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Guess Romney Got along his New PET to the interview..

But will the reviewers find an inexplicable preponderance of counterclockwise screwy arguments?

That can't be real! There aren't any stars in the background!

It's tough... people who are really into alternative medicine will often go to any lengths, including dying. You could try explaining the principles behind evidence based medicine. It's really a remarkable system (I taught a grad lecture on it last semester). Try a look at badastronomy.com. Maybe you can pull off something (except more platonically, of course) like this story: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/12/20/reality-your-bridge-to-marital-bliss/

She probably shouldn't be a nurse. If nothing else sick people are vulnerable and don't need someone in a position of trust telling them stuff like that.

So far I can't think of anything (within it's domain of applicability) that relativity is known to have failed to predict. Cosmology does have the unfortunate problem that we can't manipulate any variables, so it does tend to rely as much as possible on experiments we CAN do here. That doesn't mean it's not science. Rather the opposite, actually.

Perhaps the electrical force does have some strange effects at long distances, or interaction with gravity. Nobody's done any experiments that demonstrate anything like it though.

I'm not sure what you mean by accelerating solar wind. The solar wind does accelerate within a few radii of the sun, which, you're right, is probably due to magnetic fields. That's a fairly well accepted theory. The solar wind is not "moving ever faster, as they go farther away from the sun." That in itself would be a big problem for an electric explanation since the solar wind is neutral. If it were subject to significant net electric influences from the sun it sure wouldn't be neutral by the time it got here... either the protons or the electrons would all have been sucked back into the sun.

Cosmologists are relying on theories of physics that have been tested to the best of our abilities here on Earth. Yes, any scientific explanation might be wrong, but using a well validated theory to explain your observations is not unscientific. If that theory predicts something anomalous, like dark matter, then mapping it, looking for and testing other explanations, and building experiments to test the existence of the anomalous something (dark matter) is also not unscientific.

As the Bad Astronomer notes, the odds of nothing happening have shrunk from 99% to 96%.

recently the Chinese were accused of doctoring a moon photo

That was just a stitching error. There was no new crater and no doctoring.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/12/03/chinese-moon-update/

Couldn't the additional small crater seen in the Chinese photo be from an asteroid collision that occurred after the Clementine picture was taken?

Bad Astonomy readers are already up to date. It's an error in composition of the picture. Nothing less, nothing more.

Bad Astonomy readers are already up to date. It's an error in composition of the picture. Nothing less, nothing more.

... and it was just earlier this year that the governor of Texas appointed a creationist to lead the Texas Board of Education. Things are going downhill here in Texas lately. :(

The industry standard rebuttal

OMG!

I also noticed that the small Japanese flag attached to the probe was WAVING! LOOK!
Clearly this has been staged, and the dumb Japanese scientists forgot about the breeze!

And please don't quote that charlatan Phil Plaitt ...
He's obviously in on the NASA/Japanese conspiracy!
You'd think after 40 years, these stupid studio guys would learn something!
But, noooo....!

Neither Saturn nor Jupiter are failed stars. Let Phil explain you this a bit better than I could

There's an alternate theory going around- a Peruvian SCUD missile gone awry, and the fuel (Inhibited Fuming Red Nitric Acid) is what made people sick.

In short, this news is bullshit. Not a single meteorite remain from Tunguska event has been found.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/08/12/thie ves-steal-giant-rock/

So, you are saying we should research before saying these things. Like reading how the other planets on the solar system are not warming because of the sun? http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/04/29/is-g lobal-warming-solar-induced/ (more links inside)

This is definitely a cool idea. But it's just a myth. Take a look at that site--lots of wonky pseudo-science to be had. And I especially knew something was wrong when they started talking about the Mayan calendar and global warming.

At any rate, take a look at the original press release that was misinterpreted to come up with this theory here: http://astsun.astro.virginia.edu/~mfs4n/sgr/
And take a look at a debunking here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/06/27/is-t he-sun-from-another-galaxy

And the wonkiness about the angle we see the Milky Way at from Earth is just plain bad math.

The astronomer quoted in that link has specifically stated that his work was misrepresented; see here and here. The Sun's orbit in the galaxy indicates that it did indeed originate in the Milky Way.

Earthlike in any other way? Not likely.

The Bad Astronomer had a nice examination of this article earlier today.

