A Symmetrical Cosmic Red Square

Remember the hexagon surrounding Saturn's north pole? Now for our delectation Ano_Nimass Coward sends us to Space.com for a look at a nebula with near perfect bilateral symmetry surrounding a dying star. The so-called Red Square ranks among the most symmetrical objects ever observed by scientists. "If you fold things across the principle diagonal axis, you get an almost perfect reflection symmetry," said the leader of a study of the object, recently published in Science. A possible explanation for the structure's glow, if not its shape, was advanced in a paper appearing in PNAS, which attributes the glow of a similar object — dubbed, confusingly, the Red Rectangle — to exotic space-hardened organic molecules called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. PAHs are normally unstable but may occur in places like the nebula in question, in nanostructured clusters that are extremely stable and radiation hardened.

Geometry

[Stormx2 (1003260)]

Quoteth the article:

dubbed, confusingly, the Red Rectangle

Quoteth wikipedia:

A square (regular quadrilateral) is a special case of a rectangle as it has four right angles and parallel sides.

How is it confusing?

Re:Geometry

[adrianmonk (890071)]

How is it confusing?

The difference between Red Rectangle and Red Square is confusing because, if you read the article, they are different things. From the article:

The researchers propose that similar conditions are contributing to the extreme symmetry of another system, the Red Rectangle, whose central star is cooler than that of the Red Square.

Re:

[theuedimaster (996047)]

Remember children, every Red Square is a Red Rectangle, but not every Red Rectangle is a Red Square.

Re:

[owlnation (858981)]

Good grief, when will people here STOP quoting wikipedia as an authority. That definition of Square is utterly worthless.

Though admittedly, I'd have modded you "funny", cos I think that's what you intended. Insightful, seems like someone didn't get the joke. It was a joke right?

Re:

[Stormx2 (1003260)]

Seems like you didn't get the point.

And I don't see why it is worthless. imho it is completely relevant, on face value. No, I didn't RTFA. I was only saying that calling a square a rectangle isn't confusing if you look at it from a geometric perspective. The other replier cleared up the difference.

Re:Geometry

[Stormx2 (1003260)]

Ah, that bit is a tad unclear. The reasoning "as it has four right angles and parallel sides." is the reason it is a rectangle, not a special case of a rectangle.

Re:Geometry

[Stormx2 (1003260)]

See if you'd put that on a wikipedia article, someone would add the {{Original research}} tag, because the link between being a "pedantic, literal-minded little shit" and being a wikipedia fan hasn't been proven, yet. How about {{NPOV}}? But seriously, stop trolling.

Oh, and in answer to your question, you aren't surprised because you were all too happy to find a coincidental link.

Re:Geometry

[Walt Dismal (534799)]

Let us put this on a scientific basis. The first step is to create a proper acronym to speed discourse. Henceforth, we shall use "PLLS" instead of the longer "pedantic literal-minded little shit."

I, of course, am not a PLLS, as I spell and punctuate correctly and wipe myself properly after every bowel movemnet, because Nanny would beat me severely if I didn't...er.. I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, the 32nd poster previous failed to spell 'incunabula' correctly. Oh, and there are 152 toothpicks on the floor.

Optical illusion?

[RyanFenton (230700)]

I'm not a astrophysicist, but I've seen enough photographic artifacts to know you can get some interesting symmetrical single-color polygons through reflection and refraction that look remarkably like what is shown here. Is there any way to verify that this isn't a visual artifact, as opposed to an actual physical cloud? Or is the artifact itself a sign that there has to be a highly symmetrical set of objects creating it?

Ryan Fenton

Re:Optical illusion?

[barakn (641218)]

There are some artifacts in the image. Notice the stars with 6 rays. The rays are created by support structures holding the secondary mirror of the telescope in front of the primary mirror. The fact that the square doesn't have hexagonal symmetry argues for its existence as a real object.

Re:Optical illusion?

[RyanFenton (230700)]

But it highlighted star still does show the six-ray spikes the other starts do... the white light in the center just seems to have an hourglass shape that matches with the hexagonal spikes (also likely an artifact) that makes a square as it radiates out. Is it possible that the core of this star is collapsing into a quasar-like object, radiating in two opposite directions, each mostly perpendicular to our viewpoint? Those two narrowing radiating jets of light could match the hexagon thatches to make that white hourglass in the center, making the red square on the outside.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Optical illusion?

