I’ll be doing another live video live chat starting at 3:00 p.m. Mountain Time (21:00 UT) on Sunday May 4. I’ve been having some troubles of late with it, so I’m doing some fooling around with the software, but things should be working by Sunday. Check back here on on the blog Sunday shortly before 15:00 MT and I should have things working.
And have some questions ready!
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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May 2nd, 2008 at 3:49 pm
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!1111!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!
I missed the last one, but this time I’ve marked my calendar!
Say something about Wolf-Rayet stars? Pleez?
p.s. furstest. i am it.
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Shouldn’t you post the link to the Ustream page? Just to get it beforehand.
May 2nd, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I am pretty sure you will have a question or 2 from my 7 year old daughter.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Yoshi, UStream has been… disappointing. But Justin.tv won’t see my mic no matter what I do. So I’m still looking for a good stream channel.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:16 pm
You IGNORED my excellent questions last time.
1. Boxers or briefs?
2. Are you an atheist?
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:52 am
How about another prepared show-and-tell on your part. Last time, you showed us a version of Death from the Skies.
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:14 am
I would love to participate in this video live chat, because there I have two questions about Higgs and Dark matter that have been keeping me awake for a while now. I’m new to the site (and still amazed and thankful I found it, thanks to a LHC paranoia article actually) so I’m wondering what “steps” I have to take to participate? I am a virgin in the land of video chat sorry
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:15 am
I came across this photo:
http://hirek.csillagaszat.hu/asztroblog/20080429-allatovi-ellenfeny-paranal-felett.html
The dust in the ecliptic. It’s amazing. They say that under preferable light conditions you can see it without aid.
This image was taken with a 45 minute exposure, so it’s pretty faint.
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:15 am
I’ve got some questions which I’d love to have answered but my computer is really slow & old & I’m only on dial-up internet which makes it difficult for me.
Anyway if you could answer these questions in text here or somewhere else else (eg. the CERN -LHC / Brain Cox TED talk thread here?) I’d be very grateful :
1) Have you -or anyone you know of – ever been involved (or chosen not to involved) in any scientific project because of the ethical implications of it?
2) How big a part does ethics play in evaluating projects & experimenst in science? Is for example, the LHC ethically problematic because there may be – at least in the minds of some people – real anxieties that it could potentially destroy the planet?
(Yeah, okay I know, I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet here – but durnit it *does* worry me. I’m not soiling myself in terror & I think chances are 90 % that it will be fine but … but I am quite uneasy over them turning that on – at least on planet Earth. Build & test it on Pluto instead & I’d be really happy! Besides that’d give us a great reason to go to Pluto & develop our space expoloartion technology!
)
3) Is there ever a point, a level of testing at higher and higher, more and more dangerous particles / energies where you’d say : “Hang on, maybe we shouldn’t go there .. maybe it is too dangerous or has too negative implications for society / the environment / our culture to be worth it?”
For example : splitting smaller fundamental particles – If we’ve split the atom creating among other things the A-bomb is it really a good idea togo further down that road and split the electron? The neutrino? the quark? The Higgs boson? etc …
—-
Now sorry if asking this bugs people, I don’t mean to be anti-science or anything here & I certainly hope I’m not being a troll or anything like that(would a troll know they’re troll?) but this sort of question really has been in the front of my mind lately … (As some of you will have noticed! )
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:25 am
Proffered Hungarian on 03 May 2008 at 2:15 am :
< I came across this photo:
<
< http://hirek.csillagaszat.hu/asztroblog/20080429-allatovi-ellenfeny-
< paranal-felett.html
<
< The dust in the ecliptic. It’s amazing. They say that under preferable
< light conditions you can see it without aid.
That’s what they call the Zodiacal light isn’t it?
———————
… & another question more tied to my computer / netquette lacks : Just how do you generate the quote blocks, bold, italics etc .. here?
BA : a suggestion for you that I’d really appreciate ( & am I alone in this?) – having a set of instructions included here on how to do all that. Or is there one up already that I can’t find? Minor point I know, but it bugs me … & I’d like to make my posts here better. An ability to edit my posts would be marvellous too if its at all possible! Please?
May 3rd, 2008 at 5:32 am
D’oh! I try to get things right first time I really do … Sigh.
CORRECTED FORM OF MY QUESTION 1 :
1) Have you -or anyone you know of – ever been involved (or chosen not to get involved) in any scientific project where you’ve had doubts or strong questions because of the ethical implications of it?
Ie. Has there been any projects you’ve felt either were or at least might’ve possibly been unethical?
—————————
Guess most concisely : I’m asking about scientific ethics?
