Bad Astronomy » Miscellaneous

Science Getaways: Update

Phil Plait — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:36:40 +0000

I love science. OK, duh, but I really do. And when I go on vacation, I can’t help but see science everywhere, and in every case it makes the trip more fun for me. Seeing local geology, biology, how the stars might look different at a different latitude… it adds to the vacations, makes it better.

That’s why my wife and I started a company called Science Getaways. We figured there are lots of other folks out there like us who would really enjoy taking a vacation that has bonus science added in. Our first planned trip is to a gorgeous Colorado dude ranch called C Lazy U. Besides the usual amenities of such a place — horseback riding, great food, spectacular views of the Rocky Mountains — we’re adding SCIENCE! And scientists: we have a geologist, a biologist, and an astronomer — hey, me! — who will be on hand to give talks about the local nature scene, and then we’ll take hikes to put that new-found knowledge to practical use. I’ll be running a stargazing session every evening with my new 8" ...

Get Scott Sigler’s The MVP for $3 off

Phil Plait — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:12:20 +0000

Wanna get Scott Sigler’s brand-spankin’ new novel The MVP for three bucks off? Read on…

Scott is a pal of mine, but he’s also a few other things… like a NYT best selling author, for example. His science-based horror books like Infected, Contagious, and Ancestor are really fun (and ookie) reads. He’s been writing a really good science fiction sports series of novels about the Galactic Football League, where humans play football side-by-side with aliens… who may be able to leap five meters in the air, run far faster than humans, and oh yeah: also might possibly want to eat the other team.

His new book in the series, The MVP, is available for pre-order starting right now! And because I am super special and wonderful and love my readers, if you pre-order the book with the coupon code badastro you get $3 off the price!

Just go to his site, order the book, and put badastro into the coupon code field to get the discount. This code also works on his other hardcovers in the GFL series, including The Starter and The All-Pro (the first novel ...

Holiday fundraisers

Phil Plait — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:00:45 +0000

Winter is always a big season for charities. Christmastime is traditionally a time to give, but that means competition among charities increases, and it’s hard to separate out which ones you want to give to. And some "traditional" charities seem like they do good work, but have some pretty intolerant and bigoted beliefs they keep relatively quiet. So deciding to whom to give can be difficult.

So if you have a few bucks, here are a handful of charities I like.

Recipe4Hope is campaign to raise money for the Autism Science Foundation. I am very wary of groups claiming to research autism, since so many of them are fronts for anti-vaccination promoters. ASF, though, understands that vaccines do not cause autism, and is looking into actual scientific research. Here’s their video for this year:

100% of the donations will fund ASF’s pre- and post-doctoral autism research fellowships, helping young scientists start their career researching autism. They have a donation page set up, and the campaign runs through the end of 2011.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has an annual Season of Reason campaign which raises funds to keep JREF operating. Donate $100 (or ...

News quickies, part n

Phil Plait — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 18:02:31 +0000

Just some quick notes, to fill my quota give you some interesting reading:

1) Scientific American has a great article online about why it’s important to vaccinate, and how to talk to parents about it. [via George Valenzuela]

2) Speaking of which, the Autism Science Foundation — a non-profit that supports real research into autism, instead of trying to link it to vaccines despite all the evidence — was chosen as the number 1 startup charity in the "Disabilities" category by Philanthropedia/Guidestar. Congrats to them! [via Dawn Crawford]

3) The Discovery Institute isn’t completely honest? Unpossible!

4) Bill Nye helps create a sundial at Cornell University that glows when the Sun reaches its daily peak in the sky. [via Beth Quittman (my agent!)]

5) Frying pans that look like planets. Seriously. Very cool.

Help me get a panel at SXSW!

Phil Plait — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:00:38 +0000

SXSW (or South by Southwest if you want to make it easier to say out loud) is a major geekapalooza held every year in Austin, Texas. There’s music, film, and lots and lots of tech nerdery. I’ve wanted to go for a long time.

