Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Scientists Baffled By Magnetic Portals



"...their theory is incorrect but they don't have an accepted theory to replace it and that I think is very psychologically bothersome to particularly scientists who have gone into science in order to be certain about the world, to be sure that they're right and so forth, and it's a very insecure position. Some scientists have joked that, well, a scientist would rather be wrong than uncertain. We sort of have to live with uncertainty which is, well, it's an interesting and challenging situation." -- Halton C. Arp, astronomer, 1998

Via Watts Up With That? and Louis Hissink's Crazy World.

Magnetic reconnection could be the Universe’s favorite way to make things explode. It operates anywhere magnetic fields pervade space–which is to say almost everywhere. On the sun magnetic reconnection causes solar flares as powerful as a billion atomic bombs. In Earth’s atmosphere, it fuels magnetic storms and auroras. In laboratories, it can cause big problems in fusion reactors. It’s ubiquitous.

The problem is, researchers can’t explain it.

5 comments:

Jeffery Keown said...

Since Louis has disabled comments on his blog, I think I'll mention a story he ran over there. Perhaps he'll see this and we can move the discussion elsewhere.

Louis, your article on the paper on the Little Ice Age was pretty cool. I had no knowledge of the Choson Annals, and a quick read of the paper finds me in agreement that something (probably a comet) hit that area in the time indicated.

Fascinating stuff.

OilIsMastery said...

Louis is probably sleeping. It's like 5 in the morning there.

OilIsMastery said...

Oh and Louis lives in the future.

Anonymous said...

Jeffrey,

Thanks for the comment on the Choson Annals. OIM is right but I don't dwell on the blogs too long - too busy working and it's a 1 hour drive to and from home to work when I am in Perth, and when bush - only email.

I have comments closed on my site as I don't have the time to moderate them, apart from getting trolled by the climate change looneys etc. Problem being in full time work which is mostly in the bush.

Additional information is Gavin Menzie's books 1421 and 1434 - falls into this period. "Something"
happened then which caused the Chinese Ming Dynasty to shut up shop - and my short correspondence with Gavin Menzies on this topic hasn't been given enough time to get involved.

Ted Bryant, Uni. Wollongong published a book on his geological work on the debris deposted on the Australian eastern seaboard and they think they have located the impact near NZ.

What puzzles me is the lack of meteorite reports for the European region, though I doubt too many had the time to record these as Europe, compared to China and Korea, were basically barbarians at the time.

I lean to the Earth being tilted slightly off Axis moving Europe into artic latitudes, so Europe might have been in more equatorial ones during the MWP.

Principal opposition to this is Newtonian physics, but add the Plasma Model and you have the forces to achieve this.

As for moving this discussion elsewhere, OIM can maybe do a post on the Choson annals and we could follow up there.

I have this weekend in Perth, (waiting on anthropologists to advise the survey date so I could be off bush at the drop of a hat during the next week), and expect to be in the NT for the rest of September with intermittent interent.

Quantum_Flux said...

By the way, the diameter of that artist's rendition of the sun is about 2 AUs, far from accurate.