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It amazes me how many people are so easily swayed by crank arguments and bad astronomy yet are accuse others of "believing lies."

I trust Phil Plait to know what he's talking about, a hell of a lot more than I trust you...

No, the only thing it is evidence of is your stupidity.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#flag

Yup. Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer explained it well. What goes for Hubble, goes pretty much the same for Cassini (I know, I worked for CICLOPS) and for many other planetary missions.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/badhst.html

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

Speaking of really stupid things to do ... you are attacking a straw man. The real Phil Plait has debunked astrology, alignment and concordance many times, and in so doing has never once mentioned the speed of light. He don't need to: he simply points out the impossibility of any mechanism, and the absence of any effect.

Speaking of really stupid things to do ... you are attacking a straw man. The real Phil Plait has debunked astrology, alignment and concordance many times, and in so doing has never once mentioned the speed of light. He don't need to: he simply points out the impossibility of any mechanism, and the absence of any effect.

Speaking of really stupid things to do ... you are attacking a straw man. The real Phil Plait has debunked astrology, alignment and concordance many times, and in so doing has never once mentioned the speed of light. He don't need to: he simply points out the impossibility of any mechanism, and the absence of any effect.

Also, instead of wikipedia we could link to an actual source. E.g. Phil Plait's excellent blog: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/dark_side.html

Think on this, and think on it carefully: you are seeing a manmade object falling gracefully and with intent to the surface of an alien world, as seen by another manmade object already circling that world, both of them acting robotically, and both of them hundreds of million of kilometers away.

Never, ever forget: we did this. This is what we can do.

This really only needs a very very tiny adjustment even for very large telescopes. I'll use Hubbell as an example - it is 57600mm focal length and f/24. If its pixel density is the same as a typical 35mm sensor (it will likely not be anything near this), then you'll have sharp focus anywhere between 1400 miles and infinity (the hyperfocal distance is 2800 miles - http://www.outsight.com/hyperfocal.php). Hubble is fixed focus and routinely takes pictures of earth to calibrate its instruments (although it cannot track the earth's surface and has a minimum exposure time of 1/10s, so all you get are streaks - http://www.badastronomy.com/mad/2000/hubbleearth.html).

You're on slashdot and you don't know who the Bad Astronomer is? Pretty sure he's good at math.

Have a look here:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/jupiter_galileo.html

Apparently Jupiter has 1/80th the necessary mass that is needed to become a star. Even if Jupiter were to combine with Saturn it would still lacks the necessary mass to "ignite".

I agree that too many assumptions can ruin a theory, but what's more important is that the assumptions you use aren't arbitrary. That the orbital planes are randomly distributed isn't an arbitrary assumption. Planetary orbital planes typically follow their parent stars' spin axis, and that spin axis is arbitrarily oriented (Here's a bad astronomy link where they discuss it. That's the best reference I could find right now). Thus, the orbital planes of the planets are very very very likely randomly oriented.

Just for kicks, if that's true then we can calculate the transit probability. If we observe a star that is approximately the size of our sun, and the orbital radius of one of its planets is the same as Earth's, the chances of the planet's orbit crossing in front of the star as viewed from a point very far away is ~0.005. That's pretty rare, although if one assumes that there are ~5 planets in the system (which is an arbitrary assumption), we now have a ~2.5% chance of seeing one of the planets transit the star if we look for long enough. And there are a lot of stars out there.

...that we landed on the MOON before the invention of microprocessors! Now that's scary.

Correction: they faked the moon landings before the invention of microprocessors. That's why it's so obvious. If they had today's CGI, we would be far less likely to know the truth.

His original site was all about debunking myths and misconceptions related to astronomy. Here is the link to his original site: http://www.badastronomy.com/index.html He changed to a blog format when he joined the discover magazine network. His name refered to him pointing out bad astronomy in the movies and TV. Not really all that hard to understand why he has his name. He got pretty well known and discover magazine put him on the payroll and since he was well known, he kept his moniker.

These two sites talk about science errors in movies and TV shows. It's a great way to start a discussion because you're leading in with something fun and familiar, and possibly even something that they've seen and thought "oh no WAY could that work."

