The blog of Hilton Ratcliffe

To understand cosmic cycles, study explosions. The moment a star dies in a supernova, an inexorable tide of creation goes forth, and it is a beautiful thing to behold. It represents cosmic nativity. A supernova (SN, plural SNe) takes a fraction of a second to explode, yet its brilliance outshines entire galaxies, and the nebula [...]

Is the Universe expanding? It would appear not. What do we see? We do not see, let alone measure, large objects systematically moving away from all other large objects. On the contrary, it would seem to be quite the opposite, at least in the case of colliding spiral galaxies. Every observable large scale system is [...]

Astronomy ought to be an observational science. It really should. It used to be, after all, a hundred years ago or so. Ideally, astronomers would point their instruments at the heavens, find astounding new things, and publish them where we could all share in the joy of discovery. I wish it were so. The appalling [...]

I am terrified of Geoffrey Burbidge. I admit it. He makes me quake in my boots. The larger by a considerable margin of the famous husband-and-wife team that has earned the moniker “B-squared”, Geoff is certainly a different kettle of fish. Margaret, on one hand, is a motherly figure, treating visitors to their lovely San [...]

Something completely different happened to me several months back, and I’d like to share it with you. I got a letter from Prof Kiril Panov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences with an unusual request: He had been invited by the prestigious Franklin Institute to submit a nomination for the 2009 Bower Award and Prize [...]

Here is an extract from my Hypography thread Is Newtonian Mechanics an advantage or a limitation in astrophysics?
Quote from The Virtue of Heresy:
“There are no Black Holes, no Dark Matter and Dark Energy, no curved spacetime, no ultimate speed limits, no beginning and no end. By simply accepting infinity as a fact of life, we avoid [...]

Hi Wanderers,
I am writing two books simultaneously, much to the chagrin of my collaborators and publishers. Book two, “The Static Universe - A Challenge to Scientific Prejudice”, a fairly technical, scholarly work with Sir Patrick Moore, is nearly complete, and I intend taking the manuscript and a bottle of tranquilisers to Sir Patrick’s home in Selsey, [...]

Is Cosmology fact or fiction, science or fairy tale? Do we need it? is it good for us? Does it have any useful purpose? Should we be confined to a Standard Model?