Proxima Centauri, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2013.Credit…ESA/Hubble & NASA

As another 11-year cycle of solar activity begins, scientists debate how violent our stellar friend is likely to be.

The big news about the sun is that there is no big news. We are blessed, astronomers like to say, to be living next to a “boring star.”

But the inhabitants (if there are any) of the planets orbiting the neighboring star Proxima Centauri, only 4.2 light-years away, are less fortunate. In April astronomers announced that a massive flare had erupted from its surface in 2019. For seven seconds, as a battery of telescopes on Earth and in space watched, the little star had increased its output of ultraviolet radiation 14,000-fold, in one of the most violent such flares ever seen in our galaxy.

This was more than serious sunburn territory. “A human being on this planet would have a bad time,” said Meredith MacGregor, an astronomy professor at the University of Colorado who led the worldwide observing effort.

Space weather on this scale could sterilize potentially habitable planets, and could augur bad news for the search for life beyond this solar system. Even mild space weather can be disruptive to creatures already evolved and settled; sunspots and solar storms, which wax and wane in an 11-year cycle, spray energy that can endanger spacecraft, astronauts and communication systems.

Read the entire article posted May 31, 2021 online at nytimes.com.

link submitted by Charles Stewart

One lazy afternoon in the 1890s, legendary inventor Nikola Tesla was lounging around his laboratory with his good friend Samuel Clemens, also known as the famed writer Mark Twain. The two had a longstanding relationship, and Twain, who was notoriously fascinated with science and technology, was a regular visitor at Tesla’s laboratory.

By this point in his life, Twain was, as Tesla described, “…in the worst shape, suffering from a variety of distressing and dangerous ailments.” Thus, on this particular afternoon, Tesla suggested that Twain try out a new invention he’d been working on, a mechanical oscillator that sent vibrations through the body at various frequencies. Twain agreed and stepped onto Tesla’s machine. At the end of the process, Twain suddenly leaped up and rushed to the toilet with terrible diarrhea.

Despite this, Twain would continue to use the machine daily for almost two months, at the end of which he had, in the words of Tesla, “regained his old vigor and ability to enjoy life to the fullest extent.” This was precisely what Tesla had expected, the same results Tesla and his assistants had achieved during their experimentation with the invention.

Read the entire blog post posted online August 16, 2020 at universe-inside-you.com.

Watch the video posted August 16, 2020 on YouTube. (20:25)

link submitted by Ted Staver

December 2, 2020

Solar phenomena come from electricity flowing through space.

The conventional view of the Sun is illustrated by a popular science website: “Our Sun is made up of elements left over from the Big Bang, elements formed from dying stars, and elements created in supernovae.”

The basic premise of the Electric Star theory is that stars are immersed in plasma, and are connected by electric circuits that run throughout the galaxy. Since the Sun is also electrically interconnected with the galaxy and its planets, it should be thought of as a charged object that has reached equilibrium with the forces of its environment. That balance is not completely stable, however.

Read the entire article posted online December 2, 2020 at thunderbolts.info.

link submitted by Robert Petrovich

It may be the greatest surprise for mainstream cosmologists since the dawn of the Space Age: the detection of powerful magnetic fields at all scales throughout the Universe. In recent years, with the ever finer detection of cosmic magnetism, astrophysicists have increasingly sought an answer to the problem — an answer which might somehow be compatible with acceptable, Big Bang cosmology.

It’s important to note, as we’ve done in numerous past episodes, that mainstream cosmologists did not predict the so-called magnetic universe. In fact, a telling glimpse into the prevailing thoughts on cosmic magnetism can be found in the 1999 NASA web item entitled, ‘Do magnetic fields exist throughout space?’ It states, “On the cosmological scale, there is no data to suggest that magnetic fields are present. They certainly are not important in the dynamics of the universe for any reasonable range of field strengths consistent with present observational constraints.”

However, today, not only do mainstream cosmologists view cosmic magnetism as important, some astrophysicists are counting on mysterious magnetism to resolve ad hoc some of the biggest evidentiary problems for the Big Bang hypothesis. In this episode, we’ve asked retired professor of Electrical Engineering Dr. Donald E. Scott to offer his thoughts on the real source of cosmic magnetism in our Electric Universe.

