Blogs / Bad Astronomy

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!

If you’re anywhere near southern Florida on Saturday, November 7, then you need to get yourself over to the Broward College, which is holding the very first celebration of Carl Sagan Day!

It’s in honor of Sagan’s birthday, which is on November 9th. He would’ve been 75 this year. Sagan inspired a generation of astronomers, and in reality a whole generation of people to look at the sky and appreciate the — yes, I’ll say it — cosmos.

Celebrating his life is a great idea, and the folks at BCCC have a full day planned (the schedule is online in PDF and Word formats). A lot of good speakers will be giving talks, including my friend Jeffrey Bennett (who wrote Max goes to the Moon series of kids’ books), skeptic and "Point of Inquiry" podcast host D. J. Grothe, and NASA astrobiologist and impact expert David Morrison (via satellite). I’ll be giving my Death from the Skies! talk at 4:00 (with David there, I’ll have to be on my toes). They’ll be showing "Cosmos" continuously in one room, with kids’ activities in another. There’s a planetarium show in the evening, too.

And this will be very special: James Randi will be there, talking about Sagan. The two were friends. Randi has a lot of personal insight on the man and will have wonderful things to say. This is a don’t-miss opportunity, folks. I think I’m looking forward to that part most of all.

For more info, there’s contact info on the Carl Sagan Day website. Also, there’s a writeup in the Broward/Palm Beach New Times.

This really will be a fun and wonderful tribute to Sagan. I’m very pleased and honored to be a part of this great day for a great man.

Regular readers know that Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is one of my favorite web comics. This morning, he had an astronomy-themed bit of snark:

I’ve blocked out the woman’s reply, so you’ll have to click through to see the punch line.

And I love Zach, the artist, I really do, but…

SPOILER for the joke:

Meteorites are after they hit the ground. Meteors are when they are still in the air and glowing, and the solid part is called a meteoroid. There is no semantic definition of when a meteoroid is is big enough to be called an asteroid, but given the size depicted in the cartoon, I’d say that one counts.

See? This is why you shouldn’t date an astronomer. Unless you like that sort of thing. Oh baby! Talk cosmic to me!

Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to Brian Carroll who tweeted the link to Rebecca at Skepchick, who is in turn technically correct in her title since I’m married and Mrs. BA can kick anyone else’s asteroid herself.

What we would do without Twitter? If not for that 140 character service, I never would have found out that Dr. Chaotica wrote and performed a song called "Death from the Skies!", based on what is considered by some (OK, just me) to be the finest book to come out in 2008 (and 2009 in paperback).

I’m more of an ABBA and Shostakovich guy, but I have to admit I found my toe tapping to this happy tune of death and destruction from space.

I am just now hearing about an asteroid estimated to be about 10 meters across blowing up over Indonesia on October 8. Apparently no one was injured. I have no clue how I missed this, but The Telegraph has the story. This is not an everyday occurrence, but 10 meter rocks probably do come in and explode high over the Earth’s surface every few years or so. If they’re rock they won’t make it to the ground; instead they blow up due to the incredible force of their passage through the air (in this case, the explosive yield was about 50 kilotons of TNT). Smaller rocks will rain down, though.

If it’s metal, that would be worse. It might withstand the aerodynamic pressure and hit intact. However, like I said, this is pretty rare.

The newspaper article above plays up the "What if it were just a bit bigger?" aspect, which is true enough, but what can we do? A rock or chunk of metal 30 or so meters across is dangerous, sure, but is too small to see very far out, so there’s not much we can do about it. That’s not exactly great news. It’s possible it might get spotted a day or two in advance — we’ve seen smaller ones with a day’s warning — but most likely our first warning would be the flash in the sky.

It would cost a fortune, hundreds of millions or more, to set up telescopes to scan the sky deeply and quickly enough to see all these rocks. There are some ’scopes like that in the works, but I suspect the political will to create the network needed just isn’t there. It may take a few more impacts like the one over Indonesia before people start taking this seriously.

Regular readers know I have an marginally unhealthy crush on Felicia Day. Of course, so do millions of other people, so she’s probably relatively safe from me.

But are we safe from… colliding galaxies? Apparently, only Felicia knows for sure, as she demonstrates in this NASA PSA:

Hey! That was funny! Like, really funny! Lots of inside jokes for Felicia’s fans, too ("Is this your first time doing an internet video, Miss Day?") A lot of times videos like this are just painful, but this one is actually really good. Felicia is great, and the Sean Astin stuff cracked me up.

And I think someone’s been reading my book… OK, probably not. But the way she talked about all the astronomy was very natural and smooth, so I just know deep in her heart Felicia’s harboring a strong and undeniable love for astronomer. I mean astronomy. Yes! Astronomy! Of course that’s what I meant!

Sigh. We’ll always have Comic Con.

Tip o’ the Guilded lily (see what I did there?) to Javier Pazos.

Regular readers know Brian Cox: he’s a physicist, a rock star, a TV science documentary host, a skeptic, and a friend. At TAM London I did a very brief interview with him. Since he works at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, I had something on my mind…

Now, how long do you think it’ll be before every crackpot doomcrier takes this video out of context, and/or seriously?

One thing I really dislike about conspiracy theorists — well, one of many, many things — is their lack of a sense of humor. Maybe the tin foil hat drains that part of your personality away.

They’re too late anyway.

Related links:
Video interview with Ariane Sherine
Video interview with George Hrab
Review of TAM London
The James Randi Educational Foundation/a>