The Bad Astronomy blog has a clearer explanation of what this means (read: not much) over here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/08/03/new- planet-with-earthlike-orbit-nah/

Just because it orbits in 360 days doesn't mean it has an Earth-like orbit.

Ummm... sorry to reply to my own posting, but I thought *this* might be of interest:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/07/10/wher e-were-these-people-when-they-should-have-spoken-u p/

Not only is BadAstronomy an excellent webseite about astronomy, but this article is pretty good.
For example:

---
Here's what the former SG had to say about Bush's White House:

        "Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

Shocker.

I'm glad he spoke up. But hey, maybe this would have helped a bit more five years ago. He was the frackin' Surgeon General, the top doctor in this country and /delete{in charge of this nation's health!} a spokesman for health in this country!

What makes this worse is that I remember quite well a Surgeon General who spoke her mind, and to heck with the repercussions. Can you imagine any person in this current Administration, let alone the Surgeon General, saying "Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms"?

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/03/23/phoe nix-lights-again/ has the story on the phoenix lights. Flares, and some military aircraft. Plenty of eyewitnesses seeing that, including the pilots of the planes and a kid with a telescope.

Now that you mention it I can imagine that central channel as a clear liquid, but I can also imagine it as small ripples on the surface of sand. The features on the left however look a lot more like small pebbles on top of sand to me.

Also don't forget that image is actually taken on a slope (it's at the edge of a crater) so it can't be liquid anything.

My vote is it's just an optical illusion

(of course the most compelling reason is that the giant glass worms would never allow water to exist on their planet)

..just like on that South Park episode about the kids who said 9/11 was done in the studios too. Or something.

Oh,.. and here is your rebuttal:

http://www.lolloosechange.co.nr/

http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/green/loose_cha nge.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SgjWGVHxW8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Change_(video)

And here is a pre-emptive one: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

...at enterprisemission.com. That con artist "Doctor" Richard Hoagland has been scamming gullible people for decades. He's claimed at some time or another that he's behind most of the theories on planetary development that have become paradigms in astronomy now. On the other hand, he also claims the "face" on Mars and other naturally occurring phenomena are alien artifacts (see a nice parody of him at http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html where Phil Plait sees Lenin in a pattern on his shower curtain). I'd hate to think what Hoagland's gonna make of this hexagonal shape at Saturn's pole... probably rant on about how it confirms his "hyperdimensional physics" baloney. It's great to see that a bunch of slashdotters have already posted common explanations for the phenomena (which TFA unfortunately left out).

If there's an asteroid that's big enough to strip off Earth's crust, a trivial thing like the atmosphere is going to be a rather trivial defense.

They seemed to think that the moon has zero gravity. Inside the dome, you floated. Once you went outside, you could walk.

It just made me stare at the screen and go "Wha?"

Nice writeup here.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/12/27/the- top-ten-astronomy-images-of-2006/

-- An AC.

I was incensed when I heard that a 24 year old political appointee was altering Nasa publications on the big bang.
I was incensed when global warming was dismissed as even a possible cause for climate change.
But any researcher or rational thinker should be equally as incensed at this attempt to arbitrarily close off an avenue of inquiry - it's the same tactic, only in the opposite direction, and it stinks just as much.

Seeking to politically silence ANY side of a scientific issue is a slippery slope. The above-mentioned examples are probably repulsive to most slashdotters. De-certifying climatologists would simply be turnabout - and equally as invalid as when the tactic was employed by the existing anti-science administration. Should we seek to eliminate a theory completely because it's not our theory? No. If we want to be sure that we're moving forward with a solid theoretical foundation, each theory must be tested and discarded based on merit and evidence alone. While the circumstantial evidence for global warming is strong, there will be a time in the future when we can either prove or disprove it. Should the improbable happen and human-influenced global warming be disproved, do we want to be seen as the proverbial church that silenced Galileo?

I was incensed when I heard that a 24 year old political appointee was altering Nasa publications on the big bang.
I was incensed when global warming was dismissed as even a possible cause for climate change.
But any researcher or rational thinker should be equally as incensed at this attempt to arbitrarily close off an avenue of inquiry - it's the same tactic, only in the opposite direction, and it stinks just as much.

