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Ask The Bad Astronomer
Astronomer, author, columnist, and successful populizer of science Phil Plait, perhaps best known as The Bad Astronomer, is a regular sight on Slashdot for his unusual ability to find lucid explanations of esoteric scientific claims and controversies. Phil has graciously agreed to answer Slashdot readers' questions, so ask him below about space, science, debunking conspiracy claims, and anything else that makes sense. Asking more than one question is fine (and encouraged!), but please separate unrelated questions into separate posts, lest your questions be moderated down.
You've been doing The Bad Astronomer thing for a while. How come you haven't become a better astronomer by now?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Why does matter exist? Why does energy exist?
Wouldn't it make more sense for the universe to be empty?
I do not think that word means what you think that it means
Never let a mediocre career stand in the way of a good time
What do you see as contributing to a seemingly large wealth of misinformation about the sciences?
Also, do you agree or disagree with Slashdot's one question per post requirements?
Will you sign my breasts?
Regards,
Guy Manly
What is the best way to combat pushers of psudeo-science like the Electric Universe?
When do we get more?
Have you seen this series? What do you think about its conclusions?
What is your opinion on the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and what if any, in your opinion, are the odds that we will ever make meaningful contact?
What is the universe expanding into?
Which do you find more annoying.
Star Trek which can spend a good portion of the show trying to explain how and why they break the laws of physics.
or
Star Wars which breaks the laws of physics but doesn't care to explain themselves.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
How can I make astrology buffs see the error of their ways? Barring that, what is the best way short of setting them on fire, to prevent them from entering an astronomy conversation?
Maybe because his Webpage, not a blog or twitter account was named Bad Astronomy there is a theme.
Could also be for Caveman Lawyer reasons: I may just be a bad astronomer, hollywood, but I don't think there's no noise supposed to be coming from your improperly banking and turning spacecraft in those motion pictures you put on.
Does the universe stop moving when I go to sleep? Can you prove it?
I know events can be perceived to "happen" whilst I sleep- but can we be sure these are not just figments caused by the universe rebooting?
Will the universe cease to exist when I die? Again- can you prove it?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
There are a large number of light pollution articles to be found on the Sky and Telescope website. We amateur astronomers are keenly aware that light pollution isn't just about being able to see more stars from our backyard. Yet, when I mention the subject to friends, family, co-workers, etc, I often get a blank stare. "What's 'light pollution'?" What do you think can/should be done to improve widespread public awareness of light pollution and its effects?
The cake is a lie.
How do you make the assessment to jump over threshhold and be dick anyway?
There are times when it is necessary to ignore the rules.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
If you could give Apollo-level funding to a single NASA program, what would it be? Would you direct that money internally or involve private space companies?
Finally, what do you think of lunar-based observatories from a cost vs. performance standpoint?
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Some of the most interesting science being done now is where two traditional fields overlap. What fields combined with astronomy are making the most interesting discoveries?
What date and time will Eta Carinae go hyper-nova?
We've all seen the the domonstration of putting a bowling ball on a rubber sheet, and showing how a marble rolls around in curves, indicating that the presence of mass warps space and creating gravity. But I've never seen an explanation of WHY mass warps space. Can you explain that?
---Selden McCabe, Carlsbad, CA
Rumor has it you ride a unicorn made of bacon, Guinness, and awesomeness into work. Are you free to confirm or deny this?
What do you think is driving the motion of galaxies centered on the constellations Centaurus and Hydra?
Given your unique position, I'd like to know your answer to this question:
What do you think is the currently a bigger threat to legitimate science:
- The growing wave of anti-intellectualism and anti-science that seemingly rejects science outright on certain issues
- Or the growing wave of pseudo-science that undercuts science by adopting the trappings of science but none of its procedures?
Thank you for your time.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
A question that's bugged me for years.
Whenever I've been shown a picture of any galaxy, I've noted a swirly thing as flat as a pancake.
My question: Why are galaxies "flat as a pancake"? If the universe arose from random gas clouds, I'd not expect stable swirling galaxies - at least not on every occasion... I'd have expected to see a cluster of bodies tumbling chaotically. What gives?
What's the best way to introduce astronomy to kids in developing countries? Or, to put it in a different way, how would you get kids interested in astronomy without help of latest technology (other than a decent pair of binoculars)? A related questions would be - what would make the best first impact on them? (The idea is to make that one big impression in the beginning so that they are interested in it from the go).
It's always been a pet peeve of mine as to why people so adamantly believe and support something so ludicrous as "The Big Bang" theory? Aside from the stupid name, the idea that all the universe began from a single huge explosion doesn't match the current thought that the universe is infinite. How can it be infinite if it started from somewhere. Is it possible for one to believe the universe and stars have always been there and always will, ever-changing and always moving in any number of directions and that we haven't observed enough of our area to realize it?
Was his plan for the Human Colonization and Exploitation of Space https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space a realistic one, given the new things we've learned in various fields of research over the last 50 years?
