Scientists Find Doublehelix at Center of Milky Way

An anonymous reader writes "Astronomers report an unprecedented elongated double helix nebula near the center of our Milky Way galaxy, using observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The part of the nebula the astronomers observed stretches 80 light years in length."

Re:Deep thoughts

[qazsedcft]

But as far as science is concerned whatever may be beyond our universe is irrelevant because we have no way of observing it. It's exactly like the falling tree in a forest question.

Re:Deep thoughts

[qazsedcft]

Obviously the recording device counts as "someone listening". The point is whether something that cannot be observed in any way exists at all.

Re:Apples and peas

[brian0918]

They were pretty much identical in appearance before the semi made them 2D, give or take a big fuzzy tail.

Birkeland Current

[Markus Registrada]

It makes typical astronomers very uncomfortable when it is mentioned that this is precisely the expected form of an interstellar-scale Birkeland current.

    http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/elec_currents.ht ml [lanl.gov]

These were predicted by Alfven, and have since been detected indirectly by noting self-segregation by mass of interstellar medium ion Doppler shifts.

    http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/CIV.html [lanl.gov]

Similar structures have been noted in radio-telescope images, albeit not with such textbook-perfect structure.

    http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/plasma.universe. intro.html [lanl.gov]

The reason typical astronomers are uncomfortable with this is that the very active field of plasma dynamics is almost entirely neglected in their education. Most are ill-equipped to evaluate or contribute to work involving real-world plasma interactions. They are handicapped not only by this neglect, but by having been taught, early on, an entirely unphysical, if mathematically elegant, substitute for plasma dynamics under which all these phenomena are supposed to be impossible.

Plasma dynamics, as a field of study, is fundamentally hard because the mathematics that describe actual, natural phenomena is entirely untractable. Practitioners depend on fiendishly difficult scaled-down high-voltage laboratory vacuum-chamber experiments, and absolutely enormous computer simulations. Astrophysicists, by a natural process, are strongly self-selected from among those with a distaste for laboratory work, and a preference for abstract, elegant mathematical constructs, so it's hardly surprising to find them disinclined to fill in the gaps in their education. Instead, certain sorts of evidence are just considered impolite to mention in their company.

(Incidentally, it is precisely this phenomenon which makes press releases about "geysers" on Enceladus -- and two-mile-wide "lava tubes" on Mars and the moon -- especially comical.)