Seeking to politically silence ANY side of a scientific issue is a slippery slope. The above-mentioned examples are probably repulsive to most slashdotters. De-certifying climatologists would simply be turnabout - and equally as invalid as when the tactic was employed by the existing anti-science administration. Should we seek to eliminate a theory completely because it's not our theory? No. If we want to be sure that we're moving forward with a solid theoretical foundation, each theory must be tested and discarded based on merit and evidence alone. While the circumstantial evidence for global warming is strong, there will be a time in the future when we can either prove or disprove it. Should the improbable happen and human-influenced global warming be disproved, do we want to be seen as the proverbial church that silenced Galileo?

I can confirm this: I just saw the comet at 10:30 a.m. local time Sunday morning! Incredible. In all my years as an astronomer I have never seen anything like this. Using my binoculars I could easily spot it 5 degrees from the Sun. I'm trying to get video now, but it's so close it will be difficult. I made a videoblog about this the other day. I'll have to update it now!

The point, though, is that the test (which I originally blew off as ridiculous HR fluff) was shockingly accurate about me.

So are horoscopes.

but I do know you are mistaken about astronomers not reporting UFO's. I would suggest that you might do better research before making any more such bold and misleading statements, (like your previous comments regarding photography).

Talk about pot calling the kettle black. I suggest you read what reasonable people like Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Richard Feynman, or the folks at The Skeptic have to say. Mustn't forget to include Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy take on UFO nuttiness.

There is a difference between scientific ignorance and gullible ignorance. I know I don't know anything and am willing to be educated, but it doesn't mean I have to take what people say at face value, and if I learn it's bullshit, I'll call it bullshit. Especially UFOs as alien spacecraft bullshit. Having an open mind doesn't mean a lack of critical thinking.

If there really are aliens visiting earth in flying saucers, why then, and I'm really trying to understand this, why then would someone travel, perhaps, thousands of light years to abduct some stranger on a farm or isolated spot and give him an anal probe?

From the Bad Astronomer: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/firstonthemoon. html

But there was a far worse breach in reality in the show, and this dealt with the famous Apollo 11 "UFO".

On the way to the Moon, the astronauts saw something out their porthole they couldn't identify, and it appeared to be following them. They figured it might be the booster rocket that put them on their way to the Moon. The rocket, called an SIVB, had accelerated them out of Earth orbit two days earlier, and when they disconnected from it they maneuvered away. Two days later, their different orbits had separated them substantially. When the crew spotted their bogey, they called Houston control and asked how far away the booster was... and were told it was 6000 nautical miles distant-- way too far to be whatever it was they were seeing. Michael Collins, the Command Module pilot, looked at the object through the on-board telescope and said it was changing shape, sometimes looking elliptical, and other times looking L-shaped.

So what was it? UFO people have made a lot of hay from this story, and the show itself makes quite a bit of drama over it:

        Buzz Aldrin: There was something out there that was close enough to be observed-- what could it be?

        Narrator: If it wasn't a part of their rocket, it could only be one thing: a UFO.

That's a pretty dumb thing to say. First, a UFO is any unidentified object, but using the acronym strongly implies an alien spaceship. Also, by definition, if it wasn't part of the rocket, it was unidentified, so it had to be a UFO. Duh.

The program then goes on to say:

        To this day whatever it was the crew saw has not been positively identified or even publicly acknowledged.

However, this isn't entirely correct. It has been identified.

My friend David Morrison, who is an astronomer at NASA Ames in California, answers questions sent in to the Ask an Astrobiologist website. He got this very question! Here's his answer:

        I just talked to Buzz Aldrin on the phone, and he notes that the quotations were taken out of context and did not convey the intended meaning. After the Apollo 11 crew verified that the object they were seeing was not the SIVB upper stage, which was about 6000 miles away at that time, they concluded that they were probably seeing one of the panels from the separation of the spacecraft from the upper stage. These panels were not tracked from Earth and were likely much closer to the Apollo spacecraft. They chose not to discuss this on the open communications channel since they were concerned that their comments might be misinterpreted (as they are being now). Apparently all of this discussion about the panels was cut from the broadcast interview, thus giving the impression that they had seen a UFO.

Here's the url to phil plaits debunking. I highly recommend that anyone thinking the moonlandings are a hoax check it out.

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

It's because the hottest and coldest days of the year do not correspond with the solstices. Local temperatures have state, and it takes a while to heat and cool the atmosphere, surface, and oceans.

To find out more about this crackpot, check out Bad Astronomy

Hmmm... Hoagland, Hoagland... Is that the guy who claimed Mars is green?

I am tired of this "line in the sand" BS that we all appear to have fallen into. The overwhelming majority of Americans are reasonable people who are nothing like the extremist nutjobs portrayed on TV, and our biggest downfall will be ignoring that fact.