Has anyone come up with a better long term plan for either Colonization or Exploitation?
do have a transmission medium (aether, ether, ), just like sound waves do propagate in air, don't they? D. Brisset was onto something big in 1911 (ToE inside, in French).
Do you find joy in anything that goes against the mainstream? I get the impression you're the kind of person who would pick up a SF novel, discover it mentions "faster than light travel" and write an angry letter to the author enumerating how he's wrong and a bad person to boot.
I've noticed a disturbing trend that as funding levels drop, agencies are receding more to their core areas of study and leaving interdisciplinary scientists high and dry. Furthermore, it seems that there's an inverse relationship between the fund-ability of a project and its efficiency: if a (say) particle physics project is so inefficient it requires 1000 scientists 10 years to get 1 bit of data (like the Top quark discovery) then they're guaranteed to have well-coordinated funding and lobbying effort, whereas projects that deliver results on only a shoestring budget might not have enough people working on them to get any funding at all.
I'm working at the interface between neuroscience and algorithm theory, and I've already made some very interesting discoveries using borrowed time/funding, but I have trouble shopping my ideas to either pure neuroscience/medical funding agencies (who don't understand the math) or to computer science funding agencies (who don't appreciate the biology). Both sides seem generally excited and encouraging, but neither is willing to fund my future research, since (despite a promising track record) I'm out of the expertise of anyone out there.
My question is, are we doomed to a future dominated by big science projects working in entrenched specialties on the least-efficient, longest-term, too-big-to-fail science investigations out there? If not, how do we promote efficient, small-scale, interdisciplinary project funding?
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
How do you pronounce the name of the seventh planet from the Sun? I'm in favor of Futurama's solution: rename it to Urrectum.
-TheDawgLives suckitdown
With all the resurgence of hysteria due to 2012 as well as recent major earthquakes, pseudo-scientific explanations to otherwise natural phenomena are becoming the norm of the day.
One of the ones I've seen more lately are two:
1) The Schumman Resonance, commonly distorted to explain the upcoming "elevation of frequency" or the Earth entering into an "electromagnetic null zone" whatever that means.
2) The HAARP as a weapon to produce and trigger earthquakes.
If you could give us a set of precise and concise good shot answers that could help debunk those myths for the layman, it would greatly help to try to make people think more critically for a change... Thanks!
Do you see long term trends in various misconceptions?
It seems subjectively to me that the "vernal equinox egg" deal was WAY more popular in the 80s. Its a random variable on the timescale of a couple years.
Other misconceptions, like "the far side of the moon is always dark" or "the moon always rises at sunset and sets at sunrise" has a relatively constant rate of mis-belief over time.
Another type of misconception is the flash in the pan like the "face on mars" which gets intense media attention for awhile and then fades (permanently?) into obscurity.
Do you see any general trends in the distribution of the three types of misconceptions over time, like one getting more or less popular or ... maybe due to social media or something?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw recently tried to answer questions on the big bang and other curios of modern cosmology in The Guardian newspaper. It's hard to tell if they were dumbing down the science for the readers, but the general consensus was that their explanations were neither helpful nor informative. This isn't an indictment of their abilities, as there have been countless celebrity scientists in the media who have made a pig's ear of explaining things. Now, science SHOULD be explained, but clearly the level of the explanations needs work.
Assuming the objective is to reduce misunderstandings, what would be the right level to pitch the more complex aspects of astronomy and cosmology?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Phil,
I was recently reading through some of the '2012 hysteria' on your site and your affiliates... mostly responses to uneducated or superstitious people who've bought into the 'The End is Nigh' madness.
Since I grew up in a similar environment, I've also been watching the apocalyptic religious fervor surrounding people like Harold Camping with some horror.
My understanding is that this kind of thing tends to peak near century markers... 'End of the Century == End of the World', so theoretically, the silliness should be tapering off. Right?
What is your experience on this? Are we seeing a slowdown to the 'End of World' craziness, or is it going to get worse?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
So everyone knows how post WWII era fictional spaceships sound like P-51 engines, 80s era fictional spaceships all sound like F-16s, and I was curious if there are any recent trends in "fictional spacecraft sounds" that I'm missing that you know about. Do you think that Star Trek 15 or whatever will have the Enterprise sound like the iphone unlock sound? I was thinking with the popularity of military UAVs we might be in for an era of model airplane sounds and flexing radio control servos. Donno. What do you think?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
In your opinion, what is more important during the next 50 years and why: sending humans or sending robots on 'exploration' type missions?
Do they have a leg to stand on ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
If our moon weren't tidally locked, would early cultures have entertained sooner the idea the Earth is round?
When you were a child there were undoubtedly some science fictions that you believed to be facts (e.g., sound in space, dinosaurs and men, cats and dogs living together). Are there any examples of how realizing the truth was a particularly cathartic act? How did these revelations shape your decision to become a scientist?
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Meteor collision, alien invasion, dying Sol, or heat death of universe?
