On January 25 at 16:00 Universal time (08:00 Pacific), the European Space Agency (ESA) will make a major extrasolar planet announcement.

Frustratingly, that is all they are saying ("embargoed" generally means the press get advance notice, but they aren’t allowed to release any information until after the announcement– I have not received any other info, however). We’ve seen many big releases in the past about extarsolar planets, from multiple planets in one system to the lowest mass planet found, about half the mass of Uranus (a planet orbiting the nearby star Gliese 876).

I’ve chatted with astronomer-friends about stuff like this, and most of us agree that the next major announcement would have to be pretty big, but it’s hard to say what it could be. I guess we’ll find out Wednesday morning!

‘ Don’t ever let anyone tell you shameless self-shilling doesn’t work.

The Bad Astronomy Blog is a finalist for a 2006 Weblog Award, aka a Bloggie (sorta the Oscar for blogs). This is no doubt in no small part due to said shameless shilling. So why not, I’ll shill again: vote for my blog!

Voting closes on January 31, so head over there! There is no science category (I’ll blog about that later) but due to my loyal if somewhat easily-swayed readers I am in the "Best Topical Weblog" category. This is wonderful, despite the fact that I’m up against Cute Overload and Treehugger, which is grossly unfair, given that they are also up for blog of the year.

The Best Topical Weblog category is about 2/3 of the way down the page. If you vote, then make sure you vote in at least three categories. That’s part of the rules.

The winner will be picked the week of March 13, which figures, as I’ll be running around doing real astronomy stuff just then. Given my competition, I don’t realistically expect to win, but it’s an honor just to be nominated. ’

Ever play whack-a-mole, where the little mole pops up out of a hole, you whack it down, and it pops up in another hole?

Welcome to the reality-based community dealing with the fantasy of creationism.

Just four months ago, I wrote in this blog about the Utah school system’s Board of Education unanimously supporting a position statement reaffirming their commitment to teaching evolution in high school science classes.

But poof, that’s now gone. Utah Senator Chris Buttars (R-West Jordan) proposed a bill regulating the discussion of the origin of life in the classroom — students must consider opposing "scientific" viewpoints when learning about evolution (never mind that there are no scientific oppositions to it). The bill passed one hurdle, and is expected to pass the second as well. When it does, students in Utah get to join the increasingly less-exclusive list of other students around the United States getting screwed out of their education.

If this sounds harsh, then let me show you this quotation in an article about this in the Deseret (Utah) News:

Sen. Parley Hellewell, R-Orem, who supports the legislation, told senators, “It’s important we stand up and fight for what we believe.”

When will these guys understand that it’s not about what is believed, but what is known to be true and factual, or, in the case of creationism, what is known to be untrue and nonfactual.

I’ll be even clearer: belief does not belong in the classroom. It doesn’t. Belief is religion, no matter how you slice it. What belongs in the classroom is evidence-based reasoning. That’s why we have a First Amendment, and why Judge Jones ruled against the creationists on Dover.

A Senator from Salt Lake tried to help… but I’m glad he failed. He said

“If we are actually going to do those things, we should do it not with just one theory in the biology classroom. We should do it with all theories in the classroom,” [Senator Scott] McCoy [D-Salt Lake] said. “The fact it does target one particular theory points to the fact this debate is really about something much different than is being represented.”

He’s certainly right in that last point. But as for his idea about applying the bill to all science classes, I think he’s misguided. In a scientific setting, with proper discussion, questioning scientific theories is fine. Science is all about questioning what is known, and science classes should certainly include that. But it has to be a scientific debate, and not a religious one. I think that encouraging this at a state level is only going to make it easier for the anti-science brigade to open that door wider. It’s like dipping a cut finger into a septic tank.

This is so simple. Science thrives on questioning its premises based on observations, reason, and evidence. But creationists take this simple truth and twist it to their advantage politically, and they are subverting the law to force their faith on others.

“We’re trying to protect our kids,” Buttars said.

