What is this???

An insect and the Moon? A UFO near a streetlight? A Photoshop job?

Nope. It’s the International Space Station, passing near Venus in broad daylight.

How cool is that? It was taken yesterday by the accomplished photographer Etienne Simian of Saint Martin de Crau from the south of France. He was using a relatively modest 8″ telescope and a webcam, which amazes me. You can actually make out details on the station! Venus, if you have been living in a basement the past few weeks, is glowing like a beacon in the west after sunset, incredibly bright. You can see it fairly easily in the daytime if you know just where to look.

The space station orbits the Earth, and you can find out if it passes overhead at your location by using any number of planetarium software packages (my favorite way is to go to Heavens Above). I go out several times a month to see it pass across the sky, in fact. For M. Simian, it happened to sail very near Venus… I looked up Venus’s stats, and it’s about 17 arcseconds across, so the ISS was about 5 arcminutes away when this image was taken. For comparison, the Moon is about 30 arcminutes across in the sky, so this was a very close encounter! But only apparently: the station was a few hundred miles from the photographer, but Venus was about 90 million miles away.

Some close encounters aren’t as close as you might think.

Tip o’ the chapeau to Larry Klaes, and to Spaceweather, which is hosting that image.

I have got to get me one of these:

A NASA contractor has built a test engine that runs on methane. That image is from a movie of the test firing, and yes, you want to see it. Make sure the sound is turned up.

So so cool.

Methane is a pretty good fuel. For one thing, it doesn’t have to be kept as cold as other fuels, making it easier to make and use. You don’t need such thick tanks for it, which saves weight, and it’s a safe substance (a spill wouldn’t be all that toxic). The linked article about this is pretty informative, but one thing it doesn’t have is the comparative thrust of methane versus, say, what’s being used now on expendable rockets. If the bang isn’t worth the saving in bucks then it hardly matters. This particular engine had a 7500 pound thrust, which is nice, but compare that to the 100,000 pound thrust of the GEM-40 (used on Delta II rockets) — and bearing in mind that several GEM-40s may be strapped on to a rocket — and you can see there’s a ways to go yet. Still, it’s early in the game, and this was a test of a small version. I’m sure they’ll get bigger!

And when they do get bigger, and can be used for solar system exploration, there’s another advantage that kicks in: methane can be found all throughout the solar system (or made easily from available materials). That means you don’t have to carry all your fuel around with you! If you go to Mars, or Saturn’s moon Titan, you can bring enough fuel to get there, then make the rest from the planet you’re sitting on (and please, no astronaut diaper or related jokes!). That saving in weight is HUGE, and a very big plus.

And also, really just how frackin’ cool is that video? Wow.

The Sam Neill DVD giveaway has a winner– the random number was 50, and that post was by Philippec. I contacted him, he replied, so now the DVDs are on their way.

Don’t fret– as usual, there are more giveaways coming soon. And I’m thinking about starting an actual contest, but I haven’t figured out how yet. Trivia? Calculations? Captions, or funny comments? If you have an idea, post it in the comments!

… as usual.

[click the image to see the whole comic]

That is one of the best — and most concise — examples of debunking of the conspiracy theory subculture I have ever seen. Joe Rogan, you listening?

Too bad, though, that the last panel in the comic won’t work.

Why do I fight bad thinking?

Because of things like this:

HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) – An elderly husband and wife were burnt to death in Andhra Pradesh after villagers accused them of practising black magic, tied them together on a pyre and set them on fire, police said on Thursday.

“The aged couple died screaming for help,” said police superintendent P.V. Sunil Kumar.

In many cases, it’s pretty easy to connect uncritical thinking to murdering innocent people.

Ironically, the article goes on:

Belief in black magic is common in some parts of rural India, despite the country’s robust economic growth and cutting-edge high-technology industries.

Why is that ironic? Because I know a lot of Americans will read that and think, "stupid bumpkins" or some such derogatory term, and they forget that just a few nights ago, three out of ten people on stage vying to become President of these United States raised their hands to affirm that they, too, have no qualms dumping centuries of scientific reasoning to embrace fantasy. And the consequences are just as grave.

We are all savage animals, and thinking clearly is hard, very hard. But not thinking clearly comes with a very dear price. Let’s hope soon that everyone gets tired of paying it.

Note: Tomorrow is the last day for the DVD giveaway!

I can’t leave you for the weekend on that depressing note about the Republican debate! So instead I give you this: a video by my evil twin, Richard Wiseman, a psychologist, conjurer, and of course extremely handsome man.

Richard is a treasure trove of such things, so I strongly urge you to go to his website and play I strongly urge you to go to his website and play (link updated on the request of my friend Teek, to whom I have a hard time saying no). You’ll be glad you did, and you might learn a thing or two about how you perceive the world… and how you don’t.

Tip o’ the sorcerer’s cap to the very wonderful Linda Shallenberger.

If you read my blog, you probably read other blogs that promote science and try to stamp out antiscience. If so, you’ve probably seen or heard of this incident last night in the Republican presidential debates, where the moderator asked the candidates who "does not .. agree/believe in evolution". Three candidates raised their hands.

I am not sure how to feel about this. As familiar as I am with antiscience in this country, I’m still appalled that anyone who would run for office would state that they think evolution is wrong. Even after six years of this White House, I am still shocked to see such a flagrant attitude against reality.

Maybe I should be happy that it was only three of them. Given that anti-evolution is a platform in some states’ Republican parties, a 30% disavowal rate of reality maybe isn’t so bad.

I’m certainly not surprised at the three who did raise their hands: Brownback (Kansas, natch), Tancredo (from Colorado; my work will be cut out for me when I move, certainly– though he’s not from my district), and Huckabee (Arkansas). McCain equivocated, saying he thinks evolution is real, but then pandered a bit to the young-Earth base by talking about religion and the Grand Canyon.

I remember when the Republican party stood for strong science. It doesn’t even seem that long ago. Wow.

I will be very interested to see what the Democrats have to say on this same issue. I don’t think too many of them will make a strong stand, since it seems these days that every politician feels the need to twist in the wind, and face whatever way each breeze blows. Al Gore has made some particularly galling comments lately, too. Update: Gore may have not been as serious as many say.

I am not a one-issue voter, but peoples’ attitudes toward science — toward reality — is very telling on many of their other attitudes.

And say it with me: evolution is not a belief system! You cannot believe in it or not. It is a matter of scientific fact. It exists, it is real, whether you stick your fingers in your ears and sing la-la-la or not.

Update: Chris Cillizza has written about this on the Washington Post blog. The comments are interesting. Thanks to Derek of Skepticality for the tip!