1. Astronomers view light that was created in the past. Is the past is viewable in all directions or just one? (If my laymans' view of the "view of the past via light" is way off, please tell me how that works.) If the past is viewable in all directions, the stuff you are looking at is on the rim of the expansion which seems backwards to what I would have guessed. 2. Here on earth, things speed up or accelerate either due to a force from the initial event or an external force (like gravity, energy addition, etc.). Is the accelerating expansion of our universe due to the initial event? If so, how? (Maybe that is where all the "missing anti-gravity" is. lol) Thanks.
Just saw the "don't be a dick" lecture for the first time about a week ago, and your description of the moment when that Young Creationist began to see you as a fellow human being rather than an ideological enemy was the most beautiful thing I've heard in a long time. If I'm not wrong, you were kinda choked up, and so was I.
How do you think the web can be made into a better vehicle for human interaction and exchange of ideas? Seems the Internet now allows us to interact with people from all over the world instantaneously, and we've used this formidable power for questionable activities like anonymous chat board trolling (being dicks) and porn/cybersex (being obsessed with our dicks).
What do you see as the barriers to making the Internet a medium to reach more folks like that Young Creationist, to build understanding rather than take potshots at each other?
How serious is the amount of 'space junk' orbiting Earth? Will it have a substantial impact on the future of space flight, manned or otherwise? What are some of the best (or at least most innovative) ideas you've heard about for deorbiting big junk or cleaning up smaller bits of debris?
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
How long do we have to put up with the notion of "Dark Matter"? Whenever I research this, I come back to the "galactic rotation problem" as the most solid evidence. This discrepancy between prediction and observation is clearly rooted in the prediction being wrong. Keplers Laws do not apply to stars in galaxies. Hand waving and incorrect use of Gauss's Law have been going on for decades and we need it to stop. Why do people keep looking for "new physics" when they don't fully understand the physics we have?
I read that it is impossible to travel or even send information faster than light. But the explanations are bad. If you are in a car traveling at 50% of light speed (0.5c) and you turn on the headlights, for you the light will move away from you at lightspeed because your time is slowed. To stationary (relatively speaking) observers, you will be traveling at 0.5c and the light from your headlights will look like it is traveling at c from their point of view, instead of 1.5c, because time is moving faster for them.
A simple extrapolation has your time moving backward if you should somehow be able to move faster than the light from your own headlights, so that it will still look to you as if that light is moving away from you at lightspeed. Then we detour into all sorts of causality problems, and this often gets held up as the explanation, when it seems more like a consequence. Common sense suggests FTL signals should be possible without violating causality, without it being necessary to run time backwards. Of course something else would have to give. Perhaps vacuum is not the fastest medium, and signals can travel faster when in a special conduit.
How would you explain the cosmic speed limit?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Here's a good one:
Make us some predictions about bad astronomy in the future.
I'm guessing the 2012 crowd will be pretty disappointed in 2013 and looking for something new. What do you think will be the new hotness in flakiness? Do you think its even possible to predict?
My theory is flakiness reflects societal concerns. So the rednecks were "worried" about gay people getting civil rights, next thing you know we're deluged with UFO's doing probing of bubbas rearward areas. Following that line of thinking, now that the UK is spy camera crazy, and the sickness is spreading to the US and elsewhere, I'm predicting, some bad science will be orbiting alien space telescopes spying on us in 2013. You heard it first here on /. ...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
My Tivo caught 3, so I kind of know the answer to your question, there will at least be 1 more for you.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1571437/episodes
For those who are not reading/watching it, a huge aspect of that world is that seasons are quite irregular and unpredictable, with winters or summer having sometimes three years, other times lasting up to six or seven years. Apparently, sometimes there are even longer winters, but those are quite rare.
So, my question is: is it possible for a planet to have Game of Thrones-esque seasons? My guess is that it would require some really weird orbit around a binary start system, but I'd guess such orbits can't possible be stable. Any ideas?
What is holographic storage and how does it work?
I've been fascinated by holograms for decades and read a couple of pseudo-scientific books on the subject but that was many years ago. Is there a future for holography or have we moved beyond the umbrella concept into more application-specific development?
Thank you Dr. Bad (or BA?)
"The Borba"
1. Astronomers view light that was created in the past. Is the past is viewable in all directions or just one?
I'm predicting you're about to get hit with the classic "inflating balloon" analogy. That is boring, because its the only analogy I've heard for the past 30 years. Does anyone have an analogy other than ye olde inflating balloon? I'm not interested in extremely close analogies (like the effect on tattoos of silicone enlargement of sorta spherical parts, or how the stamped manufacturers info changes when inflating a kickball).
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Those shows should ABSOLUTELY exist - and they should be dedicated to debunking them as completely and unassailably as possible.
Spend the first third of the show explaining the myth; spend the next 2 thirds ripping it to pieces.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I enjoy gazing at the heavens sometimes but by no means would call myself an astronomer. Short of purchasing a telescope and driving out of the city, do you have any suggestions for 'naked eye' astronomy in an area of moderate light pollution?