True enough. With all due respect to George Deutsch (bless his soul - really) and Phil Plait (bless his soul - really), they are just two people with very strong, vocal opinions. They don't represent the entire spectrum of beliefs and convictions - in fact, they polarize them.

I would never say to discount extremism - instead, it must be taken into account and moderated. After all, an extremist's opinion should still be heard, as long as we remember that it is simply one position.

Is it really "intensely curious", or is it the fact that it's just not that interesting an area? Hasn't it been analyzed to death already? Does it even look like a face if you don't squint your eyes and believe?

Here's a few links about it anyway:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEM09F8LU RE_0.html http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/2 2/0634233 http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/face .html http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ mars_face_010525-1.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_on_Mars

Yesterday the Bad Astronomy site posted a great photo of Atlantis and the ISS silhouetted against the sun. The photo was taken last Sunday... from the ground! The post over there also links to photographer Thierry Legault's website, with a bunch more space photos.

The primary mechanism keeping the air warm in a real greenhouse is the suppression of convection (the exchange of air between the inside and outside). Thus, a real greenhouse does act like a blanket to prevent bubbles of warm air from being carried away from the surface. As we have seen, this is not how the atmosphere keeps the Earth's surface warm. Indeed, the atmosphere facilitates rather than suppresses convection.

I'm sorry, but does this source seriously claim that the Earth's atmosphere convects heat into the vacuum of space? If so, I call stupidity. A greenhouse does convect -- within the greenhouse. When the heat reaches the edge of the greenhouse, the heat conducts through the windows/walls into the surrounding atmosphere, which is cooler and thus a heat sink, where it then merrily convects away. When the Earth's atmosphere dumps heat, it radiates it directly into space (or back to the surface, or sideways, or any direction whatsoever until it finally reaches space). Radiation is the slowest of the 3 ways to dump heat, but it's better than the alternative: the Earth also convects the heat upward, one layer at a time, each layer acting like its own greenhouse, until the heat slowly trickles upward to the edge of space; most of this heat gets radiated from there, since more directions point into the vacuum, and the rest goes into the kinetic energy of the rarefied atmosphere and causes a tiny and insignificant bit of atmospheric leakage into space. Because CO2 reabsorbs the IR directly radiated from the surface and lower atmosphere, the Earth has to rely more on slower processes like this onion convection to dump heat. And since the rate of solar input is constant, or perhaps even going up a bit (as the Mars warming suggests), that means that the absolute temperature of Earth will rise.

On reading the entire source, it seems that the author (Dr. Alistair Fraser) is a pedantic asshole who, while not quite wrong and even having the occasional point, posesses a black/white worldview where there's no difference between a simplified explanation and a wrong one. (I should know, I had a similar attitude in high school. I grew out of it; he apparently got a PhD in it.) Contrast this with, for instance, Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site, and the difference is night and day. For one, Phil Plait has a personality.

As an example, Dr. Fraser takes issue with the word "reradiate". The common understanding of this word in science is "a particle, such as an electron or atom, absorbs a photon of energy, waits an indeterminate amount of time, then emits a photon of energy, often of a lower wavelength than the original photon". This follows from the Latin roots: "re-" again + "radiare" to emit/radiate, i.e. that there are two separate events of a photon being radiated, even though the two events are connected. He seems to think this word means "a particle deflects a photon's path without otherwise interacting with it", which never occurs in nature (ignoring gravitational lensing, where "radiate" is never used). If his definition were the correct one, the word would not exist at all, giving him no opportunity to ridicule it as "a nonsense term which should never be used to explain anything", and he then proceeds to explain the common definition of the very word he is deriding. This pedantry might be appropriate for 100-level physics, where students might not understand yet that temperature = energy = light/EM and that things seek the lowest energy level.

What's more, the entire page has nothing to do whatsoever with global warming, and says nothing at all about CO2. In the pedantic sesquipedalian verbosity that your source would understand: CO2 has an absorption spectrum that partially overlaps with the thermal emission spectrum of the atmosphere. Consider any photon within the CO2 absorption spectrum: as the amount of CO2 is increased, the chances that the photon will be absorbed by the atmosphere are inc

Ignoring for the moment, once again, that it's silly to try to scientifically define a class of objects that are really only defined culturally, these definitions are still unsatisfying to me.

we didn't land on the moon