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/

Actually, what they should do is follow the lead of sites like this and this and teach science by explaining everything that the show gets wrong. They'd never run out of material if they did that.

As for your example about ships passing each other while going from Point A to Point B: space travel isn't like a transatlantic cruise. To get to where you want to be, you need to head for where the planet is going. To pick a simple (and simplified) example, consider two ships flying from Earth to Mars and vice-versa. Imagine you plan your trip for a time when the planets are both pretty close together. Since they both go around the Sun in the same direction, let's simplify and pretend they're on parallel tracks heading in the same direction, like two cars driving down the road next to each other. As you know, it is a multi-month trip, and if both ships leave on the same day, they will have to fly at an angle to reach where their destination will be in a couple months. So their paths would not be two parallel lines--they would actually form an X. (And that's before you factor in elliptical orbits, varying orbital planes, etc., to say nothing of relativity and how really effing big space is.)

In other words, imagine firing a gun in Los Angeles towards Maine at the same time someone in Miami sends a bullet towards Seattle. Calculate the odds of them hitting in mid-air. :-)

this guy will say it better than me you are simply spouting non sense, you haven't any evidence at ALL that astrology works beyond cold/hot reading and forer effect.

"For astrology to really work, it does require a surrender of one's bias against phenomenon that cannot be directly sensed by physical senses. "
I will let any rational person read that twice, and try to reconciliate thazt with the fact astrology pretend to make prediction on people's personality, personality *which* indubitably can directly be sensed by common sense. But hey, since astrology utter FAIL at its own prediction, that's OK i guess.

This is a great work that goes into some scientific detail
about how Astrology fails many key tests.

Lol, forgotten URL to said article, wow... n00b. =)

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html

-AI

I'm guessing you aren't familiar with Phil Plait, the "blog writer" you mentioned. He's an astronomer and not prone to manufacturing controversies. When he says it's "spreading like wildfire", that probably means that he's suddenly got a ton of email about it since he's the go-to guy for stuff like this. He wrote a great point-by-point rebuttal to the Moon Hoax conspiracy among other things.

As Phil Platt pointed out in his book, meteors (unless they're really huge) are typically cold to the touch by the time they hit the ground. Even if it had enough kinetic energy to make a huge crater, the meteor would have pulverised itself and its fragments quickly cooled. Check out his whole site at http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/index.html

I'm calling hoax on this one.

This has a different POV on it:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/firstonthemoon.html

Bad Addendum: many people think that a meteorite, after it hits the ground, is very hot and glows red. Actually, meteorites found shortly after impact tend to be warm, but not hot at all! It turns out that it certainly is hot enough to glow while it is in the part of the atmosphere that decelerates it the strongest, but any part that actually melts will be blown off ("ablated") by the wind of its passage. That leaves only the warm part. Even more, the meteor is slowed down so strongly as it moves through the atmosphere that the impact speed is typically only a few hundred kilometers an hour at most . Only the very large (and we're talking meters across) meteors are still moving at thousands of kilometers an hour or more when they impact. Small ones aren't moving that fast at all. Not to say you'd want to be under one: a car in New York was struck by a small meteorite and had a hole punched through it, and the whole back end crushed in. Ouch!

Source

Yes, they're not hot. http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/meteoric.html

Be careful using that bold.

Off-topic, and the author is an idiot. The rovers' cameras do not necessarily take pictures using the standard red-green-blue colors that we perceive. Depending on what filters were used (for scientific reasons), if you want a "full color" image for humans to appreciate, you have to choose or synthesize non-RGB channels to form an RGB image. The blue tab, for example, on the color calibration target is also very bright in the infrared, so if you use an infrared image as your red channel, what should be blue appears to be pink. All of this perfectly normal and completely expected by everyone that knows how this stuff works. Stop being a silly conspiracy theorist and apply some rational thought and a tiny bit of research.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/mars_colors.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/spirit/a12_20040128.html

Why will this take 11 years? WHY, You ask??

ANSWER#1:
America is tired of sending all those Apollo Astronauts to the Moon, only to have them crash and burn, and litter the surface with lunar modules and body parts!
It's time NASA did this SAFELY! Kapeesh?