No he’s not. He’s trying to legislate the teaching of his particular belief. He might think he’s trying to protect them, but protecting them is the last thing he’s doing. Teaching them science, teaching them to think critically for themselves, teaching them what healthy skepticism is… that’s protecting them. If you do that, when they’re older they’ll be able to tell snake oil from real medicine. What Senator Buttars wants children to do is swallow whatever is given to them. That’s not science, that’s not healthy, and it’s certainly not protecting them.

You can’t legislate science. But in Utah, you can legislate fantasy.

‘

This is a bit old, but still worth pointing out.

In December 2005, a small chunk of the solar system entered the Earth’s atmosphere and blazed a tremendous path across the western Australian sky. The rock (or ice) was probably only a meter or two across, maybe less, but it was as bright as the full Moon. It was seen by many thousands of people as it streaked across the night sky.

It was captured on video, as so many things are these days. Here’s a link to the news story with a link to the video, and here’s another site with video. You can see it flaring several times, probably as pieces of it broke off due to the tremendous pressure of air as it descended at 20 or so times the speed of sound.

When they’re that bright, meteors are called "bolides" or, more colloquially, "fireballs". I saw one once when I was a kid, but it wasn’t nearly as bright as this one in Oz. In 1992, a similar rock shot across the skies of the northeast United States, broke apart, and a piece of which landed on a car (unoccupied at the time!).

Meteors like this rarely make it all the way down, and when they do it’s usually in small chunks. What’s neat is that astronomers can backtrack the path of the meteor and figure out the orbit of the object before it hit the Earth! In fact, this was done very recently for an unexpected meteor shower, and astronomers determined it was from a comet that passes very close — perhaps dangerously so — to the Earth. We’re in no immediate danger from this comet, but it was unknown until it betrayed its presence by shedding chunks of rock and ice which burned up in our atmosphere. It’s interesting to think that our first warning of an Earth-impactor might not be from some remote robotic telescope on a mountaintop, but instead from people seeing a cascading shower of shooting stars…

.. and if they do, maybe they can make some cash with it.’

‘

An Associated Press article is reporting that NASA has postponed the launch of Dawn indefinitely.

Dawn is an ambitious mission to visit two of the largest asteroids in the solar systems, Ceres and Vesta. It has an ion engine, which doesn’t use combustible chemicals for propulsion, but instead uses a powerful magnetic electrostatic field to fling individual atoms out the back at high speed. Although the thrust is low, it can be sustained for months, even years. It’s a tremendously more efficient way of propelling unmanned probes around the solar system.

Dawn has had a checkered history, with several mechanical and funding problems. I don’t know why NASA has postponed launch (the AP article vaguely states "cost overruns and technical issues"), as I just heard about this from Larry Kellogg’s lunar-update mailing list. When I get more information I’ll post again.

Note (Jan 24, 2006): I originally said the ion propulsion used magnetic fields to accelerate ions, but this is incorrect. A reader informed me that it’s a strong electrostatic field that does the trick.‘

The 26th Skeptics Circle (blog carnival of skeptic posts) has been posted at Skeptic rant. My blog entry about The War On Science is featured there.

Update (11:46 Pacific time): Spacecraft separation! New Horizons is on its way! It’ll pass the Moon’s distance in about 9 hours (it took Apollo 3 days), and then it’s next stop: Jupiter. Well, not stop actually, it’ll pass Jupiter pretty quickly, and gain a huge amount of velocity from the giant planet, speeding it up more and shortening the trip to Pluto by several years.

Update (11:42 Pacific time): MECO! Main Engine CutOff. New Horizons is over the Indian Ocean, and everything looks great.

Update (11:34 Pacific time): the Centaur upper stage is firing now, and everything looks good.

The launch of the New Horizons mission was successful! The Atlas took off at 19:00 Universal time January 19, 2006, and the launch was clean. The Centaur upper stage rocket has fired, and currently the whole shebang is coasting for about 19 minutes. Then it will fire again, breaking orbit, and the probe will be on its way to Pluto via Jupiter. I’ll continue to post updates as I hear them.