Now’s my chance, but I need your help! I was contacted by Stephanie Smith at JPL who is proposing a panel called "2012: You Bet Your Asteroid the World Won’t End", featuring JPL’s Veronica MacGregor, near-Earth asteroid expert, Don Yeomans, and me. The panel would be about end-of-the-world scenarios, something about which I have plenty of fun things to say.

The thing is, the panels have to be voted on, and that’s where you come in. All you have to do is go to the SXSW panel picker, register (that only takes a sec), and then you can vote for what is undoubtedly the best panel out of the 3285 listed.

If you do, I will love you forever and send you a unicorn*. But please hurry — voting closes at noon Central (US) time on Friday, September 2. Thanks!

Putting the eye in Irene

Phil Plait — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:26:21 +0000

Over the past few days, hurricane Irene has grown as it approaches the United States. The NASA/NOAA Earth-observing GOES 13 satellite has been keeping an eye on the storm, and images it has taken have been put together into this dramatic video showing Irene from August 23 at 10:40 UTC to 48 hours later… just a few hours ago as I write this:

Pay attention about 20 seconds into the video (August 23 at about 20:00 according to the clock at the top of the video). You can see the eye wall region burst into existence, and a few seconds later the eye itself suddenly appears. Also, a surge of white clouds appears to the right of the eye and wraps around the hurricane. That’s where warm air has risen strongly, overshooting the cloud tops, and producing intense rainfall (5 cm/hour according to TRMM!). Overshooting tops, as they’re called, happen frequently in tropical storms as they intensify. For what it’s worth, something like that happens in stars as well as hot plasma rises rapidly from under the surface, though astronomers tend to call it "convective overshoot".

Irene is currently a strong Category 3 hurricane (with ...

A tsunami’s icy reach

Phil Plait — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:09:04 +0000

The March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami off the coast of Japan did unimaginable damage. The tsunami was several meters high, marching a long way inland, and wiped out entire towns.

It also swept out to sea, expanding across the planet. By the time it hit the Antarctic ice shelf — 13,000 km away, taking less than a day — it was well under a meter high. But water is dense (a cubic meter weighs a ton!) and that much of it hitting the ice can cause it to flex and break.

And that’s precisely what happened:

[Click to antarcticenate.]

That’s the Sulzberger ice shelf on the coast of Antarctica and the Ross Sea. A few days before this image was taken those gigantic blocks of ice were still part of the shelf (though cracks were already present), and in fact the big one had been part of the shelf for over four decades at least. The pounding wave of the tsunami broke up the shelf, sending those blocks into the sea.

Mind you, that big rectangular block of ice is about 11 km (6.6 miles) across — about the size of ...

Boulder fire damage seen from space

Phil Plait — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:00:04 +0000

As I write this, storm clouds are gathering in the west. That’s a pretty common situation here in Boulder, Colorado, in the summer. We get fine, clear mornings, and sometimes rain in the afternoon. In general big storms aren’t exactly rare, but this summer we’ve been getting pounded. On my bike rides it’s been routine to see the creeks in the area swollen to the point of overflowing.

But this summer, that situation has turned more dangerous. We’ve been getting some serious flood scares, and the reason may not be obvious to people who don’t live in the area: fires.

Last year, the Fourmile Canyon area north and west of Boulder burned pretty vigorously for many days. The smoke plume was visible from space, and it caused a lot of local grief. What wasn’t clear to me at the time was how this would affect flooding.

The image above, taken on June 7, 2011, is from NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite, and is a combination of far-infrared and visible light. Water (reservoirs and lakes) shows up as purple in this false-color image, vegetation is mostly green, and red/orange shows the fire damage. You ...

Music of the spheres

Phil Plait — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 13:00:58 +0000

Alex Parker is an astronomy PhD student at the University of Victoria, and had a neat idea: create music based on 241 supernovae found in a three-year-long survey of the sky. The data were from the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope, and he made a video of the effort:

Each note represents one of the supernovae. The volume is based on the star’s distance, and the pitch based on how long it took the supernova to rise to maximum brightness and fade away — that’s tied to the exploding star’s total energy released, and was the key factor used to discover dark energy — together, they are combined into this "Supernova Sonata". Clever, and cool.

