The European spacecraft Rosetta will pass by asteroid Steins today, giving us our first close-up views of this mountain-sized rock. But far and away the most important part about this is that I am interviewed (along with my old friend Joel Parker) in The Daily Camera, Boulder’s local paper. The headline should read "asteroid", not "comet", but that’s generally written by an editor, and is an understandable error. Sometimes, even experts can’t tell the difference.
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What happened to Bad Astronomy???
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.
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Death from the Skies!
Order a copy of Death from the Skies! from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders.
"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?"
-- Adam Savage, Mythbusters"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising -
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People who like me!
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DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space - DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
September 5th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Awww, and here I thought you’d been parodied in The Onion. Have you talked to Scott Dikkers since TAM V? I think that was his name.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Damn. For a moment there I was hoping ‘Area man interviewed’ meant they were interviewing one of the aliens living on the asteroid.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am
According to Rosetta Blog (thanks for the link BA)
“everything is looking nominal, and some of the final fly-by commands are being uploaded now.” REALLY excited!
September 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Interviewing a local area man. Sheesh. We all know that their comments don’t amount to much of anything. They see UFOs and bigfoot. They can’t add anything useful to the discus…huh? The area man is Phil? Ohhhhh….
September 5th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
So, if an editor wrote the headline
then who wrote the subhead, immediately below it?
Well, at least they spelled your name correctly, unlike those “Talking Head” people.
September 5th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I flew in a Comet when I was about 7, it was the first commercial jet airliner - British designed and built, flown by Olympic Airways!
September 5th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
The Rosetta spacecraft will come within about 500 miles of the asteroid Steins…
What are these miles you speak of? Did you mean “about 800 KILometers”? ~_^ At least they’re getting coverage, and the comments section has someone pointing out that the article contradicts the headline.