Phil Plait: Why does John McCain hate planetariums? (3)
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[Note: this is a shortened version of what I wrote on my own blog. Feel free to drop by there for a longer rant.] As an astronomer and educator, I had a slap-in-the-face moment last month when I read that John McCain called funding planetariums (in the biz we call them planetaria) "foolishness." I wrote about it on my blog, and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't really able to. ...
McCainâs planetariophobia | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine (11)
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So a little while back, John McCain made an ill-advised crack about planetaria (that’s the plural of planetarium), calling them "foolishness". It was ill advised because it raised the hackles of lots of science-loving folks, including those who want to — gasp, horror! — educate kids about astronomy and science. At the time I suspected it was just a wedge in which to attack Barack Obama, but his use of the word foolishness really caught ...
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Tometheus said:
I'm beginning to wonder if McCain even /knows/ what a planetarium /is/. The "overhead projecter" as he calls it /is/ the planetarium. Without that it would just another domed building taking up space on the museum campus. The term 'moron' comes to mind.
McCain’s planetariophobia (1)
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2 days, 19 hours
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So a little while back, John McCain made an ill-advised crack about planetaria (that’s the plural of planetarium), calling them "foolishness". It was ill advised because it raised the hackles of lots of science-loving folks, including those who want to — gasp, horror! — educate kids about astronomy and science. At the time I suspected it was just a wedge in which to attack Barack Obama, but his use of the word foolishness really caught ...
Did the Chinese fake their space walk? (4)
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3 days, 1 hour
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No. I assume, as usual, you want more info, though! There is a rumor going around that the Chinese government faked their space walk last week. I’m getting email about an article in The Epoch Times, and the article has obvious leanings against the Chinese government. I’m no fan of their government either, to be honest, but this article has many signs of the authors wearing tin foil changshans. They bring up the suspicious timing ...
Machaut by MESSENGER (1)
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Galactic tentacles of DOOM (1)
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3 days, 22 hours
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Today is a good day for awesome images. Check out M86 and NGC 4438: These two galaxies lie in the Virgo Cluster, a city of galaxies about 50 million light years away. Life is crowded in the cluster, and collisions between galaxies are common. Now, that line sounds pretty mundane, but think about it: entire galaxies collide! They slam into each other at hundreds of kilometers per second! Billions of stars interact gravitationally! Gas clouds ...
Watermelon planet (1)
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4 days, 2 hours
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Mercury! Holy Haleakala. Look at those rays! They go all the way across the planet! This is Mercury as seen by MESSENGER, which flew by the planet for a second time yesterday (out of three passes on its way to orbiting the planet in March 2011). This overview was taken when the probe was 27,000 km (17,000 miles) from Mercury, 90 minutes after closest encounter. What you’re seeing here is pretty much the opposite side ...
The Doctor and the Captain (3)
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4 days, 11 hours
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Doctor Who SPOILERS. Srsly. Rumors have been flying for a couple of weeks that Patrick Stewart might get a role on Doctor Who. I know. I’ll give you a moment to squee. OK, so now the rumors appear to be true. Stewart (according to the article, allegedly, etc. etc.) has been offered the role of the Mad Monk, a renegade Time Lord last seen in 1966, long before I watched the show (being a toddler ...
Astronomers find a planet denser than lead | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine (8)
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4 days, 16 hours
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Planets circle the stars that dot the heavens. Before 1995, we couldn’t have said that with any certainty. Now we know of more than 300 planets orbiting distant stars, and we have a fleet of telescopes looking for them. The ultimate goal is to find another Earth orbiting a star like the Sun, but the quest on the way to that Holy Grail has yielded some strange benchmarks. COROT-exo-3b compared to Jupiter Meet the planet ...
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terry said:
so cool. i want a telescope. a really big one. i have a big yard. seeking donations.
