Skip to main content

Electric sky

Here’s a book with ambitions:

[...] until recently, I assumed that astronomers and astrophysicists knew what they were talking about.
Now — I’m sure they do not.
[...] Earning a doctorate in electrical engineering eventually led to my teaching that subject at a major university for thirty-nine years. What troubled me most was when astrophysicists began saying things about magnetic fields that any of my junior-year students could show were completely incorrect.

Electric Sky has a good, close look at what Astronomy is saying, under the light of Plasma Physics. The author also writes:

I have tried to hack a path through these hypotheses, contradictions, and alternative explanations that will be clear and understandable for the average interested reader to follow. The answers to the questions we ask are not stressfully convoluted and arcane — rather, they are logical, straightforward, and reasonable — and long overdue.

So... it looks like a good, clear read.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Based on your interest in "Electric Sky" we have determined that you might also be interested in http://thunderboltsfilm.com, and http://www.crank.net/astronomy.html. And magic ponies ;-) Don't forget to leave a review for other interested readers...
Leon RJ Brooks said…
The magic ponies were quite tasty with enough garlic salt added.

The on-line chapter is quite an interesting read. They manage to explain a large number of features which conventional astronomy kind of ignores or talks its way around.

That doesn't mean that this is completely correct, but it's a big hint that they might be on the right track, or close enough to be worth following up on.
Major said…
eat magic ponies?

I'll tell your daughter on you!
Leon RJ Brooks said…
Major: they're not ponies. (-:

PS, don't dare tell Arrows about them. She'll want one. Yani has more sense... usually.

Popular posts from this blog

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.