This illustration shows merging two black holes. IMAGE CREDIT: NASA

The ripples created by massive cosmic collisions have reached Earth after traveling across the universe for billions of years. Scientists have detected the largest number of these gravitational waves since the cosmic events were first discovered in 2015, according to new research.

Astronomers made 35 new detections of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time, between November 2019 and March 2020. The cosmic waves were largely created by pairs of merging black holes, but several were born of rare collisions between dense neutron stars and black holes.
It’s a giant leap from when just three gravitational waves were detected between 2015 and 2016. This brings the known number of detected gravitational waves to 90 from 2015 to 2020.

They were detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, in the US, and the Virgo gravitational-wave observatory in Italy. The results of the latest observation campaign were published Monday.

Read the entire article posted November 9, 2021 and watch a video on gravitational waves (4:43) at cnn.com.

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.

Mars may once have been a blue and water-covered world long before Earth even finished forming. That’s the tantalizing finding that researchers from Arizona State University and Stanford University announced on October 18, 2022. Scientists have seen evidence for early lakes, flowing rivers and even oceans in Mars’ past. But now, new atmospheric models plus data from the Curiosity rover support the possibility of an early atmosphere of molecular hydrogen.

The researchers published the peer-reviewed results in the October 1, 2022, (Volume 595) edition of Earth and Planetary Science Letters. There is also a free preprint version available on arXiv.

Read the entire article online at EarthSky.

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.

The Sun puts out very few gamma rays as detailed in “The Sun Is Spitting Out Strange Patterns of Gamma Rays—and No One Knows Why” posted on Scientific American. It seems there are very few gamma rays in the entire Universe, at least in comparison to the number of photons that we see with our eyes.

Astrophysicist and Lead Scientist of The SAFIRE Project, Michael Clarage, PhD—reviewed Donald E. Scott’s and Hannes Alfvén’s models of the Sun’s electrical connection to its larger environment, and discussed gamma ray data with Wal Thornhill—explains how electricity can help us think through the gamma ray mystery.

Watch the entire video posted December 25, 2021 at youtube.com. (18:54)

SOURCE STORY: Scientific American, Space & Physics – 03/28/2018, “The Sun Is Spitting Out Strange Patterns of Gamma Rays—and No One Knows Why” 

links submitted by Robert Petrovich

The city of Dwarka is one of the seven holy pilgrimage centers in India. It is the only place which is contemporary with the events described in the epic Mahabharata, where it is described as the ancient kingdom of Krishna. It is written that upon Krishna’s death the city was sunk beneath the Arabian sea.

Today, archaeologists searching for the lost kingdom believe they have found evidence of its existence off the coast of the modern-day Dwarka, and are trying to understand what could have caused it to be lost beneath the sea.

Watch the entire video posted December 16, 2021 on bbc.com. (7:10)

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.

We generally think of the Winter Solstice as the shortest day of the year, but that is only if you’re just talking about the period between sunrise and sunset. If you are talking about the entire day, from noon to the next noon,  you get a different result.  View a video with more details here.

On the other hand, the Winter Solstice starts the shortest season of the year.

Here are the lengths of the astronomical seasons:

December solstice to March equinox: 88.99 days
March equinox to June solstice: 92.76 days
June solstice to September equinox: 93.65 days
September equinox to December solstice: 89.84 days

See the video here.

Both videos from EarthSky News

Electric Sun predictions are being verified by the latest data from the Parker Solar Probe. However, NASA invents phrases such as ‘pseudo-streamers’, ‘funnel structures’ and ‘switchbacks’ to describe what they see and find everything new to be “enigmatic.”

It’s not enigmatic. It is what the Electric Universe Model has been predicting for decades as an alternative to the gravity-only, lock-step narrative of the Standard Model.

Author and electrical engineer Donald E. Scott, PhD, deconstructs the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center press release of December 14, 2021 announcing new results from the Parker Solar Probe. Dr. Scott presents a clear, accurate understanding of the real properties of electro-magnetic plasma dynamics that are being observed on our Sun.

Watch the entire video posted online January 15, 2022 at youtube.com (14:44)

link submitted by Robert Petrovich

PHOTO CREDIT: NRL/NASA. Movie processed/compiled by Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher (NRL).

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has flown closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before. Over 24 scheduled orbits, PSP will journey closer and closer to our star with the aim of flying as close as 8.86 R? from the solar surface by 2024. PSP, which launched on 2018 August 12, was designed, built, and now operated for NASA by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. It has completed the first 3 of its 24 scheduled orbits about the Sun (perihelia on 2018 November 5, 2019 April 4, and 2019 September 1). All three orbits had roughly the same perihelion distance of 35.7 R? from the Sun center. On 2019 December 26, the spacecraft flew by Venus for the second time since launch. This maneuver reduced the perihelion to 27.8 R?, which was achieved on 2020 January 29.

The main science goal of the PSP mission is to determine the structure and dynamics of the Sun’s coronal magnetic field, to understand how the solar corona and wind are heated and accelerated, and to determine what processes accelerate energetic particles. PSP explores the near solar environment through in situ and remote sensing observations of the magnetic field, plasma, and energetic particles to: (i) trace the flow of energy that heats and accelerates the solar corona and solar wind, (ii) determine the structure and dynamics of the plasma and magnetic fields at the sources of the solar wind, and (iii) explore mechanisms that accelerate and transport energetic particles. Understanding the heating and acceleration of the solar wind plasma as well as the energization and transport of solar energetic particles has been sought for decades. By exploring the source regions of these fascinating phenomena, PSP will not only help us make major strides in our understanding but will also lead to unforeseen discoveries.

Over the past year and a half, PSP returned an enormous amount of science data that drew a new picture of the source region of the solar wind. The first discoveries of the mission were reported in the Nature magazine on 2019 December 4. This special issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement series consists of over 50 science papers that provide more detailed analyses of the data from the first two orbits. The number of discoveries is more than anyone has anticipated.

Read the article and watch the movie (00:14) online.

link submitted by Michael McIntyre

An artist’s impression of the Tanis river site in North Dakota moments after the asteroid strike that doomed the dinosaurs to extinction 66 million years ago.

Picture a calm spring day 66 million years ago in what’s now North Dakota. Perhaps a Triceratops was lying in the sun, while in the river freshwater paddlefish, mouths gaping, were foraging plankton.

Seconds later, a 10-meter-high (33-foot-high) wall of water rushes in from the east and then spheres of glass start to rain down from the sky — some of them still on fire as they hit the river.
These could have been the very last moments of the dinosaur era, which came to a cataclysmic end when a city-size asteroid struck the shallow ocean off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, killing off three quarters of all species on Earth. According to a new study of fossilized fish that were found at North Dakota’s Tanis fossil site and perished as a result of the devastating impact, the asteroid hit in springtime.

Read the entire article posted February 23, 2022 at cnn.com.

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe. We can’t see them with the eye alone, but if we could, we might see them popping off every now and then in our night sky. And they’re not nearby. Most originate in distant galaxies. Yet, they release such incredible amounts of light and energy that they can be seen far across vast distances. In September 2022, an international team of researchers said they’ve detected a gamma ray burst that left its source when the universe was in its infancy, at only 880 million years old.

The scientists, led by Andrea Rossi at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), published their peer-reviewed paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics on September 21, 2022.

Read the entire article posted here.

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.