary to conventional thinking.

Electric Universe theorists postulate that between 5000 and 10,000 years ago (perhaps sooner), the Earth and its sister planets were engulfed in a catastrophic interplay of celestial forces that have not been seen since. Clouds of electrified plasma and electric arcs described by the ancients as "thunderbolts of the gods" dissected the continental geography, creating what traditional theories say are ages-old structures in an instant of time.

Sky-high tornadoes of fire writhed across the face of the Earth, excavating canyons, ocean basins, and river valleys. Lakes like inland oceans were vaporized along with their attendant flora and fauna, leaving nothing but scorched and naked stone behind. Those plasma vortices formed intense electrodynamic fields that compressed and lifted material out of the surrounding region. The resulting "fulgamites" are mistaken for intrusions when they are actually extrusions. The Brandberg Massif, Shiprock, New Mexico, and Uluru were given as examples of that phenomenon in past Picture of the Day articles.

There is much more that could be written regarding the conflict between observation and theory that seems to dominate science today. There is a need to overcome preconceptions and adopt an approach that takes into account all parts of the observation rather than ignoring those that do not fit the theory.

Happy New Year

Above: The Luckiest Man of 2008 (and smart too...Johnny education).

Thank God it's over: Americans Under 70 May Find 2008 Was Their Least Favorite Year.

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- This wasn’t just a bad year for the economy. By some measures, it was the worst year any American under age 70 has ever seen.

The loss of jobs in the U.S. may be the biggest since the end of World War II. This year’s declines in stock and home prices haven’t been exceeded since the Great Depression. The slump in holiday spending may set a record; foreclosures already have. Credit markets seized, halting the longest expansion in consumer purchases.

Europe and Japan also sank as U.S. demand faltered, marking the first simultaneous recessions since the Second World War ended. High-flying emerging economies, such as China and India, weren’t immune, signaling the world economy is just as interconnected in bad times as in good.

“It was the year we wish it wasn’t,” said Harvard University professor Kenneth Rogoff, a former International Monetary Fund chief economist. “The global scale and magnitude” of the financial crisis and recession “is much greater than those we’ve seen before.”

The National Bureau of Economic Research this month determined the U.S. economy had been contracting for 12 months, already the longest downturn in a generation, with no end in sight.

The length and depth of the slump leave even the most experienced economists at a loss for superlatives.

“We’ve never seen this before and we don’t really have a sense of where the bottom is going to be,” Nobel laureate economist Edmund Phelps, 75, said in a Dec. 23 interview with Bloomberg Television.

Housing’s Collapse

Housing led the downturn. Sales of single-family homes dropped in November by 7.6 percent, the biggest decline in two decades, to an annual rate of 4.43 million, a 12-year low. A 13 percent decline in the median resale price from a year earlier was likely the largest since the 1930s, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The share of mortgages 30 days or more overdue hit an all- time high 6.99 percent in 2008, and the proportion already in foreclosure jumped to a record 2.97 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, whose statistics go back 29 years.

Problem loans morphed into toxic securities that brought down Wall Street banks and forced more than $700 billion in writeoffs worldwide this year. Bear Stearns Cos., which survived the 1929 crash, collapsed in March. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., founded in 1850, filed for bankruptcy in September. Merrill Lynch & Co. sold itself to Bank of America Corp. to avert a similar meltdown.

“There’s no more Wall Street,” Alan “Ace” Greenberg, former chief executive officer of Bear Stearns, declared in a Dec. 8 Bloomberg Television interview.