The Hive Overmind at Discover Magazine, in their semi-infinite wisdom, has featured my book Death from the Skies! on their front page.
W00t!
They even included a table from the book, where I list the odds of getting killed in nasty ways (and how to prevent them, if possible). So read, enjoy, and sleep well tonight… mwuhahahahahaha.
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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"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
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
October 28th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
“semi-infinite” … *chuckle*
October 28th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Phil,
I have a question about the book. Currently I’m reading Neil Tyson’s “Death By Black Hole” which is fantastic. I’ve been saving the chapter about black holes like the last piece of chocolate cake on the plate because I love the ways in which Tyson describes such cosmic quandaries.
My question about “Death From the Skies” is this: is your book similar to Tysons in terms of subject material (beyond the obvious title and chapters) and do you both take different approaches to describing these certain cosmic quandaries?
I plan on buying your book regardless of your answer but I’m cursious what are the differences and similarities between both “Death” books.
Yes, pleasant. I know.
Thanks in advance.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Sweet! I’m thoroughly enjoying the book, by the way. Excellent stuff!
October 28th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Dead link Phil!! Or has the world ended I didn’t notice?
October 28th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Iman, in fact I was worried about that, but after reading Neil’s book I can tell you they are totally different. He has one very fun essay about black holes that covers the high points, but I have a lot more details in my chapter. That’s not surprising; his essays were magazine articles, so he had to keep a lot of the details out. So I think you’ll find they’re very different books.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
oops! Fixed the link.
October 28th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I just read that as the Discover Institute, and i was rather confused…
October 28th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Phil:
Speaking of the BA Shameless Commerce Division (to borrow a page from Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers), we (the Faulkner Planetarium) just got our kit for the “Bad Astronomy” planetarium show, and noticed that the visual showing the BA blog web page on screen was the old (pre-Discover) version. So I updated it to the new version which, for the sharp-eyed, includes most of the cover of DFtS. Subliminal advertising (woot)!
October 28th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Thanks Phil. I look forward to reading it!
October 28th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I smell nepotism.
October 28th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
From the table:
Funny, in both your interviews with Pamela Gay and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, you described a mitigation method – using a gravity tug to adjust Earth’s orbit.
October 28th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Phil, isn’t this a little, “But my mum says I’m cool!”
Just joshing you, mate. Great to see the book doing so well.
October 28th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I just bought your book for my Kindle–how does that affect your cut, vs a paper book?
October 28th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
What, Phil’s new book already reduced to Kindling?
October 28th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Now on Phils nex post will be “Want Kindle”.
October 28th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Speaking of Discover, I’ve been receiving “this is your last issue” warnings from Scientific American for about a year now, whereas Discover cut me off after about two months. Cheapos.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
It was also featured at theawesomer.com, which only makes sense. They list all things that are awesome.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Chris A, excellent! I’m curious about what you think of the show. Feel free to email if you have comments.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Jennifer, don’t you let Jen-Luc blog for you? Talk about nepotism!
[but I have a big crush on J-L so it's OK]
October 28th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
It’s “bwahahahahaa!”, Phil, “bwahahahahaa!”.
DftS is next in the queue (after ‘Ancestor’s Tale’, though, sorry)…
October 28th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Hey, Phil-
As a fellow Boulderite, I thought you might like to know that I saw a fireball tonight from the Pearl Street Mall facing west in front of Old Chicago’s. The fireball appeared near Altair and headed west at an incredibly fast pace, visibly broke apart, and faded away after arcing out a trail that must have been at least 10 or 20 degrees long. Do you know anywhere I could find more information on this event – I assume others or cameras pointed at the mountains across the state should have seen it.
October 29th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Hey there!!
I haven’t seen the book yet but, I intend to buy it. So far, I’ve only seen the cover of the book. I was wondering if there was lots of pictures in it (I love pictures). I’d like to see pictures of a big comet coming toward the Earth or maybe, evil aliens attacking us.
October 29th, 2008 at 9:37 am
There are indeed pictures. Not a pop-out book though unfortunately.
October 29th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Does the book explain how you calculated these odds. I understand intuitively that some of these events are less likely than others, I just wonder where the numbers come from.
October 29th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
@ tobiasthecommie: Someone sold you some bad dope there. You should get your money back.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
[...] within a factor of ten or so (a table of the risks was published online by Discover Magazine here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/28/hive-overmind-of-death/). Good enough for [...]