Aftermath of Distant Planetary Collision? 97
gazurtoid writes "Astrobiology Magazine is reporting that astronomers have announced a mystery object orbiting the 8-million-year-old brown dwarf 2M1207 170 light-years from Earth might have formed from the collision and merger of two protoplanets. The object, known as 2M1207B, has puzzled astronomers since its discovery because it seems to fall outside the spectrum of physical possibility. Its combination of temperature, luminosity, and age do not match up with any theory. 'Hot, post-collision planets might be a whole new class of objects we will see with the Giant Magellan Telescope', said Eric Mamajek of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics."
Old Earth (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Old Earth (Score:5, Informative)
"Plasma Universe" busted, by its own criteria? (Score:2, Informative)
Based on what you have written, here in SD, pln2bz, I imagine that you (and Thornhill, and Scott, and Peratt, and
Would readers of this comment be interested to have these PU promoters join such a discussion? Of necessity, any internet discussion forum would have to support the relatively straight-forward posting of the symbols (etc) in the equations in Alfvén's theory, together with those in the papers reporting magnetic reconnection in the lab
Maybe a review of the advances in observational cosmology over those 20 years might be of interest?
Perhaps a more detailed look at this "actualistic" vs "prophetic" dichotomy could prove insightful?
For example, how accurate a characterisation was it in 1990? How accurate today?
To what extent would such a detailed examination inform readers about this Plasma Universe idea?
* for example "The latter proposes a very detailed knowledge about the origin of the universe", "the Alfven-Birkeland theory of auroras"
Re:"Plasma Universe" busted, by its own criteria? (Score:3, Informative)
[How the Sun shines: http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/forum_thread.php?id=6058 [uwm.edu]]
The guy who is co-author of a paper which claims the Sun was formed when a super-massive neutron star fragmented into smaller pieces, and one such fragment became a ~0.1 sol neutron star core of the Sun*?
The same one who has been particularly vehement, in many internet discussion fora, that a) the concept of 'neutron stars' violates his fundamental rule of science (that every theory must be tested, empirically, in controlled conditions, in earthly labs^), and b) the Sun has a solid (mostly iron?) surface?
The same one who is a co-author of a paper claiming that the Sun is powered (~67%) by the decay of excited neutrons in its core and (~34%) by standard fission reactions*? Yet who is also on record, in many fora, as claiming that "the bulk of the total energy release of the sun comes from an external energy source (flowing electrons)"?
The same one who claims that the mass of the Sun is under-estimated because the solar system is accelerating in the z-direction (or something like this)? That the 'missing matter' in galaxies is largely due to stars being more massive than estimated because they are composed largely of iron?
If so, then I wonder if you can ask him from which university he got his PhD in plasma physics? In which laboratories has he done plasma science experiments?
And when does he plan to publish a paper, based on his review, in a relevant IEEE journal (the one Peratt is editor of perhaps)?
Oh, and how many equations are presented in the laying out of his arguments?
* This idea resembles nothing like any 'Electric Universe' idea I've ever come across, nor do the papers he is a co-author of reference Birkeland, Alfvén, currents, Peratt, Thornhill,
^ You can find many lots of instances of him insisting that 'a gram' of something be produced in a lab before that something can be said to have been 'scientifically qualified'. Curiously, he has continued to say this long after the paper he co-authored went up on the arXiv preprint server.