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:35 am
How about these questions which I asked on the meteorcensored thread :
May 3rd, 2008 at 7:43 am
D’oh! I thought I’d finally worked out the whole italics / boil /quoting deal thanbks to Jim Shaver
Sorry … Take II :
________________________________________
How about these questions which I asked on the meteor___
censored thread :
… that source asteroid is Pallas – one of the larger & first discovered main belt asteroids I’m guessing – hence the name?
Just a thought but do we have any idea or calculations on how large the original Pallasite source body would’ve been before it got broken up?
Larger than Ceres? Size of the Moon? Size of Pluto? Or Charon or ..?
Incidentally since the Kuiper-Edgeworth disk is much larger in size & mass than the inner Mars-to-Jove asteroid belt shouldn’t that be called the main asteroid belt?
Plus also, is the asteroid belt (well both asteroid belts really) getting noticeably smaller over the millennia along with the size of the largest objects in it as impacts erode down the size & mass of the largest objects? ….
Or the whole heap of questions I asked about the Omega Centauri =elliptical galaxy? thing? They’re all on that thread if you want to check them out & haven’t answered already ..
Or & here’s a new one or three (I think!) :
1) Is it possible for the Earth-Moon system to capture a comet in orbit about it the way Jupiter did Shoemaker-Levy 9 & if so what would it look it & could it last & become a second moon?
2) How different (temp. /climate~wise?) would our planet be if the Sun was just one spectral class different ie. a G1 or G3 star? How about two types different eg,. G0 or G4 or a full spectral class eg. a K2 or F2 star?
&
3) If our Sun had a Hot Jupiter (or Hot Neptune or Super-Earth?) type planet orbiting it in about every 2 days or every 7 days then how would it appear in our skies? Would we see it & could we tell it was there?
There’s a few thoughts for ya anyway!
(Hope the HTML (?) tags have worked this time around … )
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:32 am
Whew!
Going through the archives to find my Omega Cen questions sure takes a while .. These were asked on 11th April – & on the 5th too. Still now at last I’ve found them – once & still unanswered here :
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/04/10/spitzer-bags-omega-cen/
(Hope my netiquette is ok – apologies if not.)
Not meaning to hog this thread (& yeah I wouldn’t mind hearing about Wolf-Rayet stars & other stuff too) but I’ve tried three times now toget answers to these & I don’t think that that bad questions so please BA can I have answers to these somewhere .. even just quickly here?
Third time lucky for getting a response here?
Has my persistence paid off at last?
Or have I missed some answers there already? Sorry if so …
Anyhow thanks again, kind Bad Astronomer , for giving me the opportunity to ask & hopefully I’ve given you enough & not more than enough questions to work on!
———————
PS. Another suggestion for your suggestion box : Please could we have the archives in some sort of just “by title – then link” style listing format to make a whole lot easier to find? A constructive suggestion, I hope.
PPS. All this time & no other posters? Hmm .. must be late night / early morn over in the Us of A! (As well as here in Oz now!)
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:22 am
Zodiac light? Nice. I read tons of astronomy, but I’ve never heard of it.
Then it’s only new for me
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
It’s called the gegenshein.
I found this on a Nasa page:
“However, at the point in the night sky opposite of where the Sun is on the daylight portion of the Earth (antisolar point), the feeble band brightens slightly. It’s not all that obvious, but nonetheless it’s pretty impressive to think that in the middle of the night, a spot of light opposite the Sun can be detected with the unaided eye. This oval-shaped spot is known as the gegenshein or the counterglow and the time to look for it is around midnight (in February and March and again in October and November). The myriad dust grains along the ecliptic, when they’re opposite the Sun, act like little moons that reflect light back toward the Earth. Even though it’s very faint, the gegenschein is surprisingly big, about the size of your fist held at arm’s length, and it’s not a stationary feature – it migrates across the night sky during the course of several months.”
This is the exact phenomenon that was photographed.
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
From a time before I can remember my parents and grandparents encouraged my interests in science. Despite their anger at my declared atheism at the age of six (”because that stuff doesn’t make sense”) they always provided me every opportunity to learn more.
One thing I can’t reconcile is the size of the universe versus its age. If /c/ is the universal speed limit (and we know it’s a constant) and the age of the universe is 13.6 billion years, I don’t get how the universe can be larger than 27.2 billion light years across the widest point.
So far most of what I’ve read has used analogies similar to compound interest, but — at least in these explanations — it seems to imply a changing /c/, something that can’t happen without drastically distorting all the other numbers.
Care to give this one a shot? I’ll try to be on-line for the live show.
May 4th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Just checking in. BA, have you found a channel that works?
May 7th, 2008 at 11:44 am
So I missed the show due to externalities. Was it recorded in any way? GooTube? MetaCafe? Podcast? Animated ASCII art?