Blogs / Bad Astronomy

My friend, the magician Andrew Mayne, is here at Carl Sagan Day, and told me that he will be live streaming the entire event on UStream! I’ve embedded the video viewer below (hopefully it won’t start playing automatically). If you go to the UStream page Andrew set up there’s a chat room where you can talk to fellow astronomy and space enthusiasts too.

The event starts at noon Eastern time (17:00 GMT) , so those of you not here in person in Florida can still watch, and even virtually participate in this inaugural festival to celebrate Carl Sagan!

A quick reminder: the Carl Sagan Day celebration will be at Broward College in southern Florida on Saturday! Speakers include James Randi, Jeffrey Bennett, David Morrison, and me. There will be lots of stuff for kids and astronomy enthusiasts of all ages. Check my blog post from Monday for more info.

Also, there will be a reception that night at 8:00 p.m. as well. Requested donation is $10. I hope to see some BABloggees there!

I was going to write about how Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and John Kerry (D-MA) were trying to somewhat slimily slip a provision into the health care bill about paying for prayer-based health services, but then wouldn’tyouknowit, Steve Novella (who apparently does not need to sleep or eat or breathe) beat me to it. Besides his take-down of the odd and wholly unrealistic beliefs of Christian Scientists, I’ll note that is has been pretty definitively proven that prayer doesn’t work in healing. So not only is this provision unconstitutional, it’s just an all-around bad idea.

OK, I know that some people see the face of their religious icons in random things. I’ve written about this a zillion times. And I know that sometimes it’s just pareidolia, our tendency to see faces in random objects. And I know that people will think it’s a miracle, when really it’s the end-product of thousands of generations of the evolution of our pattern-seeking abilities.

But then there’s stuff like this: a guy is "clueless" about how the face of Jesus appeared on his truck window, and why it persists day after day.

Oh, I have a clue. It’s clearly not random, which means it’s either a) divine, or 2) drawn on by someone. My conclusion that it’s (2) comes from having a daughter who would take her finger and draw her name in the misty back window of my car when she was younger. And also doing it myself when I was a kid. And seeing eighty bazillion examples of this as a human living in America.

So I think someone drew it on the window. The oil from their finger doesn’t wash off with water, so every morning the picture reappears with the advent (advent! Haha! A little funny for the upcoming season) on the morning dew.

But, of course, that’s just me. When I hear hoofbeats I think horses, not zebras. And since I don’t live near a zoo or in the African plains, I’m guessing what we have here is a horse-drawn carriage.

Um. Well. You know what I mean.

Picture credit: (AP Photo/Johnson City Press, Lee Talbert)

Looking for something to do this weekend, and for the next month? Are you anywhere near New York City?

Then I am very pleased to let you know that a group of artists there have created an exhibit based on my book, Death from the Skies! The exhibit is hanging at the ABC No Rio site, and runs from now until November 25 (actually it started last week). The viewing times are Sundays 1:00 – 3:00pm and Wednesdays & Thursdays 4:00pm – 7:00pm.

This is very cool, and I am deeply honored they based their work on my book. I was contacted by artist Brian George about it some time ago. Just recently he sent me some snapshots, and I was totally blown away by this:

I recognized this poor sot right away, and if you’ve read the first few pages of the book you will too. He’s the first guy killed by the Universe, straight away in Chapter 1. But don’t fret too much about him: everyone dies in the book. Over and over again, even.

I love the shadows of the trees in that drawing. Read the book to find out why. <Mwuahahahaha!>

The artwork on display is eclectic and interesting, and if you’re into astronomy and mayhem you want to go! The artists include Michael Estabrook, Brian George, Jacob Hashimoto, HC Noel (who drew Mark, above), Kevin Pyle, Kelly Savage ("Galaxies" over there on the left), William Stamos, Es Muss Sein Quartet & B-Cat and C-Town.

There’s a Facebook group for the exhibit, too.

And as an aside, if you happen to be in NYC Friday November 6, why not pay my friend, the wonderful flame-haired chanteuse Marian Call, a visit at her east coast debut? Her voice and music are really good, and she sings about cool scifi stuff, and even has a song the title of which I suggested to her. She’s awesome.

Of course, if you’re not in NYC, but instead are in Florida, that’s OK, because then you can go to Carl Sagan Day on Saturday, November 7!

The hi-res Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s camera captured a pretty cool image of a (what I’m guessing is an ancient) landslide on the Moon. Check this out:

[Click to embrobdingnangate.]

The slide is down the steep slope of a crater called Marius, located in Oceanus Procellarum, a vast smooth-surfaced area on the Moon (generally called "maria" — singular is "mare" — and easily visible to the naked eye). The crater itself is pretty old; the floor is covered with the same smooth surface as the mare around it, so it predates Oceanus Procellarum which we know is pretty frakkin’ old.

The slide is very interesting; what could have caused it? A moonquake, or a nearby impact? Either way, the ground shook, knocking loose rubble at the crater rim which then rolled downhill. And just to give you an idea of the scale here, the image is 510 meters across: you could walk that distance in a few minutes. The fingers of debris are only a few dozen meters across at most! The smallest objects you can see in this image are less than a meter across.

Features like this on the Moon yield a lot of information. Better, as the LROC page notes, this feature can be compared to similar ones on Mars, giving scientists insight into both worlds.

And? It’s just really cool. Landslides on the Moon! Look out below!

If you’re jonesing for some spacey stuff and maybe some critical thinking too, then check out these three links:

1) Starts with a Bang has a diary of the Ares I-X launch a couple of weeks ago.

2) The 127th Carnival of Space is lying in wait at Next Big Future.

3) The 123rd Skeptics Circle is at Blue Genes Science News, where things have become decidedly Galilean.

So go waste your Thursday afternoon learning stuff.