So here you are waiting for the second attempt to launch New Horizons, and you’re sick of waiting. You’ve watched the steam vent from the side of the rocket, waiting for the winds to die down, you’ve chewed your nails, you’ve answered all your email. Now you’re just wishing for something to bide the time.
What a coincidence! I have about a hundred backlogged entries for this blog which consist of nothing but a title and a link. So instead of wondering when I’m gonna write them out into full entries, I’ll clear out the backlog and just post a few as one liners. These should keep you happy until launch control lights that candle to Pluto.
- My old friend and editor for Sky and Telescope magazine Bob Naeye answered the call by Spiked online ‘zine, which asked, "If you could teach the world just one thing, what would it be"? Bob, ever thoughtful, chose to teach people the scientific method. For an editor, he writes real good.
- Skepticism… in Kansas? Yup. Red State Rabble is a blog by a guy who lives in Kansas, and to the point, has two kids in the Kansas public school system. Not surprisingly, he is concerned about the increasingly anti-scientific direction the schools are headed in that state.
- I was perusing the Minor Planet Mailing List a while back, and read a post by a guy who found a comet whose orbit just kisses that of Saturn. That’s pretty unusual, but you can see it for yourself.
- If you listened to me talk about Stardust on the Paul Harris Show, then go over to the Australian Skeptics’ site and peruse the Skeptic Tank, a collection of fun podcasts.
- Take a look at Nasa’s website for flying robots that will assist future astronauts.
- Hey, what’s happening on Mars right now?
OK, that oughta hold ya for a while. But keep an eye on NASA Pluto webcam. You don’t want to miss the launch while you’re out surfing.
January 18th, 2006 at 3:47 am
That NEO orbital calendar (?) is gonna come in handy! Cool!
TY
January 18th, 2006 at 4:16 am
The comet seems to get quite close somewhere around year 2128. What kind of effects do you think that kind of “close encounter” would have on its orbit?
January 18th, 2006 at 6:21 am
Although I´m not short of things to do today until the second attempt to launch comes up, I thank you for all the goodies you have sent us. That NEO applet is very cool and useful. You are an amazing source of resources
Keep up the good work, Phil.
And fingers crossed for later on.
January 18th, 2006 at 9:15 am
I don’t care about the launch. I’m sitting around waiting for the probe to reach Pluto. My fingernails are going to be just awful by then.
January 18th, 2006 at 9:53 am
Hm.
Launch is cancelled again, due to power outages in washington….
Do you have any other goodies for us?
January 18th, 2006 at 10:20 am
“For an editor, he writes real good.”
Of course, you meant to say “really well”…
January 18th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
DennyMo, it was a joke. Ha ha. Ha.
January 18th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Yeah, editors don’t write nothing good.
January 18th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
I’ve been reviewing the comments from the Spiked online survey on what to teach about science. I am stunned that one of the respondents, Timothy F. Ball, just repeated the misunderstanding that theories go on to become laws.
http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA9D7.htm
———-
>…you must understand the scientific method – how science proceeds from theory to law.
>Any formula is only as valid as the assumptions upon which it is based, and the theory of relativity is no exception. This theory is a logical mathematical extrapolation, from fundamental assumptions, and those assumptions may or may not be valid. It is not Einstein’s law of relativity, it is his theory of relativity. And it remains a theory to this day.
No, he is incorrect, and spreading misinformation. Theories do not become scientific laws. The two are fundamentally different items.
A Scientific Law, sometimes called a Principle, is a description of behavior. It is not like a social law, that describes how people should behave. Rather, it is a description of how things have been observed to behave. Laws can be hypotheses – guesses, starting points, predictions of behavior, first attempts at describing the results. They are then tested, and through testing either verified to be accurate or shown to be flawed or wrong. They can then be modified or rejected as warranted by the evaluation. Laws are also based upon assumptions and initial conditions. They are only valid in cases where those assumptions and initial conditions are valid. Consider the Ideal Gas Law – it is a description of the cummulative behavior of gases in response to varying volume, temperature, and pressure. However, the underlying assumption is that you are working with an Ideal Gas, which is a certain set of conditions. Most gases are close to Ideal Gases, but you have to be sure that those conditions are valid. Ideal Gas Law doesn’t work for water, for instance.
A Scientific Theory is a completely different animal (to use a metaphor). A theory is an explanation. It is not a description of behavior, but an attempt to understand that description. Theories start as hypotheses as well, hypothetical theories, as opposed to hypothetical laws. A theory is also tested by comparing results of tests, but the test may not rely on any particular scientific law of behavior being invalidated. Theories are composite structures made up of numerous laws, tied together in a framework that helps show them to be consistent and interrelated.
Laws are the piece-parts, theories are the assemblies. You need valid piece-parts or the assembly may not work, but the assembly can hold together weak piece-parts and may partially function until the working piece-parts can be found. Consider a car. The car may have a hard time driving if the fuel pump is shoddy. On the other hand, a spent fuel pump does not mean the steering system won’t work. You don’t throw out the whole car, you replace the fuel-pump.
Timothy Ball has some valid comments relating to the role of testing theories. He may even be valid concerning Global Warming as a topic. (Let’s not argue that here, please.) But he is wrong when is asserts that theories progress to laws after they are proven.
January 18th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Spiked columnist Sandy Starr summarized the responses of the participants in a cummulative review. I take issue with a couple of his summaries, particularly from Victor Stenger.
Starr states,
>While science necessarily assumes that the natural world is intelligible, there is an interesting distinction between those survey responses that suggest that order is intrinsic to the natural world, and those survey responses that suggest that order derives from human engagement with the natural world.
and
>And Victor Stenger argues that ‘the laws of physics were not handed down from above, nor are they built into the logical structure of the universe – they are human inventions’.
This sounds like Victor Stenger is saying that the universe is not ordered, that universal laws are arbitrary human inventions with no connection to an external, objective universe. But that is not what Stenger is saying.
>I should teach the world that the laws of physics were not handed down from above, nor are they somehow built into the logical structure of the universe – they are human inventions, although not arbitrary ones, because they must agree with observations.
>The laws of physics are not restrictions upon the behaviour of matter, but restrictions upon the way physicists may describe that behaviour. In order to describe an objective reality, these descriptions cannot depend upon the point of view of observers – they must be point-of-view invariant. When point-of-view invariance is implemented, the universal laws of physics follow, with few additional assumptions.
[bolding in original]
In other words, Stenger agrees with the other respondents that there is an objective “real” world out there. His point is that our descriptions of that behavior we codify into “physical laws”. They are our attempts to describe that behavior, and as such are not handed down from on high, but invented by humans to summarize our understanding and convey meaning to each other.
Starr seems to have missed the distinction, and thus I think he misrepresents the cummulative message of the respondents.
January 19th, 2006 at 2:11 am
This blog gets better everyday! Thanks alot Phil