Starship Asterisk*

Okay, I get your point about phase transitions for water and high pressure. But we were discussing methane. I just don't know for certain that the results published for methane at one bar (Earth's atmospheric pressure) translate to methane on Pluto where the pressure is 5 orders of magnitude less. D...

I hope it does not tax your patience too much, but I'd like to try to explain more about what I think could happen with dust lanes that are heavily populated with ferromagnetic material. So we are looking at the M96 galaxy in the APOD associated with this thread [September 21, 2015], and I put forwa...

For dv, there is another force component due to magnetism and this force component could affect the movement of dv so that it can rise above or below the disc of the rotating dv-nf elements. I think that Spiral Galaxy M96 [APOD 2015 Sep 21] shows this and so does Centaurus A NGC 5128 [APOD 2015 Nov...

I am sad that I missed out on the fascinating discussion of magnetism and dust back in September. I was refreshing my page to see if there were responses when the discussion had moved on to a second page... now, I know better. :) Thank you very much Ann, Art and Chris for more discussion and good in...

I'm having trouble finding any references that spell this out for me. I believe that methane ice, like water ice, is less dense than the liquid phase (depending on what exactly the methane ice is composed of, because I think they mean methane and water combinations). But I would guess that carbon m...

I agree with you, Pianosorplanets, that objects small enough to make craters the size of the pits would just slide off with no impact marks if the surface was fully frozen. The lowest possible speed a body can impact Pluto at is 1200 m/s (and statistically, most impactors will be moving faster than...

Seeing all the tolerance and dialog so far, is it okay if I jump in? I'd like to propose my ideas about Pluto: From Mountains to Plains. I just hope you have some left-over patience for me. :idea: I am not alone in thinking that the Sputnik Planum could be an artifact of a glancing blow (or impact)....

I will offer up one speculation. If outgassing of the nitrogen managed to reduce the hard surface these low temperature tend to produce, I suppose it is possible that, as Pluto orbited, an area less firm having been weakened by sublimation crossed a field of objects of unknown size caught in Pluto'...

The ice mountains are said to be 10,000 feet high. http://www.space.com/29961-pluto-ice-mountains-nasa-photos.html Yes mountains. But these mountains do not necessarily penetrate the ice layer. According to my theory, they do not penetrate the ice layer ( so they do not rest on the rocky surface be...

sallyseaver wrote: Where does the original angular momentum come from? My understanding is that the original matter started like the big nebulae we see in other parts of the cosmos, like The Great Nebula (APOD Jan 19, 2015) or Gamma Cygni Nebula (APOD April 22, 2015) or the Carina Nebula. No, the o...

Thank you Chris, Ann and Neufer. Your answsers are very helpful. 1. To me it looks like a big swath of dust is in a prominence above the plane of the main body of the spiral, above the main star-filled arm of the galaxy. Is this how other professional observers see it? I'd be cautious trying to infe...

The reason for M96's asymmetry is unclear I need some help. 1. To me it looks like a big swath of dust is in a prominence above the plane of the main body of the spiral, above the main star-filled arm of the galaxy. Is this how other professional observers see it? 2. What is the conventional explan...

Why does it look like this crater is raised up above the adjacent surface instead of cut down into the surface? You can get a better look at the crater which is 2 miles deep from this APOD --- and a mountain (4 miles high) that has a white face --- at this NASA page: https://www.nasa.gov/jpl/dawn/c...

I would like to propose a different conjecture about the surface of Ceres from what I proposed earlier. It occurred to me that any ice that would have been present from the primordial surface of Ceres (from releasing steam that froze in cold space) would most likely have been blasted away from galac...

Thank you, Geckzilla , for representing my concern regarding a steadfast sticking to the 9% number at a time when the reports are that scientists are surprised by the light spots and light areas on Ceres. And thank you so much for passing on the information from Chris Russell regarding a possible 0....

My bet is that a hard dirty snowball hit that spot hard and hot, the surface stayed hot long enough for the dirt mixture in the ice that was melted to settle to the bottom and that left a slightly cleaner ice to re-freeze on the surface around the impact area. This is an interesting idea and it see...

Sally, I think you should look up the details of the HST images. They are not at all what you think they are, especially the uncertainty map you've re-linked to. And as for the Moon data, I think you've missed my point completely. Average Moon albedo = 0.12. Aristarchus central peaks = 0.183/0.12 ~...

The mystery link: http://space.io9.com/just-what-are-those-white-spots-on-ceres-1684160250 claims the spots are 9% brighter than the surrounding areas. I like this idea from this article posted by Alter-Ego: Ceres could have a rock core, an ice mantle, and a thin crust of debris and dust. Meteor im...

The mystery link: http://space.io9.com/just-what-are-those-white-spots-on-ceres-1684160250 claims the spots are 9% brighter than the surrounding areas. I like this idea from this article posted by Alter-Ego: Ceres could have a rock core, an ice mantle, and a thin crust of debris and dust. Meteor im...

Ok. Got it. For the record, I did not say that no one takes me seriously. What I spoke to was the notion that a) the ability to get peer reviewed is only for a small minority of institution-associated scientists that are in with the most notable scientists (which is actually understandable given th...

Do you agree that peer-review of a paper document is not part of the scientific method? There is no THE scientific method. The expression refers to a broad way of gathering knowledge about the natural world. Most scientists (myself included) would consider peer review and consensus within the speci...

In addition to what geckzilla has said ... in this day and age, one's work cannot be considered formally scientific unless it is peer reviewed. Your book seems to offer a very bold collection of new hypotheses. Perhaps if you were less ambitious in the first instance, and attempted to get papers of...

Is it because I am a woman that you think it is pseudo science, or because presenting a new model for consideration itself makes it "pseudo-science"? I will say that your post sounded awfully pseudoscientific even without knowing whether you are a man or a woman. This is a loaded question...

JUNO is visiting Jupiter and it should be able to verify the ice layer on Jupiter. Or fail to find any evidence for it at all. It is very hard to take someone who imagines wildly skeptical ideas and then fails to show any skepticism of them seriously. If JUNO project team looks for an ice layer und...

So if you were alive a thousand years ago, you'd definitely be one of the Flat Earth and Earth-Is-The-Center-of-the-Universe people, right? I don't see how your comment furthers the discussion. It just says that you can't believe anything that is different from the Standard Model. JUNO is visiting ...