Speaking of which, I also got an email from Mike Lemmon of Neue Music. For a website called Experience the Planets, he created music I’d characterize as "atmospheric" — more tonal and ethereal than most synth music. I happen to like this kind of stuff, and I find myself listening to his "Planets" as I’m working. It’s not for everybody, I know, but if you like that kind of thing as I do you should give it a shot.

It’s available ...

Slodem

Phil Plait — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:00:22 +0000

I’ve had a cable modem for quite some time, but for many years before that I had to get onto the internet using a dial-up modem (and I remember having to bite the bullet to buy a second phone line so we could get calls while online). And I also remember how slllloooooowwwwww the bitrate was.

The connection itself didn’t take long, and made that weird wheeeecccchhhh woooooccchhhhhh noise. But what if the connection had been as slow as your downloads? What would those weird noises sound like slowed by a factor of 7?

Why, they’d sound like this:

I have no reason to post this other than I thought it was cool. As it happens I just watched "Quatermass and the Pit" (for about the hundredth time) the other day, and was reminiscing about old scifi movies. Doesn’t this sound like it could be in one of those old soundtracks?

Tip o’ the modulator to reddit.

Give a buck for autism research

Phil Plait — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:50:14 +0000

A few months ago I posted about the Autism Science Foundation: an organization that funds real research into autism. We don’t know what causes autism, but ongoing research is making progress, and ASF is helping support that.

For today only, they are featured on the Philanthroper home page. Philanthroper is a group that helps raise money one dollar at a time. I like this idea. Giving a dollar isn’t all that hard for a lot of people, and the process is pretty painless: if you have a buck and a Paypal account, it takes less than a minute.

A lot of time, money, and effort is being wasted looking into a connection between vaccines and autism when we know no such connection exists. I’m glad there are groups out there trying to find the real causes, and that’s why I already donated to ASF.

So. Got a minute and a buck?

Geeky interview now online

Phil Plait — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:23:39 +0000

Just as a so’s-you-know: the radio/podcast interview I did with Jules Sherred for Geeky Pleasures is now online for your listening nerdtainment. We talked about a ton of stuff, including the space program, Doctor Who, space colonies, Trek, asteroids, antivaxxers, and nudity.

Oh, did that get your attention? I figured it would. People love it when I talk about Doctor Who.

Space station approaching! Red alert!

Phil Plait — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:55:12 +0000

How flipping nerdawesome is this? A lamp that lights up when the International Space Station is visible!

He has the plans online so you can build one and code it yourself. I bet a lot of teachers would love to get one of these in their classrooms!

… and I want one too. But I’d wind up soldering my hand to the desk. Sigh.

Tip o’ the LED to NASA’s Twitter feed.

Cubes all the way down

Phil Plait — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:06:03 +0000

I love Cyriak Harris. His animations are amazing, and funny, and weird, and frequently distressing, and make my brain hurt.

This one is no exception:

So cool. Cyriak’s a flippin’ genius and we should be throwing accolades and money and little pickles at him.

Tip o’ the Power of Ten to Boing Boing and JHGRedekop.

From space: video of five days of tornadoes

Phil Plait — Wed, 25 May 2011 21:32:58 +0000

Over the past few days, huge storms have exploded over the US midwest. The GOES 13 geostationary weather satellite had a birds-eye view of the whole thing, and its images were used to make animation showing five days of meteorological action:

Wow. It’s positively creepy how those cells burst into life with what looks like no trigger or precursor. They’re just suddenly there. Terrifying.

I was in Kansas over the weekend for my nephew’s college graduation (congrats Derek!), and literally minutes before the ceremony was to start there was a tornado warning. We had to huddle in the building’s basement for about 45 minutes before the all-clear was sounded; the tornado spotted was to the northwest and missed us (although right as the warning started I was able to get a picture of the weird rolling mammatus clouds overhead).

After the ceremony we saw the storm raging to the north of us, and I got this photo of it:

That’s a several second exposure at (I think) f/8. The lightning was never more than 5 – 10 seconds away for quite some time. It was awe-inspiring.

