Starship Asterisk*

I like my crackpot theory that the hexagon is the cloud top manifestation of the largest ice crystal reef in the solar system.

JW

Hello again: We see here the most wonderful astronomy imaginable. I always wonder though, where the mass that formed that cloud came from originally. If it was an object that exploded, it must have been a kind of big bang on its own. Such an event, if near enough to the earth could possibly cause on...

Hi All: Well, I do like the windblown water or windblown ice-floating-on-water explanation too. There is more than one way to move those rocks. I had no first hand experience with wind blown water! I am sure we now have the question answered. As to erasing the clay ridges, the floating ice explanati...

Hi All: How is it that the obvious is overlooked. Death valley is a wet place some of the time. Those rocks are moved by water in sheet flow mode during flash floods. This explains the smooth curved paths. Water in sheet flow moves in long curves as for example waves traveling slowly across flat bea...

It is clear to this former geologist that sliding dark colored sand is not the explanation of the streaks. The margins of the streaks show that there has been NO disturbance of the surface whatever. Surface features continue across the streaks uninterrupted by any movement of the material. These str...

I want to thank you all for the definitive answers to drifting through dust clouds.!

Jack White
Albany OR

I once asked astronomers on Science Friday, the NPR science radio program, if the solar system were to drift into a dust cloud, would the density be great enough to cause cooling of the earth. This seems to me to offer another variable in global heating/cooling. The astronomers were quite negative o...

THERE ARE TWO ADDITIONAL REMARKABLE FEATURES OF THE ONE ARMED GALAXY. ONE IS THE VERY FAINT BUT LARGE HALO SURROUNDING THE LOWER AND LEFT PORTIONS OF THE GALAXY. THE LIGHT EMITTED FROM THE HALO MUST ORIGINATE FROM STARS OF SOME SORT. ARE THEY DIFFERENT IN SOME WAY FROM WHAT IS NORMAL DO THEY OFFER A...

I hope to be forgiven for commenting again on the myths infesting current cosmologies. We originate from a tiny sperm, we have invented the hydrogen bomb,(the big bang) and we die. Being prisoners of our own egos we believe the universe must do the same. Well why not, we have invented our Gods in ou...

Thank you so much for the discussion of the microwave spectra of molecular clouds. It is through such discussions and information that the non astronomer really learns astronomy without the requirement to struggle through mathematical astrophysics, which so many of us are not trained to do. I am alw...

We should be so excited and pleased that a course in Astronomy is available to all. I would like to see some real data when it can be understood by scientists other than astronomers. For example, much is done with X-ray images, a feat that I would have thought to be impossible a couple of decades ag...

My apologies for the typo, don,t know how that happened!

JW

We see all these wonderful images and the explanations of them but very little is said about where all this mass came from. The big bang theory, which appears to me to be just another creation theory rejiggered for scientists, does not explain anything, but it gets us off the hook for a real explana...

Well, I have heard too much and am now willing to concede (especially after examining the large image) that this is an optical effect and probably is not related to crystal growth. My prediction is that as the observer approaches the light source the fanning out of the light column increases until a...

There are a number of things going on here. It appears that the light columns are terminated by an overlying cloud deck. The ice crystals presumably are being nucleated at the interface between the lower levels of the cloud deck and the colder air near the ground. The increase of crystal aspect rati...