Starship Asterisk*

What does this have to do with astronomy, picture, or the day?

"We have never seen them directly, yet we know they are there." Science is in a very sad state, as demonstrated by the quotation above. (First line of the movie.) The black hole is entirely an invention, made up to support other invented theories. The black hole had to be invented because...

There's no reason that the workings of the Universe have to make sense to us on some intuitive level. One of the axioms of science is that if the axioms are not true we can't know anything. You may be correct, but if you are then the universe runs on magic and/or religion and there is no point in p...

Equatorial bulges may be mysterious, but they are not exactly rare. Check out "moqui marbles" with Google. Notice the comparison to the blueberries on Mars.

Ok, let's say we had a big bang when time and matter came into existence. What was before that? The question is meaningless, because no time means no "before". Ok, so what caused the big bang? I don't think anybody is ready to give up cause and effect, because that would mean magic was inv...

There are many stars and galaxies with tails, looking just like comets. Here is a star called Mira:


SOURCE

Global warming might be to blame:

So if glaciers melt it's global warming and if hailstones freeze that's global warming too. I'm really getting tired of this global warming nonsense.

(No objection to global warming, if any, only to the nonsense about it.)

Good science doesn't depend on directly observing everything. There are lots of things we have never observed, such as the electron shell structure of atoms. But, like the geometry of the Universe, we observe other things that let us make inferences about things we can't see directly. Correct. The ...

Electric charges can cause all those effects, but apparently that possibility has not been considered yet. I understand storm fronts causing the buildup of electric charges, that happens enough here in Oklahoma. But electric charges causing storms? I don't understand this, please explain. Astronome...

But the center is a point in spacetime, not a three dimensional point that we can observe.

That is where the disconnect occurs. I took a science class once and they taught me that step #1 of the method was, "Observe a phenomenon."

It is possible that the Universe itself is smaller than the visible Universe,

Say what? That didn't come out right. What was that supposed to say?

How can an enviroment with little atmosphere contain or hold a storm or have a storm front? How can an eviroment with little atmosphere have a planet wide dust storm? In the images of the planet wide storm where is the storm front, how is it created? Where is the dust on the rovers? Electric charge...

HERE is a theory about that.

But we should remember that space does not have a temperature. Only mass can have temperature.

Here is one example of an observation that disproves a common notion. Many people speak of space "curving back on itself" somehow. If there were any such effect we would see every star in the universe in every direction we look. In other words, space would be uniformly white. We observe th...

Another interesting question along that same venue Does the aircraft engine noise get quieter for the pilot given that he is moving faster than the sound waves that would normally reach him in the cockpit? Well, I'm just guessing here. No, the engine sound travels through the metal of the aircraft,...

It can be a real challenge to figure out if something has been observed or not. It is very common to compute what something ought to be and then go looking for it. There is a very real tendency to see what you are looking for even if it's not really there. And after seeing this face in the clouds th...

With a name like mine I have to be careful all the time. I've tried using other names but people still know who I am. The tell me, "Oh you're such a SmartAZ!"

Maybe someone can explain something to me. Everyone seems to think a red moon is expected during an eclipse, even old hat. But when I saw one in the early 50s it was quite unexpected and it took a while for someone to figure out why it looked red. The newspaper said nobody had seen that effect befor...

Excuse me? Did I say something I shouldn't?

I guess I understand the 4D universe concept as well as anybody, which is to say zero equals zero. I am very suspicious of any concept not based on observation, and this one is by definition not observable. And the Big Bang is based on the assumption that only gravity powers the universe. As soon as...

"The blue regions shine primarily by reflected light. Blue light from the star Rho Ophiuchi and nearby stars reflects more efficiently off this portion of the nebula than red light. The Earth's daytime sky appears blue for the same reason." http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070903.html W...