...but I take serious issue with typifying anything from 1970 as "ancient".
Seriously.
Now get off my lawn.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
In science a simple misconception can lead to thousands and millions of people being skeptical and disbelieving. For example the large number of people who think that humans evolved from chimpanzees rather than sharing a common ancestor.
In astronomy what misconception would you class as most dangerous to the general publics understanding?
The sun is spinning on it's own axis every few days, you know!
Ever since I read Gary Taubes' "Bad Science," I've been unshakably convinced that cold fusion is an example of pathological science, and Pons/Fleischman's "room temperature fusion" was utter nonsense.
However, CF believers seems to soldier on year after year. As recently as 2009, the U.S. Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center reported finding neutron bursts when using heavy water electrolysis, though their claims were not accepted by the mainstream scientific community.
Has anything emerged since the debunking of Pons/Fleischmann that gives any credence to cold fusion?
And if you have the time...is there any future for muon-catalyzed fusion (which I understand is legitimate but falls far short of break even for energy production)?
Advice: on VPS providers
Next June, I plan to travel from Boston to Hawaii (probably Kauai) to view the transit of Venus. I can take a small (90mm mak cas) telescope and a solar filter, but trying to cope with airline carry-on luggage restrictions and get a 4" diameter, 10" long aluminum cylinder through airport security is going to be a pain. Can viewing the transit be done using a camera obscura technique like one might use for viewing a partial solar eclipse?
In movies when starships go really fast, shouldn't the light inside the ship red and blue shift visibly as well? .75c halved again etc. .75c these nice bright halogen lamps on the ships ought to provide a nice mix of hard UV radiation on the front, and burning hot IR from behind...
I mean, at 0.5c the light in front of the spectator ought to have its wavelength halved, at
At
Is Bill Nye a worse astronomer than you?
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
If my hypothetical faster than light starship had a front window that I could see through, wouldn't I get a really nasty sunburn?
While watching the panel you moderated at this year's TAM with Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Pamela Gay and Lawrence Krauss I noticed several instances of tension between Tyson and Krauss on issues like funding, cosmology and others things. The question is, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I ask because it appears science is assaulted from many sides and I wonder if internal strife helps or hinders progress?
Well, in all movies I know, the people in the ship tend to more with the ship, with only minor relative speed (given the size of the ships, any relativistic movement would end with that person immediately hitting against the wall and dying, anyway). Since the relative speed is non-relativistic, no noticeable red/blue shift is seen.
You can also consider it from an "outside" view where the ship is indeed moving with 0.5c from you. Consider light going from the front of the ship to some person inside, moving with the ship. From your viewpoint it's of course red-shifted. However that person is also moving with 0.5c in the same direction, that is, against the flight direction of the light. Since he flies towards the light source, he will see the approaching light blue-shifted, and this blue-shift will cancel out the red shift from emission.
Note that you don't even need relativity for that, the same is true for sound: You don't inside a moving car hear the motor in front of you in a lower pitch, but you do if you are standing behind the car driving away.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I look to the stars a lot and think a lot about outer space and things of that nature. I see a lot of patterns and always think, "why hasn't anyone else talked about this stuff". This stuff being how black holes twist the fabirc of space the same way our sun does on a smaller scale... There seems to be a habital zone in our Galaxy, right where our son (sol) is. If you scale it down to our solar system it would "match up" to were the earth is etc. Do you think the in the grand scheme of things there is something bigger than a black whole that is manutpulating all the galaxes, spinning all the galaxies around?
That's how I read that, anyway. Perhaps I see what I want to...
Followed closely by a image of a sad pirate with no other ships to pillage...
Of course they could hold our telecommunications satellites hostage for big profits... Hmmmmm....
1) Light takes a while to travel, so everything you see is in "the past", as light always takes a while to reach your eye, it just takes longer for objects further away. Direction doesn't matter.
2) It's the space that is expanding, not the stars flying away from each other. Have two ants staying on a rubber band and pull the rubber band apart, the ants will get further away from each other, even when neither of them moves. The more interesting question would be: How do you tell the two apart? If you see an object moving away from you, how can you tell it's the object moving, not the expansion of space that is doing the job.
I am a firm skeptic and opponent of astrology and certainly think it does more harm than good. However a friend of mine gives credence to astrology. Not any particular implementation bur simply the concept that some sort of spatial body could have an effect for life on earth. It's an overly complicated theory that isn't supported by our current understanding, however I was trying to communicate this in my argument with my friend without being dismissive.
I found your essay on astrology and was excited to show my friend as it was articulated very eloquently and I thought it would be hard to make an argument against it. I was surprised and disappointed then to see you boldly claim there could not possibly be any unknown force that could effect us in the way astrology claims possible. That seemed like an example of bad astronomy right there.
There is so much that we do not currently understand, how can you make such a strong claim like that? Is making such a bold claim that you can't backup not an example of bad astronomy and bad science in general?