[barakn (641218)]

First of all, I'd suggest looking at this higher resolution image [usyd.edu.au], available from this page [usyd.edu.au] with other fascinating graphics. I would agree that the more-or-less horizontal component of the central X (the sides of the hour glass) is in the same direction as the two "horizontal" components of the stars' hexagonal rays (by coincidence, I presume). However the vertical part of the central X does not point in the same direction as any of the hexagonal rays. This may be a simple demonstration of how an hourglass doesn' have hexagonal symmetry, but more importantly it suggests the hourglass isn't produced by the same process as the hexagonal spikes.

Having said that, there are some faint hexagonal spikes created by the central object, but they are much fainter than the hour glass shape..

I wouldn't use the term "quasar-like" because the word quasar is an acronym for "quasi-stellar radio source" and i don't think this object is the source of many radio waves

Re:Optical illusion?

[barakn (641218)]

Anonymous Coward is quite wrong. All the news articles about the Red Square are referring to it as a new nebula. It hasn't been "imaged thousands of times by hundreds of instruments over the past decade." It has only been imaged by two intruments over the last several years. It wasn't imageable until recent advance in adaptive optics, as AC should have known had AC read any of the articles. Mod parent uninformative.

Re:Optical illusion?

[Derling Whirvish (636322)]

The Red Square has been imaged thousands of times by hundreds of instruments over the past decade. The square *is there*.

You are confusing the "Red Rectangle Nebula [google.com]" which has been imaged hundreds of times over the past decade with the newly-discovered "Red Square Nebula [google.com]" which this article is about.

Re:

[Bastard of Subhumani (827601)]

I'm not an astrophysicist either, but I suspect they kind of check for stuff like that.

Too obvious...

[adrianmonk (890071)]

In Soviet Russia, the Red Square ejects stars.

On a more serious note, in present-day Russia, the Red Square really does eject -- and beat and arrest [buffalonews.com] -- stars[1] when they show up to demonstrate against the government. Things are getting kinda shaky over there, it would appear.

[1] Garry Kasparov, specifically.

Obligatory

[Rubinhood (977039)]

In Soviet Russia, you don't observe Red Square, but Red Square [wikipedia.org] observes [slashdot.org] you [iht.com].

Looks like a lot of things

[PinkyGigglebrain (730753)]

When I first looked at it I two 90 degree cones of ejecta blasting from a central point along the rotation axis of the original star. Like the Eye Nebula would look if seen from the side.

My second thought was it looked like those things we made in kindergarden where you wrap colored yarn around two sticks. I think my mom still has the one I made her, she used to put it on the Christmas tree.

It is most devinitly NOT a lens artifact, look at the other stars, they have six points, those are definitly caused by the camera, the Keck telescope uses hexagonal mirrors in its array.

Absolutly beautiful no matter how you look at it.

Re:Looks like a lot of things

[Derling Whirvish (636322)]

When I first looked at it I two 90 degree cones of ejecta blasting from a central point along the rotation axis of the original star.

http://msnbcmedia2.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Phot os/040511/040511_hubble_bcol_10a.jpg [msn.com]

Re:

[Derling Whirvish (636322)]

It is most devinitly NOT a lens artifact, look at the other stars

Indeed, look at the other stars. At the edges of the photo they are all oval-shaped pointing towards the center. That implies there is something wrong with the imaging.

http://opostaff.stsci.edu/~levay/color/HandoutIIIc .pdf [stsci.edu]

It's Another Hourglass Morphology

[pln2bz (449850)]

Observant space enthusiasts will notice the excessively large number of hourglass morphologies that continue to appear in NASA's press releases. These hourglass morphologies can only be awkwardly called the result of gravitation. A cursory familiarity with laboratory plasma physics will help people to recognize that the most likely explanation is that these are in fact z-pinches wich result from Birkeland Currents. In a zoomed image, you can see the filamentary Birkeland Currents on two opposing sides of the red "square" being pinched down to a central point. These same filaments are also observable, but in cross-section, in the 1987A supernova remnant. Which components are visible varies from image to image, but the general morphology of the hourglass remains discernible.

Here are some additional hourglass morphologies with pictures that have been observed:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4953165/ [msn.com]
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0510 05eta-carinae.htm [thunderbolts.info]
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0504 26bug-nebula.htm [thunderbolts.info]
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0504 15milkyway.htm [thunderbolts.info]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Supernova-1987a .jpg [wikipedia.org]

Since hourglass morphologies are somewhat disconfirming to traditional mainstream cosmologies (ie, the Big Bang), the fact that they continue to be observed all over the universe escapes the notice of professional astrophysicists, whose primary concern is to prove the Big Bang Theory and Stellar Evolution Theories. Objectively interpreting these shapes for what they most likely represent means dropping complicated, mainstream astrophysical explanations, and accepting the notion that electricity flows through space over plasma as we know it does within the laboratory. In these particular instances, at least, it is clear that the electrical force is dominant to gravity. We can opt to devise all sorts of gravitation-centric explanations for hourglass morphologies, but in doing so, we consciously opt to violate Occam's Razor.