The next day we left ...

Give him 2.54 centimeters and he’ll take 1.609344 kilometers

Phil Plait — Tue, 10 May 2011 17:09:27 +0000

I like the metric system. I really do. It’s so much easier than trying to remember how many inches there are to a mile, or roods per square furlong*. I prefer metric over the imperial system, and use it all the time. I really wish the U.S. would just knuckle under and convert to it, and join the rest of the entire world in the 21st century.

Well, the rest of the entire world except for Burma and Liberia. Yay?†

Still.

The thing is, I do have a problem with the metric system. Not as a way of measuring things, but because it’s really awful for aphorisms. Seriously. This has bugged me for a long time, but it came up again while writing a blog post where I wanted to use the phrase "That asteroid will miss us by a cosmic mile," a play on the phrase "country mile", a colloquialism for a long distance. I used the phrase because I liked it, but had to wonder how many of my non-American readers had no clue what I was talking about.

As I pondered more on this, it got worse.

Who can really refer to a diminutive friend as "0.2366 ...

Radio interviews now available

Phil Plait — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:01:58 +0000

This is just a quick note to let y’all know that the two radio interviews I did over the past weekend are now archived.

The Star Talk Radio interview with Neil Tyson and Leighann Lord is stored right here on Discover Magazine’s site, and you can also get it on iTunes.

The Think Atheist interview is available on their website.

They were both fun to do, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Two Sunday radio interviews

Phil Plait — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:49:09 +0000

You know what you don’t get enough of? Hearing me blather on about astronomy and skepticism on a Sunday. So you’re in luck: I’ll be doing two interviews on Sunday:

1) At 6:00 p.m. Eastern (US) time (22:00 UT) I’ll be on Star Talk Radio with my old pal and all around cool dude Neil deGrasse Tyson, and my new pal, comedian and all around cool chick Leighann Lord (we’re the three on the left of that pic with producers Helen Matsos and Leslie Mullen on the right). We’ll be dissecting the science in science fiction movies and basically having a good time with it. You can listen to the show when it airs, but keep in mind we pre-recorded it when I was in NYC last week for NECSS.

What I will do, though, is listen along when it airs Sunday, and then I’ll be on Twitter making dumb jokes and snarky comments as usual. So join me there and I’ll answer your questions if I can.

2) I’ll be on the Think Atheist radio/podcast at 8:00 ...

I’m guest hosting Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour on Thursday!

Phil Plait — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 21:13:22 +0000

Hey, who has two thumbs and is hosting Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour on Thursday?

Well, usually the answer would be Kiki Sanford, the host. Assuming she has two thumbs. I’ve never really paid that close of attention, honestly. But Thursday the answer will be: me! Kiki hatched a youngling, and so she’s off on maternity leave. She asked a few people to sub for her, one of them being me.

Mwuhahaha!

Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour is a live streaming video science talk show, and my shot at stardom will be at 4:00 p.m. Pacific time (23:00 GMT) on Thursday (tomorrow) March 17.

I’ll also have a very special guest on the show! It’s a secret, but here’s a hint: his name is ZACH WEINER!

The show can be watched LIVE at TWIT TV. There’s also a chat room there, so you can log in and ask questions, or you can ask via Twitter, but to be honest it’ll be hard to check the tweets during the show itself.

If you want to see what the show is like, I was guest a while back and the video is embedded there.

This will be a ...

Japan earthquake info

Phil Plait — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:25:00 +0000

The magnitude 8.9 earthquake that hit Japan last night has done a vast amount of damage. I’m seeing lots of information scattered around the web, and figured a post listing them might help.

First, if you need info about the quake, CNET has a long list of links for finding lost loved ones, information on the quake in general, and more.

Second, our own Discover Magazine has an excellent article with the science behind what happened. The article notes that science and engineering prevented this disaster from being a lot worse.

There are many charitable, non-profit organizations that may or will be providing aid and relief. I asked on Twitter which ones people liked, and here are a few. I do not necessarily endorse these groups, but provide this for your information.