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
What do you think is the answer to Fermi's question? That is, why do you think we see no signs of intelligent life other than humans?
Do you think we'll ever be able to travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum?
Actually, we have, but we all decided that it would be best not to let you in on it.
Changa hates change.
Sounds like a question for the Bad Physicist, or the Bad Chemist, not the Bad Astronomer.
Bad AC.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
A recent post here talks about a study that posits the possibility that the universe has a non-zero angular momentum. Would this strengthen the likelihood of the possibility that the Big Bang was the"White Hole" side of a gravitational collapse in some parent universe?
I see this anti-dark matter / dark energy stuff a lot on Slashdot. It would be nice if Phil Plait could give a good explanation of the evidence.
Whenever I research this, I come back to the "galactic rotation problem" as the most solid evidence.
That isn't the most solid evidence. It was just the first evidence, and if it was the only evidence then Dark Matter would not be preferred over the idea of a modified gravitational theory. Since then there have been two major additional forms of evidence for dark matter. The first is gravitational lensing.
According to General Relativity, mass bends bends light that passes by it. We have measured this effect before with objects of known mass, and the predictions of GR are dead on. Astronomers have looked at how strongly light is bent when passing by large galaxies, and used this to compute the mass of the galaxy. The numbers they get are much greater than the mass of the visible material, and more importantly match up very closely with the estimates of dark matter mass obtained by looking at rotational curves.
The most outstanding evidence of this is from the Bullet Cluster. Here two galaxies had passed through each other, and you can see how the different types of matter were slowed down by different amounts depending on how likely they were to collide. The gas clouds were slowed the most, and the large structures (stars, etc) slowed down less. But if you look at the gravitational lensing, you see that there is a big chunk of non-visible mass that was not slowed down by the collision at all. This is exactly what you would expect to see if the galaxies contained non-baryonic dark matter, and can't be explained by modified gravity at all.
The second major evidence is the cosmic microwave background radiation. I don't pretend to understand this, and thus won't try to expound, except to note that the ratio of baryonic matter to non-baryonic matter found using the CMBR also agrees with the dark matter estimates found using galaxy rotation curves and gravitational lensing.
So we have three drastically different ways of indirectly measuring the same thing, and they all come up with the same result. That is pretty strong evidence in my book.
How long do we have to put up with the notion of "Dark Matter"?
My guess is quite a long time, because it is almost certainly correct. Hopefully though, we will have direct evidence of dark matter with the next few decades, which should make it less annoying :)
Having read today that some astronomers claim to have resolved the discrepancy between the giant nebula surrounding the oldest observed supernova (by Chinese astronomers) is there any chance that that supernova could've been responsible for the star of Bethlehem? I realize that the Chinese records say 185 A.D. but could they be off (I guess the date of Christ's birth also could be recorded/calculated incorrectly but I assume you are not a Bible Scholar).
I'm reminded of the Arthur C. Clarke story "The Star" in which a priest's faith is sorely challenged when he discovers that a peaceful advanced civilization was sacrificed to provide the light for the birth of Christ:
"[O]h God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?"
If not this supernova, are there any other candidates that might have fit this time frame? Even if there are no reputable astronomical records, can we look at supernova remnants to see if there are any that match? Or perhaps it was due to A) Venus B) a comet C) weather balloon?
If one views UFO's as a mystery instead of as "aliens", do you think there's a legitimate case for further study, even if it may only produce psychology lessons?
Reliable pilot and passenger witnesses have seen "flying disks" in broad daylight up close, for example. I'd like to know what triggered that perception if it's not "real".
Table-ized A.I.
Please give me the one simple proof that I can tell my wife that she will finally believe that we actually went to the moon!
Hi,
What do you think represents the biggest threat to the credibility of science in the eyes of the layman?:
- The media, and the way they report results of scientific (and sometimes pseudo-scientific) research.
- The models used to fund science that sometimes leads to a quest for funding over a quest for scientific rigor.
- Political and governmental ignorance.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
Because he deals skeptically with bad astronomy. For example if someone calls themselves a macro economist, would you think they deal with macro economics or would you think that they were a large person?
Do you think it is more likely that Dark Matter and Energy are physical entities in this universe (eg. WIMPs), or bleed over effects from parallel dimensions?