Dissatisfied with #1? OK....

ANSWER#2:
NASA knows, with the whole world watching, they cannot pull off one of those Hollywood sound-stage stunts anymore!
This time, they really have to go to the Moon!
Besides, it's only a matter of time before one of those 210,000 NASA engineers and
scientists (or their sleazy apologist Phil Platt ) breaks their silence and confesses to the whole Apollo charade!

THIS time, NASA has to get it right, and do it right! Once John McCain is president, he certainly won't stand for any of their shenanigans! Like G.W.Bush, he's been tested in battle!
...
Tune in tomorrow: How the WTC was knocked down by by the Mossad and the FreeMasons!

I thought their governor is their biggest problem.

I thought their governor is their biggest problem.

Except that food with trans fats tastes better.

Have you read the Bad Astonomy rant about trans fat being removed from food? Yeah, trans fat gives a noticable taste benefit, and people notice when they're removed.

To get started learning about skepticism read blogs and listen to podcasts such as these:

http://www.skeptic.com/index.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
http://whatstheharm.net/index.html
http://www.expelledexposed.com/

Then when you find a science topic you are interested in, read a lot of books about it so that you can be comfortable enough with the topic to think critically about new discoveries and claims and to explain it to others.

The blogs I listed tend to recommend more good books than I can keep up with.

Be warned though. Skepticism and science are addictive and fun and tend to piss off the intellectually lazy.

This was posted at the BadAstronomy.com blog a couple of days ago.

[Sceptic] Brian Dunning has put together a video on how to think critically. Itâ(TM)s called Here Be Dragons, and itâ(TM)s a pretty good primer into how to think. Itâ(TM)s about 40 minutes long, and free to use (with some caveats; see the site). I think this would do well in a classroom. Any teachers out there? I know itâ(TM)s too late for most school sessions, but you can download the movie (and a high-res version too) and keep it handy for the next year. http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/06/11/here-be-dragons/

Thanks for the link lurv. I did write up an extensive description of this as best I could. It's a weird experiment!

If you want good coverage of space/astronomy news, I recommend the Bad Astronomy Blog:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/

Speaking of which, Phil Plait (the "Bad Astronomer") is also no fan of the ISS. From his article on this same experiment:

"So some European scientists came up with the idea of using the International Space Station (I know! Using ISS for science! Wow!) to test this out."

can't people see that the big bang theory is the same kind of centrism?

I think you need to watch this.

can't people see that the big bang theory is the same kind of centrism?

I think you need to watch this.

Well, I'd say you're probably right to wonder ... I'm pretty sure they would. Perry is a bad choice all around. You can spend some time reading the millions of links to websites with stories about him, but this is a good one to start with:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/07/25/texas-doomed/

Mr Perry has made some blatantly ill-advised choices. Supporting Rudy for Pres was one of them. His views on many topics that relate to gaming either directly or indirectly make him quite a questionable choice. Perhaps Jack Thompson was busy and Perry was the second choice? -- not really a fair comment, but it sounded funny to me.. sigh

While searching through Google'd info about Mr Perry, see if you can find his name near 'video game' anywhere except on the explanation of the DMCA on his official website. I had trouble finding anything. Try searching with the -E3 option.

Choosing a politician to speak in an election year is practically BEGGING them to politicize the presentation. Being republican, and a Bush crony, it's hard to imagine that anything good will come of this. That said, it is not a foregone conclusion that it will totally suck either, it just seems a bad choice. There is not much to say about Mr Perry and video games except he likes game creators to have their businesses in Texas instead of elsewhere... really? How does that make him relevant to E3? I have to admit I can't find any reason that he should be on the short list, never mind the final choice. YMMV

Ah, good for Phil! I need to start checking him first.

You got it. Phil Plait (aka, The Bad Astronomer) ranted about this today.

Yes, I wish we could score the article -1, Wrong. This is the smallest exoplanet discovered "around a Sun-like star". More details on this and previous discoveries can be found at the Bad Astronomy blog:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/04/10/no-its-not-the-smallest-exoplanet-found/

scientists have an unexplainable believe that the universe can be explained

It is explainable. It is a reasonable inductive conclusion.

