Mystery Alignment of Planetary Nebulae Discovered 86
astroengine writes "Astronomers have discovered something weird in the Milky Way's galactic bulge — a population of planetary nebula are all mysteriously pointing in the same direction. They noticed the mysterious alignment in the long axes of bipolar planetary nebulae. 'This really is a surprising find and, if it holds true, a very important one,' said Bryan Rees of the University of Manchester, co-author of the paper (PDF) to appear in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 'Many of these ghostly butterflies appear to have their long axes aligned along the plane of our galaxy.' The team of astronomers, who used data from Hubble and the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope (NTT) to survey 130 nebulae, posit that powerful magnetic fields may be behind the phenomenon."
Re:Lithium? (Score:4, Insightful)
Electric Universe (Score:2, Insightful)
"The team of astronomers, who used data from Hubble and the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope (NTT) to survey 130 nebulae, posit that powerful magnetic fields may be behind the phenomenon."
Hey, you mean that mainstream science may be coming around to what http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/ [thunderbolts.info] have been suggesting?
Good luck!
More important then the fact they're pointing... (Score:4, Insightful)
... is what they're pointing at.
Notice how that's left out of the article. Coincidence? I think not!
Re:Why is that surprising? (Score:2, Insightful)
Axial tilt on planets is tought to be hugely influenced by colisions when they were forming. I'm far from being a scientist, but I don't think you can use planets as a baseline.
Re:Why is that surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
The trick, is figuring out why the poles were aligned with the galactic plane, and not perpendicular to it, which the spinning of the galactic gas cloud would suggest.