I would assume that the gp is referring to when the planets' elliptical orbits have them close to the Sun.. if Jupiter is the main culprit I would expect this event to happen twice per "Jupiter year." How fast the Sun rotates should be unrelated.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Everywhere I look it seems that large astronomical instruments are being shut down. Here in Australia I've learnt that the Parkes Radio Telescope is in imminent danger, and one scientific institution gave away a 1m telescope to an amateur so that it would no longer need to be funded. Clearly science funding in general and astronomy funding in particular is in crisis with such instruments, that took decades to realize, being dumped unceremoniously. The usual excuse is the economy but the truth is that there have been darker days. While amateur equipment has gotten remarkably capable and affordable it's not going to replace world class instruments any time soon. What do you think can be done about funding, so that the next couple of generations can continue to make discoveries?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Everything we see is in the past. The light emitted from your monitor took a very small amount of time to get to your eyes, but in that sense it is still "historical" data. You can still see your monitor even if you're slowly backing away from it. Same principle applies here.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Do you support finishing the JWST which is now substantially behind schedule and over budget? (I realize that many of the problems were caused by Congress but unfortunately that's where we are today). What about if a substantial amount of the money needed to complete it is taken out of other astronomy related programs? :(
If you had to choose a major (Discovery?) class probe to look for life beyond earth which celestial body would you send it to?
Mars (methane outgassing?)
Europa (subsurface ocean?)
Enceladus (water "fountains"?)
Titan (liquid water, ammonium, hydrocarbon ocean?)
Are you familiar with Peter Ward's book "Life but not as we know it" in which he makes a strong case for Titan? Do you agree?
Why are inertial mass and gravitational mass equivalent for matter? Given what we know about the laws of physics, does it seem to be required that they are equivalent for the laws of physics to be consistent or for any other reason? Or does it seem to be, as far as we currently know, just a coincidence that they are equivalent?
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Will the proposed next generation of ground based "super" telescopes like the "OWL" make space telescopes obsolete (in the visible spectrum anyway)? With advances like ultra-accurate laser frequency combs will they be able to do spectroscopic analysis on earth candidates? Does this mean the Terrestrial Planet Finder is not needed?
Who? (and if so, what do you recommend!)
Ever seen Mythbusters?
Too bad the name is already taken 'cause it would be ideal.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Hi, Phil. I saw the video of the TAMS panel on the future of space exploration that you moderated. Whose dim-whited idea was it to make you a moderator and not a panelist?
Any chance of ever bringing back your Mad Scientist section, where you do a Q&A sort of like the Straight Dope, only with generally more Astronomy related topics? That's the particular feature that caused me to discover your site in the first place.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I mean, really.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Although your blog is clearly geared toward Astronomy related topics, and far more of the good than the bad as the name might otherwise indicate, you also delve into a number of unrelated topics, primarily global warming and anti-vax opposition. Of course, it's your blog and you can write about anything you want, and I can choose to read everything or just skip over those topics that I'm either uninterested in, or in some rare cases might disagree with. Sometimes, even for a controversial topic for which we are 100% in agreement on, I don't want to waste brainspace getting emotionally charged up on an issue when all I want to do is look at awesome pictures and explore not only the visual appeal of the cosmos, but the scientific background as well. Therefore, since astronomy is clearly your core strength and the only reason I come to visit, in more recent years I've noticed that I've gone from visiting once a day to only visiting once every couple weeks, so I can skim past the posts I'm uninterested in and get to the juicy astronomy stuff. Problem is, now I find myself only visiting when it dawns on me that I hadn't been there in a while.
So, my question is this.. do you think that having a blog with a more diverse set of topics, especially some of a more controversial nature (which astronomy itself typically isn't), attracts and retains a larger and/or more preferable audience than one that is more focused on a single discipline, and do you think the resulting commentary contributes well or distracts from interest and attention to the blog's core mission (whatever that may be)?
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
You've made you're position fairly clear on whether the current recent warming trend in global temperature is anthropogenic. My question is: do you think a mere reduction in (or cessation of) anthropic CO2 emissions will significantly reduce this trend, and whether larger scale geoengineering is an inevitable requirement to maintain the abnormally long stable warm period that humanity has thrived in for the last few millennia?
And i'm strictly a layman sky gazer so apologies if I don't use the right terminology. 1.-What would you say our risk level for NEOs is? I know we make fun of the Naburu or whatever that crazy rogue planet thing is called but last I heard we had only mapped about 2% of the sky and with all that space it does make me wonder if we would actually see a NEO that was a danger before it was too late to do anything, and as a follow up 2.- If we were to spot a NEO that was a danger do you believe we could divert it with our current technology, if so how so? Gravity tractor, using nukes as shockwaves to divert, maybe solar sails? How far away would the NEO have to be detected at for these to work?
Again I apologize if I didn't use the exact terminology, just an average Joe who like looking at the stars and Jupiter through a friend's 6 foot telescope and these things I have been wondering. Thanks for your time and keep up with the debunking!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Have you ever tried walking up all the stairs in a very tall sky scraper? This gives you a very human feeling of the extent of the gravity well in which we sit, due to the mass of the Earth. It takes a ridiculous amount of energy just to get away from Earth. Then add to this the problem of cosmic rays and having enough of everything to get there and back, and I really have to wonder why so much thought and money and time goes into the idea that we will go to Mars. Until we have better sources of energy or a breakthrough in physics so that we can teleport places, don't you think it's a bit of a waste of time and resources to think we can take a trip to Mars? If not, why not? Basically, I'm saying, let's just explore and take care of this planet a lot better first, before we go anyplace else.
