Our Lovely Milky Way Torus

 Here is a new NASA image of the lovely torus that is our galaxy--

STARS WITH A VIEW  Two newly discovered clusters of stars lie far from the Milky Way’s spiral arms. Planets orbiting these stars might get this view of the galaxy in all its spiraling glory.

R. HURT/ESO/JPL-CALTECH/NASA

Alignment of Planetary Nebulae Puzzles Scientists

Couldn't pass this one by without comment. Here is the beginning of an article posted at Space.com.
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Planetary Nebula Alignment Has Astronomers Scratching Their Heads

Space.com  |  By Mike Wall Posted: 09/05/2013 8:40 am EDT

Dying stars that are among the most beautiful objects in the universe tend to line up across the night sky, and astronomers aren't sure why. These "cosmic butterflies" — actually a certain type of planetary nebula — all have their own formation histories, and they don't interact with each other. But something is apparently making them dance in step, scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope (NTT) have discovered.
"This really is a surprising find and, if it holds true, a very important one,"study lead author Bryan Rees, of the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "Many of these ghostly butterflies appear to have their long axes aligned along the plane of our galaxy. By using images from both Hubble and the NTT we could get a really good view of these objects, so we could study them in great detail."

This mosaic shows a selection of stunning images of bipolar planetary nebulae taken by Hubble. Row 1 (from upper left): NGC 6302, NGC 6881, NGC 5189 Row 2 (from lower left) : M2-9, Hen 3-1475, Hubble 5.

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Okay, the first thing I see is a stunning array of toroidal vortices at galactic scale. Is it too controversial to suggest that large-scale, unseen, bi-polar electromagnetic and gravitational forces caused material to array itself into these vortices? The article says that what puzzles the scientists is not necessarily the presence of these vortices, but the fact that they are arrayed along the same axes, no matter their location. The study's lead author notes that these axes also align with the plane of our Milky Way, and he is puzzled by this, as well, as our Milky Way has no interaction with these far-away nebulae.


Scientists have discovered that the long axes of bi-polar planetary nebulae align with the plane of the Milky Way. The plane in the illustration above should be tilted like this / to portray it accurately in space.

The Simple Explanation cosmological theory suggests that our universe is brimming with fractal toroidal forces at various scales, from the tiniest sub-atomic particles to the largest cosmic phenomena.

The Simple Explanation's version of the Big Bang envisions the prototype of all toruses actually enveloping and defining the shape of our universe. This toroidal membrane, the originating fractal formula, describes and contains our particular space/time continuum. In this theory, there would indeed be a bi-polar axis through the middle of our universe, with toroidal motion at the farthest edges of our space, sending waves of gravitational influence (for want of a better term) inward toward the middle from the outer 'brane, and waves of expansive energy from the middle outward, feeding universal expansion from the center.  In other words, I predict astronomers will soon find one of these "butterflies" at the middle of our universe.

The Simple Explanation of the alignment of planetary nebulae with our Milky Way galaxy is that all of these objects are aligning themselves with the mother of all "butterfly" vortices at universal center.

Any thoughts?

Scientists Find Torus of Dark Matter Enveloping Our Galaxy

NPR's Morning Edition brought news that a torus-shaped "beachball" of dark matter surrounds our galaxy. Even before the scientist described the shape he had discovered, I anticipated it would be our beloved torus.  Here's the article:

Astronomers Map Dark Matter 'Beach Ball'

by Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR Morning Edition, 1/7/10

January 7, 2010

From way out in space, our home galaxy would look pretty much like a flat disc of bright stars with spiral arms. But the Milky Way is actually surrounded by a vast halo of invisible dark matter that's shaped like a squashed beach ball.

That's according to a new map of our galaxy's dark matter announced at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C.

Even though dark matter cannot be seen, scientists think that it must be present because they can see the effects of its gravity as it pulls on the orbits of stars and galaxies.

"While we may not be able to see the dark matter, it's a vitally important component of our galaxy. It makes up the bulk of what the actual stuff is in our galaxy," says David Law, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who says dark matter accounts for more than 70 percent of the mass in galaxies like the Milky Way.

Law wondered what the cloud, or halo, of dark matter enveloping the Milky Way would look like if you could actually see it. He knew he could get clues about its shape from how the dark matter alters the paths of dwarf galaxies and clusters of stars as they orbit the Milky Way.

"Based on the shape of those paths, we can say what the shape of the dark matter itself has to be," he says.

Now, you can't actually watch a dwarf galaxy go all the way around our Milky Way — that would take about a billion years. But Law and his colleagues used a kind of trick to reconstruct the path of one orbiting galaxy.

"As it flies around the Milky Way, tidal forces from the Milky Way are shredding stars out of it into streams that trail behind it and even go ahead of it, along its orbit," Law says.

These streams of stars are like a trail of breadcrumbs showing the orbiting galaxy's path around the Milky Way, he says. From that, he and his colleagues could figure out the shape of the big halo of dark matter that surrounds our galaxy.

Picture the bright, visible part of our Milky Way as a flat, round, dinner plate, says Law, and imagine it sitting inside a large beach ball, which represents the dark matter halo.

"If you then came along to that beach ball and put one hand on one side and one hand on the other and squeezed it, that's something like we think the dark matter is," Law says. "It's squeezed along that direction, and the dinner plate of the disk of the Milky Way is sitting inside of it."

This new map should help scientists as they try to understand the nature of dark matter. At the moment, there are lots of theories about what dark matter might be, but nobody knows.

Whatever dark matter is, says Law, it's got to be able to form this kind of squashed beach ball shape. "You have to have some kind of a dark matter particle which can build a halo like this, because this is generally what we see surrounding the Milky Way."