The carnival of natural science, Philosophia Naturalis, has its fifteenth incarnation over at Sorting Out Science. Lots of good stuff there! It should keep you all warm, fuzzy, and sciencey over the weekend.

In our last episode, the book was seen being sported in the shadow of the giant Parkes radio telescope in Australia. So where has it turned up now?

Many years ago I received an email from a young woman named Maya from Serbia. She told me stories of how people in her country were afraid of the 1999 total solar eclipse, because rumors were being spread by the government there that if you looked at the eclipse it would kill you.

Americans are far from having a monopoly on teh stoopid.

I mentioned her in my first book (mistakenly saying she was from Bosnia, dumb dumb dumb, but I had lost her email and was going from memory). Some time later she contacted me again! I was thrilled. She seems like a pretty cool person; we’ve emailed each other on occasion and she sent me some books on Serbia, and I sent her a copy of the book since she was in it and all.

She loved it (I said she was cool) and she sent me a picture:

So this sets the bar pretty high: the book has been to the VLA, to Parkes, to Serbia. Where next?

So, do you own a copy of the book? Take a picture of yourself holding it in some fun location, send it to me, and I’ll post it here.

Wow! Glenn Beck is more talented than I thought. Not only is he a complete and utter tool over global warming (which we already knew), he is also a tool about astronomy, too!

First, read what Pamela wrote about the overhyped news that observing the dark energy of the Universe may hasten its demise.

Then, read what Glenn Beck had to say about this topic.

Here is one small part of Beck’s doofosity:

GLENN: I know I wasn’t in my car observing dark matter. I wasn’t in my giant SUV observing dark matter. The scientists were. Don’t blame me, scientists. Oh, I’ve got my little SUV that’s going to make the world a little hotter. You’re collapsing the universe! Which one of us suck [sic] more for nature? I’m only wrecking the planet. You’ve destroyed the entire universe! Thanks a lot!

Now, first off, Beck means dark energy, not dark matter. When you don’t understand the difference between energy and matter, then maybe you shouldn’t be using them to joke about global warming. Of course, I know that a lot of folks don’t understand much about dark energy and dark matter, but then, a lot of folks wouldn’t use them as a springboard to say other dumb stuff — and a lot of folks don’t have a national radio show where they can spout their ignorance, either. And the fact that he says "dark matter" about 50 times doesn’t help much. It’s not like it’s difficult to find easy-to-understand info on dark matter.

But despite his ignorance, he is trying to be clever and make this big deal about how global warming doesn’t exist either. The impact of his "satire" would be strengthened somewhat if he had any clue at all about what he’s talking about, but that’s true of pretty much everything he says. And the ultimate irony, perhaps, is that global warming is tied in very closely with energy production– so if he had gotten the dark energy part right, there would have been more room to make jokes.

It’s too bad. When I read it, I thought he was going to make some relatively funny point about scientists and science and astronomy… but I should have known the way it would really go down. I’m surprised that all the wrong things he said in that one segment didn’t collapse into a black hole and destroy the Earth. Certainly, if enough people listen to him, that end will be achieved anyway.

And a final note: yes, I know it’s just a joke. But sometimes dumbness in all its myriad forms needs to be pointed out.

Tip o’ the lens cap to Sam Harrelson. I almost hate to break it to him that the clip he posted was from a piece of pseudoscientific dreck.

Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray telescope made a pretty nifty observation of the supernova remnant Puppis A.

This pretty picture (click to embiggen) is a combination of X-ray and optical observations, and it shows just how impressively huge a supernova event can be. Attend:

Puppis A formed more than three millennia ago when a massive star exploded at the end of its life. Over time the cloud of debris expanded, forming this intricately woven web of filaments of gas.

Only the outer layers of the star exploded outwards, though. The core of the star collapsed to form a neutron star, an ultradense object with the mass of a star like the Sun, but squeezed into a ball only a few kilometers across.

Neutron stars are funny beasts. Some of them are seen to be screaming across the sky at fantastic speeds, up to hundreds of kilometers per second (fast enough to circle the Earth in a few minutes). What could possibly toss around an object of that mass so quickly?

There are two ways, in fact. The star could have been in a tight binary orbit around another massive star. When it exploded, it loses most of its mass. The sudden drop in mass lowers the gravity of the system, and its the gravity holding the two stars together. When the gravity lets go, the two stars slingshot away from each other at high speed.