What do you think about the current state of educational programming both on TV and online? Do you think kids are getting the right and important information?
I believe in extraterrestial life. But has anyone calculatd the developmental time factor?
Relative to the overall life of the Universe, or even our planet, we humans have been here for a few moments. And we are pretty sure that we won't be here for a (relatively) long time. If our, or any orher planets' development, were off by say 1% would we ever be ABLE to communicate?
Global Warming skepticism isn't just a grass-roots movement that's happening because global warming would be really scary if it were true or because its proponents don't like hippies. It's a well-funded campaign by businesses that would suffer financially from laws intended to stop global warming - oil companies, etc. - who are the Republican Party's corporate sponsors. They're also propagandists for Anti-Evolutionism, not because they care about Creationism, but because getting people not to believe in one kind of science makes it easier to get them not to believe in other kinds of science, and also because it's a way to get religious conservatives to believe that they should also be political conservatives. Anti-Evolutionism is the hook to get them in the door; stopping anti-global-warming laws is the payload.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I kind of see where you are going with this. But then, what is a 'tronomer'?
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
Say something true now that will also be true even if the species, the biosphere, and the planet are gone.
Not quite astronomy but just wondering if you think the human race will achieve some sort of "Singularity" brought about by A.I. and/or nano-technology? Within this century?
The "Singularity" is nonsense. Take an AI class or read through a textbook, and the problem will become obvious. Faster computers aren't smarter computers. A faster chess-playing program is just a faster chess-playing program. It may play better because it can search the game tree deeper, but it's still a stupid chess-playing program: no amount of speed-up will result in a singularity.
Anyone who thinks there will be a singularity this century is either ignorant (excusable) or a crank (not excusable).
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I see that everyone is asking question but where is the answer from the Bad Astronomer? Am I missing something?
For one, it tends to mess with the Circadian Rhythms of local plants and wildlife.
See Light Pollution: Disruption of ecosystems.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Lyman-alpha blobs are among the largest objects in the universe. What causes them?
When we say that the universe is expanding, do we simply mean that stuff like stars and galaxies are getting further apart, or are our X, Y, and Z dimensions expanding (stretching)?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
if einstein's theory of gravity well formed by planets are correct,then why are the planets not attracted to the center of the gravity well (towards the bigger planet)?why should they rotate round the planets?also why the satellites are not dragged to the bigger planet?(in solar system moon can go to sun instead it rotates round the earth.why?)isn't there a banking in the cosmic fabric?
I've noticed that your blog repeats a common mistake: you frequently refer to exoplanets orbiting other stars as existing in other "solar systems" rather than using the correct term and stating that they are other "star systems."
This is a common error. There are many star systems, but there is only one solar system. Our star system is the solar system because our star is named Sol.
I suppose technically none of that was a question, so I'll ask one now. Can you correct that error? :)
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Why does the Great Bear, the Great Slave and the Great Lakes seem to be aligned?
that the pyramid builders used to lift the largest stone blocks? And how many men would they need to lift it? How long would it take?
If not, what do you think this means for long term space exploration and/or colonisation?
(I say implicitly/explicitly to allow for both actually exceeding the speed of light and for using some sort of clever multi-dimensional/space bending/startrekkian technique :) )
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
A genie appears and offers you one true yes/no answer to any question you ask (subject, perhaps, to xkcd rules). What would you ask?
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
E.g., will we have colonies on other planets? Other star systems? Will we have robots/AI/cyborgs? Will we have a high tech world? Low tech? Nox tech?
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
everyone talks about hubble, but what's your take on the cost/benefit of the shuttle program? would the money have been better spent launching more voyagers/cassinis/new horizonses? were there hidden benefits to astronomy from the program?
If I gave you the Universe, where would you put it?
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Phil, CERN has not yet found the Higgs' particles. Has the accident you caused (knocking over one of the orientation points) on your last visit got anything to do with it? ;)
I'm Not Antisocial, I'm Just Not User Friendly
If I stand on the north pole and look "up" with a powerful enough telescope I'll be able to see objects that are roughly 10-12 billion light-years away. If I do the same thing on the south pole and look in the opposite direction I'll also see objects that are as far. Yet these objects cannot be 20-24 billion light-years away from each other since the universe isn't old enough for them to go that far. What I am not understanding?
Way back when I was a freshman in college I was considering a carrier in astronomy and physics, but I opted for the more flashy and showy job of application development. Is there room for hobby astronomers to contribute in a meaningful way to the global community, or should I stick with the crowd-sourcing projects on https://www.zooniverse.org/ ?
I'm trying to understand the gravity of black holes. When a star dies and a black hole results the amount of mass that makes up the black hole can not be more than the mass of the original star but the black hole exhibits much more gravity than the original star. Is this the result of r approaching zero in the law of universal gravitation? F = G ( m1*m2/r**2 ) as r->zero, F = G*m1*m2
You should like this?
