The latest version of the SETI radio show Are We Alone has a segment with Seth Shostak and me talking about the Large Hadron Collider (it’s part of our regular feature, Brains On Vacation).
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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.
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May 20th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Love Are We Alone. Been listening for a couple of years but I downloaded all the back episodes so I was a couple of years worth of shows behind. Been listening to 3 or 4 episodes a week to catch (up to mid 2007 now). Was tickled pink when the BA turned up on Brains on Vacation, and for some time now I wondered if you’d got to famous
to keep doing the show. Thankfully after this post it shows that you’re still doing it. Yay!
May 20th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
HA!
Too late, Plait, I already heard it and you were great!
Take that, Bad Astronomer.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Heh, Shane. I like doing BoV with Seth. We’ve known each other a long time (we met at a CSICOP meeting what? Seven years ago? Something like that), and we get each others’ humor. So it’s easy to work with him, and we’ve done it enough that we pick up on each others’ cues easily too.
Actually, I hadn’t thought of that before. I do a few podcast and radio interviews, and the cadence can be difficult because the host doesn’t know your cues: when you’re done talking, when you’re making a good point, when to move on to a different topic. After a while you pick up on how people do it. Seth is really quite good at that!
May 20th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Come to mention it Phil, you and Seth do seem to have very similar sense of humours. Seth has been responsible for some serious groaners in the past.
Part of the appeal of AWA and BoV is the lightness of touch. There are some quite well known and respected skeptics out there that sometimes come across a little… earnest and serious.
So thanks Phil, I hope you and Seth can keep it up for years yet. Yes, even the bad puns.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
I heard the segment from start to finish.
At several points, I found myself catching my breath in realization.
This is one reason I subscribe to this blog.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
A ha! I knew it. The LHC has something to do with extraterrestrials – otherwise why would the SETI people be interested in it?
Obviously Niribu-boy was right all along, and that thing is going to punch a hole in the Van Allen belt.
I’m onto you Phil, I saw those supposed “access shafts” at the LHC in your video. They are obviously shafts to direct the massive particle beams.
And where are they pointing? Directly up.
And what’s directly up from that location? The Van Allen belt.
Ha! Got you! Get out of that one you NASA stooge!
May 21st, 2008 at 5:51 am
@IRONMANAustralia:
D’oh! Of course, it all becomes so obvious now!
Global warming -> expanding earth -> Van Allen belt needs to be widened -> punching new holes.
Easy.
OK, nobody seriously believed that, right? … right?!
May 21st, 2008 at 6:21 am
We know we are not alone.
Scientologists are not a figment of our imagination nor is it possible that they are humans.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:28 am
The Pearl Harbor/Vietnam War comment was hilarious. You couldn’t make that stuff up if you tried.
With regards to LHC I think the biggest concern, might be, if they don’t find evidence the God Particle or Super Symmetry and the possible funding implications that might have for the ILC.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:09 pm
riki – If they don’t find the God particle, but unintentionally find the L. Ron Hubbard particle, the money should start pouring in.