Another way is for the explosion itself to be off-center. When the core of the star collapses, triggering the explosion, there are several complicated processes that can make the explosion asymmetric. This acts like a rocket, kicking the new neutron star in one direction while the ejected matter goes off in the other.

Usually, it’s not easy to figure out which scenario took place in a given supernova. But in Puppis A, using Chandra, the astronomers found massive blobs of oxygen created in the explosion all moving in roughly the same direction. The neutron star that was once the core of the star that exploded was found to be moving in the opposite direction! When they added up the velocities and masses of the blobs, they matched those of the neutron star: but in the opposite direction. So the forces all balance out, indicating it was an off-kilter explosion that blasted the star off at high speeds. In the picture inset, you can actually see the motion of the neutron star over the six years between observations.

From the images, the astronomers figured the neutron star is moving at at least 5 million kilometers per hour. That’s fast. In the 3700 years since it formed, it’s moved about 20 light years, or 200 trillion kilometers.

I study this kind of thing all the time, and in fact I researched this very topic for my second book (to see how fast I could get a black hole to move, so that I could work out the math of what would happen if one approached the Earth… yikes!). And yet the sheer size and scale of events like these never ceases to give me a chill down my spine. The Universe is such an amazing place. I’m really glad we’re here.

One thing most creationist promoters really abhor is publicity. Not all of them hate it, of course; the Discovery Institute craves it like an addict, but the irony is that when they get it, their lies, machinations, and political sleaziness get exposed.

Other creationist organizations want to avoid publicity for that very reason. So the Texans involved with forcing Chris Comer out of her job are probably taking blood pressure medicine at this point. Not only has their utter contempt for reality and decency been exposed, but the exposure is gaining momentum.

The group Texas Citizens for Science (go team!) has posted a very public evisceration of the Texas Education Agency. This essay really pounds home just how evil these people are:

The real reason she was forced to resign is because the top TEA administrators and some SBOE members wanted her out of the picture before the state science standards–the science TEKS–were reviewed, revised, and rewritten next year. Plans are underway by some SBOE members and TEA administrators to diminish the requirement to teach about evolutionary biology in the Biology TEKS and to require instead that biology instructors “Teach the Controversy” about the “weaknesses” of evolution, that is, teach the Creationist-inspired and -created bogus controversy about evolution that doesn’t exist within legitimate science. There are no scientific weaknesses with biological evolution as the natural process is understood by scientists. At the level at which it is taught in high school, evolutionary biology has no weaknesses, gaps, or problems. Therefore, it is duplicitous to pretend such “weaknesses” and “controversy” exist.

This is not an opinion being expressed here. It’s a fact. The Texas State Board of Education is trying to change the way they review and edit the science standards in the state; the basic ideas students get taught in class. Get this: they want to have a single person (called without any conscious irony on their part a facilitator) who will have the final say on how the standards get written. Sure, there will be a panel of experts and all that, but if the panel says evolution needs to be a standard, and the facilitator disagrees, then evolution won’t be a standard. It’s that simple.

And what are the odds the facilitator will be someone who can be trusted on these point? I’d say a big fat zero.

This violates the very nature of education on nearly all levels. Without any expert input whatsoever, a single person (chosen by a Board of Education with decidedly creationist leanings) gets to decide not only what is science and what isn’t, but also decide this for all the public school students in the state.

How doomed can one state be? The answer is none. None more doomed. Unless people rise up and do something about this. If you are an educator, scientist, parent, or student in the state of Texas, and you’re as angry as I am, contact the Texas Citizens for Science and do something. Make your voice heard!

Tip o’ the ten gallon hat to PZ.

Heh. I found this post buried in my list of drafts. For some reason I didn’t post it when I wrote it months ago. It seems appropriate now given what happened in Texas, so enjoy.

A woman in Ohio has stopped drinking Starbucks (registration for that link may be required) because her takeout cup had a quotation on it that expressed a vague notion of possible agnosticism:

Printed on the cup was: “Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.”

It is attributed to Bill Schell, a Starbucks customer from London, Ontario, and was included on the cup as part of an effort by the company to collect different viewpoints and spur discussion.

“As someone who loves God, I was so offended by that. I don’t think there needs to be religious dialogue on it. I just want coffee,” said Incanno, a married mother of three who is Catholic.

That’s her right, of course, but I wonder out loud that her faith is so shaky that it is disturbed by a paper coffee cup. Be that as it may, where was she when Starbucks had this on a coffee cup?