The implications of such strong evidence of electricity in space are overwhelming -- which provides all of the explanation necessary for avoiding abandonment of the traditional, more popular gravity-centric theories. When astrophysicists eventually accept that plasma in space has electrical resistance just like the plasma we observe in the laboratory, then they will begin to re-interpret all of our observations in terms of Maxwell's Equations rather than fluid and gas laws. And the enigmas of dark matter and dark energy will forever disappear, as this substitution can provide the exact forces necessary to explain things like how spiral galaxies can spin as if they are solid plates and how matter might repel other matter. The fact that we as a culture currently prefer to consider imaginary forces and particles to explain these "anomalies" rather than forces that we already understand will forever paint us to future generations as people who decided to favor the mathematicians and theories over our observational data and decades of experimental laboratory physics work.

The evidence for electricity in space is not a sparse patchwork here and there. It is a flood of data that is only allowed to escape the notice of the public with the help of overconfident astrophysicists and a mob mentality within the space enthusiast community. Anybody who is intellectually curious about the universe and less concerned with what the people around them believe than what in fact appears to be true should consider learning more about plasma physics and the electric universe we live in. Don Scott

Re:It's Another Hourglass Morphology

[HuguesT (84078)]

I essentially agree, this structure could simply be a cone like SR1987a, seen edge on.

Re: It's Another Hourglass Morphology

[Black Parrot (19622)]

I essentially agree, this structure could simply be a cone like SR1987a, seen edge on.

Surely it's a pyramid seen from the top.

Re:It's Another Hourglass Morphology

[barakn (641218)]

There's just one problem with your argument. The stuff in the Red Square image is relatively cool uncharged dust and gas (it's an infrared image after all), not a hot plasma, and therefore can't carry a current. Typical Birkeland Current/Electric Universe fanboy spouting off without having a clue...

Re:It's Another Hourglass Morphology

[pln2bz (449850)]

How you're able to determine charge density on the basis of temperature is somewhat of a mystery. We can't even do that for our own Sun. We know from the laboratory that plasma has three distinct modes of operation -- the dark mode, the normal glow mode and the arc mode -- and that it continues to conduct electricity within its dark mode even though plasma in this mode would emit neither photons nor infrared light/heat whatsoever. So, even if the process that creates the charged particles would emit infrared, the allegation is not that this process is occuring within this image. If it helps, you might consider that when you pass electricity through copper wires (which is also a form of plasma), your wires conduct quite well without glowing. Gaseous plasmas in fact conduct better than copper wires.

The fact that you are not objectively considering the subject matter is evident in your decision to take a condescending tone. If you ever do decide to investigate the matter objectively, I think you will be surprised to find that there is indeed a serious debate here.

Re:

[barakn (641218)]

How you're able to determine charge density on the basis of temperature is somewhat of a mystery. We can't even do that for our own Sun.

Using the spectrum of a star, not only can the densities of various ions and electrons be calculated, but also the relative abundances of the elements. It's unfortunate that you are unaware of an entire branch of science, but not unexpected. I'd also like to know why you think that a large current in space would z-pinch in only one central point along the length of the cu

Re:

[ruiner13 (527499)]

Typical Birkeland Current/Electric Universe fanboy spouting off without having a clue

You, sir or madam, just made soda squirt out my nose.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

People who seem more concerned about the politics of existing theory than the tenuousnous of their own personal theories (electricity in space, in your case) are generally viewed as crackpots. This is science, show us your testable theory that can explain what we are seeing better than existing theories, or go back to work.

Re:

[TapeCutter (624760)]

"It's NASA's choice to interpret all observations through one single cosmology."

Most people with a scientific education would have stopped reading after the first line because it is a distortion of the truth based on total ignorance of how science and skepticisim work (and they do work!).

You have been duped/mislead and when/if you learn how to determine what is credible science you will be pissed off at those who duped you. A good place for you to start learning genuine skepticisim would be Carl Sagan

Re:

[Ginger Unicorn (952287)]

If we have any eminent authorities here who want to show me to be some uninformed jackass, please answer for me this one single question.

See, the thing is, if your theory wasn't bunk, you wouldn't require an eminent authority to back it up. You would simply be able to present us with some links to credible science sources on the web.

Invoking a global conspiracy to explain the lack of acceptance for your theory, and just resorting to "prove me wrong" when backed into a corner is like having a giant neo

Re:

[marcosdumay (620877)]

"And the enigmas of dark matter and dark energy will forever disappear, as this substitution can provide the exact forces necessary to explain things like how spiral galaxies can spin as if they are solid plates and how matter might repel other matter."