Oxfam The Red Cross has info, and also a page where you can contribute directly to quake relief Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) Red Cross through WePay Global Giving ShelterBox

Before you donate, please watch this video of the tsunami crashing through Japan:

Yes, those are buildings on fire as they are being swept ...

CatIRday

Phil Plait — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 14:00:10 +0000

I haven’t posted a Caturday picture in a while, and this one presented itself to me.

How proud am I, that on a cold Boulder winter’s day, Canis Major sought out the brightest astronomical infrared source she could find?

Live video webcast with LPI Wednesday night!

Phil Plait — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 17:39:49 +0000

[UPDATE (Saturday, February 12): the recorded webcast is now online for your viewing pleasure.]

On Wednesday, February 9, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern (US) time (01:00 Thursday morning GMT) I will be participating in a live video webcast with Andrew Shaner of the Lunar and Planetary Institute. We’ll be talking about the Moon — I’m sure the Moon Hoax will be in there, but I have a hard time staying on topic, so I imagine we’ll also talk exploration, science, and more. And really, I’m always happy to talk about any astronomy or skeptical topic.

This will be a lot of fun, and I hope a bunch of BABloggees will be there. The audience can participate by filling out a brief form and entering their question at the link above. Easy peasy.

P.S. Despite the poster, I really don’t know where you live. Well, for some of you I do. I won’t say who though.

Mega Giveaway versus Giant Contest!

Phil Plait — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:00:49 +0000

[UPDATE: We have a megawinner! @kurtjmac had the inning tweet, and the swag is on its way to him now. Thanks to everyone for joining in, and as always, stay tuned for more giveaways like this one. I still have a ton of stuff lying around.]

At the top of this year I had to do two things: replace my Mac laptop, which is so old the operating system is called Sabre Tooth (baddaBING!), which in turn meant rearranging my office as well (to make room for all the joyous new cables). While performing this archaeological dig I unearthed a lot of really cool stuff lying around in boxes and bags, plus a lot of what can only be called random crap, so I figure the sweat of my brow is your good fortune: I’m giving it away.

That’s right! I’m having Yet Another Bad Astronomy Giveaway contest, and this time it’ll be on Twitter. What am I including? This:

[Click to sharktopusenate.]

This is truly an awesome load of geekiness. To wit:
A SyFy tote bag from Comic Con last year that says "GIANT BACK PACK" on one side and "MEGA TOTE" on the other. Yes. A copy ...

Bits and pieces, Part (n)

Phil Plait — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 14:20:59 +0000

Just some quick notes for a Sunday after a big holiday:
I heard that "Bad Universe" will air on Discovery Asia and Discovery Channel in New Zealand and Australia starting Sunday January 16 at 7:30 p.m. Just so’s you know. Check your local listings, etc. etc. As the end of the year approaches, a lot of people like to give money to charities since it’s tax deductible. Tech Skeptic has a great list of secular charities for your perusal if things like this bug you as much as they do me. If you live in Europe, north Africa, and western Asia, you get to see a partial solar eclipse on January 4th!

Science geek holiday gifts: books!

Phil Plait — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:29:49 +0000

So you read this blog, which means you’re a hopeless geek. And chances are, you have other such folks in your life too (I have too many to count*). And what geek doesn’t want more books? One who’s dead, that’s who, and assuming your geek friends aren’t zombies, then they’re both alive and want books. So here are a few that might keep them enthralled over winter’s chill grasp.

The Science of Battlestar Galactica by Patrick di Justo and Kevin Grazier

BSG is one of the very few scifi shows that made the crossover into mainstream, and for good reason: tough, gritty, and with a devotion to getting as much of the science right as possible. That last bit was in no small part due to my friend Kevin Grazier who was the science advisor on the show, and is the co-author of this book. I was expecting it to be pretty good, but it still exceeded my expectations. It was a very enjoyable read, briskly taking on cutting-edge scientific ideas as explored in BSG. Artificial Intelligence (duh), faster-than-light travel, radiation, weaponry, ships, planetary science — it’s ...