Darwinism’s impact on traditional social values has not been as benign as its advocates would like us to believe. Despite the efforts of its modern defenders to distance themselves from its baleful social consequences, Darwinism’s connection with eugenics, abortion and racism is a matter of historical record, and the record is not pretty.” From Dr. Jonathan Wells, biologist and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Yup, that Wells, a shill for The Discovery Institute who never gets within a glancing blow of reality. Starbucks says they put these quotations on cups just to air out various points of view. That’s fine, I suppose, up to the point where they spread sheer nonsense like that garbage from Wells (you need not imagine what PZ had to say when that cup came out). Even then, of course, that’s their right, but in today’s climate of public ignorance about science, publicizing quotations from the DI — which is populated with people who will lie outrageously and without hesitation to promote their religion — I wish they had a little more info on the cup.

And again, that woman from Ohio is free to buy or not buy whatever product she wants for whatever reason, just as Starbucks is free to print whatever it wants to on its cups. If Catholics boycott because of an atheist quotation, or atheists boycott because of a religious one, that’s the power of the pocketbook, and it’s a good one.

But everyone should be aware that Starbucks is, indeed, printing opposing views, so in that sense what they are doing is legit. I’ll note that not too long ago, a Starbucks cup featuring a quotation by Armistead Maupin about homophobia caused an uproar in Texas (well, Baylor University), too. I’ve seen both progressive and conservative quotations on Starbucks cups, though I’ll wait with bated breath for them to post an opinion from, say, David Duke or Charles Manson.

I’m sure glad I have my own pulpit here to talk about it. I’m not a huge fan of Starbucks — I drink it when I’m out of beans or in too big a hurry to make a cuppa joe myself — but something like this is hardly enough to make me avoid the place, or let it get me upset. Some folks really just need to switch to decaf.

After writing this, I found a long thread about it on Fark.com. In general, many Farkers are rude and immature — it’s a selling point! — but the respondents in this case have some interesting good things to say. And need I add? NSFW.

The emails will start soon, I’m sure.

"Dear Phil– I am new to astronomy, and my son/daughter/cousin/niece is interested. I want to buy them a telescope. Which one should I get?"

First off, let me say that I get so many of these emails that I created a web page with telescope-buying advice. It’s almost ten years old now (yeesh, when did this site get so ancient?) so it needs updating, but the general advice there (and the links) should still be true.

Basically, buying a telescope is like buying a car. What you should get depends on what you need. If you only need a car to drive to the store for groceries, don’t get a Hummer. If you live in the mountains and it snows ten meters a year, don’t get a VW Bug.

‘Scopes are the same. If you want to do general observing, looking at big things like the Moon, open clusters of stars, and bright nebulae, then a small telescope will be fine. If you want to see planets in details, or take deep astrophotographs, or go galaxy hunting, your needs will change.

My usual advice is threefold:

1) Buy a pair of good binoculars first. They are extremely useful, show you wonderful things, and can test your appetite for observing. They are an excellent tool for getting used to the sky, and can be used during the day for bird spotting and other things, too. If the interest keeps up, then move on to a telescope.

2) I cannot stress this enough: find a local astronomy club and go to the meetings! At least attend star parties when they throw them. The best way to shop for a telescope is to let others show you theirs. At a good star party there might be two dozen or more telescopes of all different flavors, and you can see how easy or hard they are to set up, to use, and what they can show you. Amateur astronomers are only too happy as a whole to talk about equipment. This is absolutely the best way to gauge your level of potential involvement in astronomy.

3) And if you decide to take that fateful step and buy a telescope, avoid department store ‘scopes AT ALL COSTS. The overwhelming majority of these ‘scopes are cheap garbage with poor optics, bad eyepieces, and wobbly mounts. Instead of instilling a deep love for astronomy, these lemons will instead make it a frustrating and aggravating experience. You may be tempted by the beautiful pictures on the box and the claims of 200X magnification, but what you’re buying is a sure-fire way to grind someone’s enthusiasm into the ground.

Having said that, there are good entry-level ‘scopes out there. I won’t go into details, because I don’t need to; Astronomy Buff already has several good blog entries about it: Good Telescopes for Christmas, How To Buy a Telescope for Christmas, and Characteristics of a Good Beginner’s Telescope.

If you want to buy a ‘scope for someone this holiday, remember that you may be leading someone down the path of a lifelong pursuit. That first step is a doozy, so treat it with respect!