I'd love to see how do you explain such fenomena using eletricity. Also, if you make an actual explanation the entire physics community will probably aplaud and recognize you (and teach your name on classrooms for decades to come).

But, of course, nobody w

Critique of "The Electric Sky"

[TapeCutter (624760)]

"The explanation has been provided."

But has failed to convince these guys [plasmas.org] who correctly categorise "The Electric Sky" as a popularization [google.com.au] and point to an excellent critique of the book [tim-thompson.com].

If you are so eager to be a skeptic then start testing YOUR ideas and acknowledging their known flaws. If you do have the courage to test your convictions you will also notice that these "established scientists" are actively looking at alternatives to the big bang that involve plasma, including those that appear in popu

dude, it's the borg

[circletimessquare (444983)]

look away, don't send any signals in that direction, or they'll soon follow up, and we'll have to travel back in time to 1980s san francsico to save the whales, or something

God's rendering engine running out of steam

[Tablizer (95088)]

Appearently the universe is expanding faster than God's hardware can handle, and we are seeing rendering polygon effects. Boundary detection problems will appear next.

Re:

[nacturation (646836)]

That explains black holes -- it's an attempt to cut down on the number of polygons by culling large sections. A supernova must be what happens when God overclocks a particular region of space and it backfires.
 

Re:God's rendering engine running out of steam

[SharpFang (651121)]

Boundary detection problems will appear next.

Yeah? They've been reported decades ago, and the exploits are out in the wild and in common use (tunnel diode, tunneling microscope and so on).

Will these pesky scientists be surprised when the next batch of patches comes. :)

Re:

[bky1701 (979071)]

Probably just an effect of the memory leak in "humanity()". Don't worry, the garbage collection function "meteor->collide(earth)" will be called eventually to fix it.

Hurricanes on earth also do that sometimes

[flyingfsck (986395)]

I have seen photos of hurricanes that have poligonal eyes. This is unusual, but not exactly rare. A circular eye is probably just a high order poligon.

It's a artifact from a Type II civilization! ;)

[wisebabo (638845)]

Wouldn't it be great if this was found to be an artifact from a Type II civilization? It would be an immediate and overwhelming proof that there is super-intelligent life out there.

Type I - civilizations capable of harnessing the energy of a planetary body, Type II - civilizations capable of harnessing the energy of a star, Type III - civilizations capable of harnessing the energy of an entire galaxy. We are a Type I civilization.

Re:

[Black Parrot (19622)]

Wouldn't it be great if this was found to be an artifact from a Type II civilization?

Like this [e-scoutcraft.com]?

Re:

[istewart (463887)]

No, Type II civilizations typically dedicate themselves to following the touring schedules of jam bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish. Their artifacts can be seen rusting away in junkyards that specialize in German cars.

Hurricane pictures show same shapes

[flyingfsck (986395)]

Here are pictures of Isabel:
http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/goes/030913.isabel.g if [nasa.gov]
http://www.enterprisemission.com/hurricane1.htm [enterprisemission.com]
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Hyperdimensional% 20Hurricane_optimized/16.jpg [enterprisemission.com]

here is Ivan:
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Hyperdimensional% 20Hurricane_optimized/30.jpg [enterprisemission.com]

and here is Jean:
http://www.enterprisemission.com/Hyperdimensional% 20Hurricane_optimized/jeannani2.gif [enterprisemission.com]

More info

[ByteSlicer (735276)]

NewScientist has an article with an explanation here [newscientist.com].

Proof of God ...

[HW_Hack (1031622)]

Not really - a million monkees blowing up a million stars could achieve the same result

Ah, the famous old riddle...

[oddaddresstrap (702574)]

If a nebula with near-perfect bilateral symmetry has exotic space-hardened organic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and there's no one around to smell it, does it have an odor?

You see symmetry because...

[Ankh (19084)]

...the celestial object in question is right at the corner where two edges of the universe meet. The edges are of course mirrored to fool astronomers. :-)

Re:

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Sorry, bud. You got it wrong. The article is correct.

Re:Right angles

[tverbeek (457094)]

Objects that are extremely regular and have right angles are usually considered to be artificial in origin.

Yeah, like a sodium chloride crystal. :)

Re:

[MarkRose (820682)]

Objects that are extremely regular and have right angles are usually considered to be artificial in origin.

Yeah, like a sodium chloride crystal. :)

That response has gotta burn like salt in a wound.

Re:

[TheRealMindChild (743925)]

Well, I don't know where you come from, but in my reality, we call a 3d rectangle...


wait for it...


a box.