If you hold an object in front of you and let go and see it fall to the floor, and you repeat that with thousands of different objects to the same result, it is reasonable to conclude that each subsequent case will with very high probability continue the pattern.

There has been vast sequence of examples of the universe being demonstrably understandable and explainable. It is inductively reasonable to conclude that each subsequent case will with very high probability continue the pattern.

The valid part of the point you were trying to make, yes it is non-trivial that the universe would be understandable and explainable. Yes, it has been noted that there is no basic to expect that that must be so. Yes, some have noted the significance and almost surprise that the functioning of the universe could be understood and explained within the human mind. So you're right that there is no valid basis to expect that it should be so, other than the fact that it HAS been so.

While i personally think that most astrology is complete rubbish, given that the range of gravity is infinite

At its PEAK, the gravity of Mercury upon you is less than the gravity from the computer on your desk or from various other items around your room or outside your house. I'd have to check the math, but I'm pretty sure the gravity from AIR in weather systems constantly changing around you totally swamps any gravity from Mercury.

At it PEAK, the gravity effect from of Uranus is 0.3 times the gravity from Mercury.

Again at peak, the gravity from Neptune is 0.14 of the gravity from Mercury.

And just for giggles, the gravity from Pluto is (again at peak) 0.00001 of the gravity from Mercury.

No, astrology does not and cannot operate based on gravity or any of the other forces. Humans are just really good at seeking patterns even were none exists, and have a habit of confirmation bias.

The bad astronomy has a great page invalidating astrology and explaining why so many people follow such things.

-

Only if you define a shortcut as a much shorter route that gets you to the wrong destination.

As an often-scientific athiest, I'm prepared to date people from any different religions, as long as we're both content to let one anothers belief systems not interfere with our love life. But I have difficulty talking to anyone who believes a few miniscule globules of rock millions of miles away can effect something as complex as our personalities and day-to-day activities. Same for alot of /.'ers I imagine - you can appreciate someone who's put a lot of thought into their belief system and come to their own conclusion and is happy with it and the way it helps them live their life - systems of belief are an entirely human construct and are thus irrational by default :) But people who have convinced themselves that astrology exists and then try to subvert physics with claptrap about subtle variations in gravitic attractions and how it aligns iron particles in your blood which short-circuit synapses into taking certain descisions? All without a shred of proof? All without a shred of evidence, even? You're a moron and I'm incapable of respecting your intellect.

Yes, I realise it's not their whole personality (don't get me wrong, I've met hundreds of lovely people who happened to believe in something ridiculous), but to me it's just like talking to someone with LIAR tattoed across their forehead and taking everything they say at face value.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html /asbestos long johns

P.S. A prize of fifty points and a bowl of raspberry jelly to the first person who correctly guesses my relationship status :)

Astrology differs from most religion and "spirituality" in one very important way (especially to scientists): It is testable. While there is no way to prove or disprove most spiritual things (including the existence of any god or the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God), we know that astrology is 100% wrong. It has been studied scientifically (because it makes testable predictions and claims), and the results always come back the same.

Try this page for a start:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html

Somebody else on slashdot posted this link http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/03/03/wr-104-a-nearby-gamma-ray-burst/ Read it if you are going to read the slashdot article. I am not sure how reliable the information is, but it seems to have a lot more data than the slashdot article has. The slashdot article is just you typical sensationalized crap saying "we are looking down the barrel of a gun." We don't know if it is pointed directly at us or not. We do not know how much matter is between the star and earth. If there is a lot of matter, then a lot of energy will be absorbed by it. We aren't even certain how far away it is (even though the article says 8000 light years). This is a binary star.... what happens if the other star goes super nova before this one creates a gamma ray burst? Will it change WR 104's aim? There are too many unknowns this article is just news media trying to promote itself by predicting doomsday.

Right here.

Could that governor have been the guy discussed in this article. He sure sounds like the mind-ray fearing type...

this horrible video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_Y6L9-VmK8

and the obvious corrections to it
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/21/repeat-after-me-asteroid-2007-tu24-is-no-danger-to-earth/