Watch the video on youtube. (14:58)

link submitted by Robert Petrovich

PHOTO CREDIT: NASA

Space-based power stations are turning from an idle dream into a serious engineering prospect, as scientists hope they can take renewable energy into orbit.

It sounds like science fiction: giant solar power stations floating in space that beam down enormous amounts of energy to Earth. And for a long time, the concept – first developed by the Russian scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, in the 1920s – was mainly an inspiration for writers.

A century later, however, scientists are making huge strides in turning the concept into reality. The European Space Agency has realised the potential of these efforts and is now looking to fund such projects, predicting that the first industrial resource we will get from space is “beamed power”.

Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, so there’s a lot at stake. From rising global temperatures to shifting weather patterns, the impacts of climate change are already being felt around the globe. Overcoming this challenge will require radical changes to how we generate and consume energy.

The aim is that solar power stations in space will become a reality in the coming decades. Renewable energy technologies have developed drastically in recent years, with improved efficiency and lower cost. But one major barrier to their uptake is the fact that they don’t provide a constant supply of energy. Wind and solar farms only produce energy when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining – but we need electricity around the clock, every day. Ultimately, we need a way to store energy on a large scale before we can make the switch to renewable sources.

Read the entire article by Amanda Jane Hughes and Stefania Soldini posted online November 26, 2020 at bbc.com.

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.

Metamaterials, which could improve smartphones and change how we use other technology, allow scientists to control light waves in new ways.

Imagine operating a computer by moving your hands in the air as Tony Stark does in “Iron Man.” Or using a smartphone to magnify an object as does the device that Harrison Ford’s character uses in “Blade Runner.” Or a next-generation video meeting where augmented reality glasses make it possible to view 3-D avatars. Or a generation of autonomous vehicles capable of driving safely in city traffic.

These advances and a host of others on the horizon could happen because of metamaterials, making it possible to control beams of light with the same ease that computer chips control electricity.

The term metamaterials refers to a broad class of manufactured materials composed of structures that are finer than the wavelength of visible light, radio waves and other types of electromagnetic radiation. Together, they are now giving engineers extraordinary control in designing new types of ultracheap sensors that range from a telescope lens to an infrared thermometer.

Read the entire article by John Markoff posted April 27, 2021 at nytimes.com.

link submitted by Robert Petrovich

24 NOVEMBER 2020|PHYSICS

Watch the film online at bbc.com (4:09).

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr.

First sunspot image by the NSF’s Inouye Solar Telescope’s Wave Front Correction context viewer at 530 nanometers — in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum. Credit: NSO/AURA/NSF.

December 9, 2020

A recent press release from Rice University states: “Orbiting instrument hints at how stored magnetic energy heats solar atmosphere.”

The solar corona exceeds 2 million Kelvin. Many explanations for why this is so are offered by consensus heliophysicists, but they admit that they are not certain. Why they are not certain has to do with the foundation upon which they build theories. As written many times in these pages, the simplest theory that best fits observations is that high velocity positive ions are colliding with relatively static ions and neutral atoms in that location. The photosphere, the chromosphere and the lower corona region of the Sun’s atmosphere are dominated by an electrical double layer.

The “surface” of the Sun is the photosphere, followed by the chromosphere, and then the corona. The chromosphere is about 2000 kilometers above the photosphere and is a very thin layer compared to the Sun’s diameter of 1.4 million kilometers. Plasma density in the chromosphere is low, more than a million times less dense than Earth’s atmosphere. Temperatures vary from 6000 Celsius near the photosphere to less than 4000 Celsius in its middle regions.

One of the Sun’s great mysteries is why its temperature rises to 20,000 Celsius at the top of the chromosphere. However, the greatest mystery of all is why the corona is two million Celsius! Why does the hottest region of the Sun begin at an altitude of 4000 kilometers and then extend over a million kilometers from its surface?

Read the entire article by Stephen Smith posted online December 9, 2020 at thunderbolts.info.

link submitted by Robert Petrovich

Read the entire article online at bbc.com.

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr

Yes, they were still significant as authentic fragments of the coveted scrolls have been hard to come by, but they were blank, and therefore, just scraps of paper.

Until now.

Researchers have found that four of the 51 fragments believed to have been blank do, in fact, contain readable Hebrew/Aramaic text. They just needed a special camera to see it.

Read the entire article by Alicia Lee posted May 20, 2020 online at cnn.com.

link submitted by Gene Savoy Jr