What does YOUR candidate think about science? (2)
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4 days, 19 hours
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Are you a conscientious voter, and do you care about science? Find out what your duly elected United States politician thinks about science at the Scientist and Engineers for America website, where they have helpfully listed this info. They have the House, Senate, and Presidential opinions there, including candidates for the upcoming elections. You could, for example, read what candidate Hal Bidlack (D 5-CO) has to say on issues of innovation, energy, and climate change. ...
MESSENGER flies by Mercury tonight! (1)
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5 days, 14 hours
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Mercury, shot by MESSENGER on Oct. 5. The NASA probe MESSENGER will pass by Mercury for the second time at 08:40 UT Monday (which is the middle of the night for the US). I’ll get up first thing and write about what it saw, but it’ll probably be a few hours before we get the really cool stuff. The last flyby was in January, and the pictures were incredible. As it happens, we’ll be seeing ...
Model scientists (1)
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6 days, 20 hours
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If you ask 1000 young girls ages 13 - 18 what profession they want to be, how many do you think would want to be scientists? According to a poll done in the UK and reported by The Guardian, the answer is 14%. How many want to be models? 31% Ouch. While again this poll was done in the UK, I suspect it would be pretty closely reflected in the US as well. There are ...
Help my friends take hot showers (3)
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1 week
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Regular readers know I have a big crush on Pamela Gay, aka Star Stryder. I suspect her husband knows this as well, but he’s also a great guy who knows a) I am harmless, and b) he can kill me with a single thought. But it can’t hurt for me to butter him up a little. He and Pamela are both tech-junkies. They have Macs littering their house, and lots of other fun things. But ...
The back yard is empty (4)
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With the recent discoveries of near-planet-sized objects out beyond Neptune, it makes you wonder just how much junk is floating around out there. Usually, when you see some big stuff, it means there’s probably lots of little stuff. For example, asteroids collide and shatter. You get a few big pieces, but lots and lots of little shrapnel. Also, little guys can stick together to make bigger guys, and it takes a lot of little ones ...
Hubble documentary on NatGeo (2)
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A new documentary about Hubble and astronomy, called "Hubble’s Amazing Universe", will air on the National Geographic Channel this Sunday, October 5 at 10:00 p.m. Eastern (check your local listing, though). The director and producer, Dana Berry, knows Hubble; he worked on producing Hubble images for many years at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is where I first met him. He is one of the best astronomy illustrators and animators in the ...
Jupiter, looking sharp (9)
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Jupiter, looking sharp and hot This weird-looking image is the sharpest picture of Jupiter ever taken from the ground. Taken with a device called — are you ready for this? — the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (or MAD, in an acronymic stretch), it has a resolution better than Hubble’s! The Earth’s atmosphere roils and waves, distorting ground-based views of the sky. That’s one of the reasons we launch telescopes into space, to get above all ...
McCain’s McCarthyism. McMaybe. (4)
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My head is spinning after researching this blog post. See if you can follow along here. You may want to sit down, and have a bucket of water handy. A while back, Presidential candidate John McCain said that there was evidence that vaccines cause autism. This did not endear him to me. Then, actress Jenny McCarthy became an outspoken advocate of this non-existing link. Now, in an interview with Access Hollywood (link goes to video, ...
Vote (3)
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1 week, 1 day
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OK. I love: Leo DiCaprio — yes, I do — and Jennifer Aniston, and Forest Whitaker, and Natalie Portman (sigh), and Sarah Silverman, and Dustin Hoffman. I love Dustin Hoffman a lot. Why do I love these people? Because they know what it means to be a true patriot. I’ll break my own rules here, just this once, and embed a video that has some NSFW language. I’d normally just link to it, but yeah, ...
Space X makes it to space! (5)
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Congratulations to the team at Space X! At 16:26 Pacific time today (Sunday, September 28, 2008), their Falcon 1 rocket achieved orbit around the Earth, the first time a privately funded company has done such a feat with a liquid fuel rocket. This was their fourth attempt to get to orbit with the Falcon 1 rocket. The first three failed to make orbit for various reasons; each time the company analyzed the problem and was ...