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
The only other one I know is that of a doughnut. Not as easy to imagine expanding but it's a cool thing to think about.
When you see pictures of the Milky Way in the night sky it looks nothing like the nice picture of a spiral galaxy shown in books when they talk about the Milky Way. I know that if we are in a spiral galaxy we would be seeing it edge on and a lot is said to be obscured by clouds of dust but has it actually been proven that our galaxy is spiral or is this just an assumption? Do we have any clue what lies beyond the Milky Way or does it completely obscure our view of what's on the other side?
In the 1960s there was a huge push to put a man on the moon. Countless hours and dollars were pored into the program, resulting in several rockets, including the Saturn V. I would assume the plans for these rockets still exist, and could be used today to build new rockets to put people into orbit, the moon, and beyond.
Why, then, is SpaceX working so hard to develop and test new rockets? Were they starting from ground zero, or were they able to access Saturn V specs and plans? We had rockets that got us off the planet before - if we threw enough money at it couldn't we just build new Saturn Vs?
-jazon
This is our Cry, This is our Prayer: Peace In The World
-Sadako Sasaki Peace Memorial, Hiroshi
I read recently about an organized hunt for the Apollo 10 LEM named Snoopy which is still in orbit around the sun but apparently had left the Earth/Moon system. This got me thinking about the other missions, after the astronauts left the moon, docked with the command module and jettisoned the LEMs what happened to them? I can think of three possibilities, they crashed back on the moon, they were jettisoned out of the moons orbit or they are still in orbit around the moon. From what I read the least likely seems to be that they are still in orbit, a stable orbit around the moon appears to be difficult to find, too far out and the Earths gravity will destabilize it, too close and the gravitational differences caused by the moons mountainous surface will destabilize it. My money is on them being flung out of the system as Apollo 10's LEM apparently was and I'd never heard about them crashing into the moon.
In your book Death from the Skies, you mentioned that about 4 billion years ago the sun was like half as hot as it is now, and in 4 billion years it will be twice as hot as it is now (I hope I got that right). Is it possible then that a few billion years ago when the sun was "cooler" Venus was a nicer place where life could actually exist? and then in a few billion years when the Earth gets hot from the increased brightness, Mars will be a better place for life to exist?
We're always hearing about threats to our planet from outer space. Asteroid impacts Gamma Ray bursts. Invaders from Mars. The list goes on. What do you think is our biggest threat from space, and why?
Hey Phil,
What's your favorite equation? Is it one that you use often, or is more for aesthetic/historical reasons?
Cheers,
Garrett
"Nothing shocks me, I'm a scientist!" - Indiana Jones
I just had an interesting argument with a coworker. The point: while he can accept that space-based telescopes would be able to do direct imaging of extra solar planets --assuming that they can directly capture the photons traveling across all the involved light-years without interference-- he just doesnt believe that is possible to image those planets from the Earth surface, given atmospheric interference. He says that the images from Hawaii and other Earth observatories are just software interpolations that try to "guess" and "process" (his words) the anomalies in the images as planets... in other words, they are unintentionally "photoshopped" (again, his word). The basic question would be, then: how can a telescope inside our atmosphere be able to "take pictures" of something as faint as extrasolar planets?
Whenever I see pictures of Quasars and the like, I wonder "Why can we see the streams of energy"? When photons are pouring out of a stellar object, but aren't heading towards us, why can we see them? What causes the photons (or whatever) to head in our direction when all the others are heading somewhere else?
If dark matter is only affected (effected?) by gravity, would it tend to collect in massive bodies like planets, stars and black holes? Would that mean the gravitational constant could change locally depending on the amount of locally available dark matter? Could this have something to do with the shrinking mass of the standard kilogram?
At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-supernovae-universe-expansion-understood-dark.html the author proposes that the expansion of the universe may be understood without dark energy. Do you find this resonable?
I just watched the recent TAM 9 from las vegas and in it Lawrence Krauss states that the JWST would not help us find more about dark energy but unfortunately does not go on to explain why due to time constraints. This question has been eating away at me, could you explain why the JWST wouldn't help us learn more about Dark Energy, or at least what Krauss's argument might be that it wouldn't. Thanks!
Phil,
In January of '09, The BBC ran a story on research done by scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Using the VLBA they found what they felt was very good evidence that our galaxy is about the same size as Andromeda (150k ly). However, very few of their fellow astronomers, including you, are touting this new size. Why? Was the study flawed?
People describe the "Big Bang" starting as some massive black hole, exploding, and the energy moving out faster than light for a bit.
I know gravity causes space time to contract. So what if instead this massive black hole caused space time to be highly contracted. When the black hole exploded, there was no more mass as everything turned into energy. As the lack of gravity propagates out, the space time suddenly expands faster than light. The energy in different areas would seemingly move away from each other faster than light.
It is my understanding that nothing can move through space time faster than light, but I never heard anything about how fast space time can move relative to itself.
Just a thought that's been bothering me.