Blogs / Bad Astronomy

The Mars Science Lab is NASA’s next big Mars mission, with a big rover and a fleet of scientific instruments to explore the planet. It’s hugely ambitious, but has suffered a series of massive budget overruns (see my previous MSL post for details). The blooming budget problem has impacted other Mars missions, and is causing a lot of stress and grief at NASA.

Tomorrow (Thursday), NASA will hold a press conference to discuss MSL. That’s interesting in and of itself, but the people giving the conference are even more interesting: NASA’s top guy Mike Griffin for one, Ed Weiler, who runs the Science Mission Directorate (after Alan Stern left, primarily due to MSL cost issues), Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA HQ, and Charles Elachi, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where MSL is being built.

These are heavy hitters, and not your usual scientists who participate in such events. Obviously, they are bringing out the big guns because whatever they have to say, it’s important. I doubt they are canceling the mission, since it’s well under way and canceling it now would be wasting the money already spent. I suspect they will be making statements about the cost overruns, the impact on other missions, and trying to assuage fears that NASA has run amok with this mission. I cannot imagine that it’s a coincidence that this conference is being held a week after Alan Stern wrote a scathing editorial on this very topic in the New York Times.

I’ll be listening in, to be sure, and I’ll report what happens. The conference is at noon (Eastern time).

One thing that bugs me is the appropriation of scientific words by people who twist them for their own ends. One that really gets me is "natural", as in, "This product is all natural!". They imply that means it’s good for you, somehow, but I counter that arsenic is an element. You can’t get more natural than that!

Another is the word "chemical". People use it like it’s bad. Chemicals kill! We associate them with toxic and noxious substances, cleansers, nasty things added to our food that makes us sick.

But the word means nothing of the sort. Water is a chemical. So is the air we breathe (the components are, at least, including diatomic oxygen and nitrogen).

It’s time to take the word back! Neville Reed, a director of Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry, has said he would happily give one million pounds to anyone who can produce a substance that is 100% chemical-free.

This is impossible, of course, and he said it to publicize misleading advertising like I pointed out above. He got fed up when the advertising standards in the UK defended a ridiculous ad saying Miracle Gro, a chemical fertilizer, was “100 per cent chemical-free”.

That would mean it’s not made of matter. Of course, the company says there is a colloquial meaning to the word "chemical", which is true, but they’re being weasels. Obviously there are chemicals in the fertilizer, even by the traditional or colloquial sense (Apple recently said something similar: don’t believe what we say in our ads).

I think the RSC should make this offer official. Of course, they’d be flooded with nonsense and woo-woo; people claiming they have bottled Dark Energy or the ether or some other phlogiston. That’s inevitable.

But it would also raise peoples’ awareness that the advertising industry dupes them constantly. I’d love to see more folks understanding this. It’s not just products like fertilizer either: it’s political ads, public service announcements, the news, and pretty much everything else you can see on TV or read in a magazine. Even some blogs indulge in misleading statements to sway people — OMG!

A little skepticism goes a long way. And that is guaranteed 100% chemical free.

Roger Ebert is best known as a movie critic on TV, but he has been writing movie reviews for far longer. I’ve read a great number of his columns and his writing is in general excellent, with an obvious and profound depth of understanding of movies.

Ebert has a fierce intellect backing up his writing, and that is on display very well in his review of the execrable "eXpelled: No Intelligence Allowed", the creationist "documentary" that is so chock full of lies that the creators’ pants will be on fire for centuries. Ben Stein was the host of this steaming pile of celluloid, and Ebert aims his keyboard directly at him.

Ebert’s review is dead on target, and I recommend reading it. "eXpelled" was a major flop and will most likely sink beneath the waves of history, but don’t think for a moment that the people out there trying to promote creationism won’t use the same slimy tactics again and again. Being aware of them is half the battle.

Note to my readers: This is also cross-posted on The SkepticBlog, the blog of The Skeptologists.

I want to indulge myself for a moment and follow up on what Ryan wrote about our shoot at Mt. Wilson.

When we shot The Skeptologists, I had never been to Mt. Wilson before. I’ve been to a few observatories, including some small ones affiliated with Universities, Mt. Stromlo in Australia, and the IAC facilities on La Palma in the Canary Islands.

These are all fantastic places to visit, but they’re relatively new. Mt. Wilson has been around for a long, long time, and even better, we filmed in the dome of the Hooker 100″ telescope. When I found that out, I was ecstatic! This was the very telescope used by Edwin Hubble when he was investigating the nature of what they used to call simply "nebulae", what we now call galaxies.

When we got there, I was not disappointed. The ’scope is magnificent! I love the brute force steelworks of it, the criss-crossing braces, the sky-blue paint. The control board was very retro (duh), and had an almost steampunk feel to it.

But the best part was when we went down into the pit, the bottom of the dome where we could stand under the magnificent ’scope. I was peering around, and when I was underneath it I happened to look up. My eyes caught a flash of green, and I realized I was seeing the 100″ mirror itself. It was supported by a maze of steel, but gaps in the bracing and random bits of machinery and metal left a clear view of the glass.

I had an odd moment, thinking of the photons that hit that glass a century ago. They had traveled millions of light years through space before being reflected by that mirror. The galaxies observed by Hubble had emitted countless fleets of them, more photons than there are stars in the sky. The vast majority flew off into open space, and still ply their way between galaxies. But a tiny fraction of those made it to Earth. Some were absorbed by our atmosphere, and some few of those were aimed right down the telescope’s gullet. A fraction of those were absorbed by the mirror itself as well as the other mirrors used by the telescope to focus the light.

Out of the countless octillions of photons that started their journey, only a few made it into Hubble’s detectors. And from those scant particles of light, he and his fellow astronomer (Slipher, Hale, and others) discovered the Universe itself is expanding.

I stood there thinking of all that, and I couldn’t help it. I reached up and touched the back of the mirror. I laughed at myself a little; a skeptic connecting with a chunk of glass. I didn’t feel any vibrations, no sense of Hubble’s energy, no rapport with the history.

And yet… we’re still apes, we humans. We can see something, hear it, taste it; but it’s our fingers that relay so much of the sense of what’s around us. Nothing New Agey or superstitious, just a simian need to fulfill the part of the brain that desires the tactile sensation of connection.

But still. Touching that glass put me there. That part of my brain firing up gave me the extra dimension of sense, the understanding, the knowing, and (yes) the feeling the history of the place. And there is history at Mt. Wilson; our grand explorations of the cosmos took a major leap there. When I reached out my hand, that’s what I was experiencing, if only vicariously.

I remember it better now than I would have otherwise. I can still picture it all, can remember how it felt, and my sense of awe remains unabated.

It was, simply, cool.

And even a skeptic responds to that.

Much of what I have read about and from Obama leads me to think that he is part of the reality-based community (at least in part). That’s why I’m not too concerned that UFOs-are-visiting-us proponent (and, evidently, BABloggee) Stephen Bassett wrote an OpEd asking Obama to lift the "truth embargo" about aliens coming to Earth and posing for blurry photos while masquerading as Venus, balloons, the Moon, satellites, military aircraft, atmospheric distortions, and hoaxes.

Now, let me make this as absolutely clear as possible (which will be to no avail, because I have been very clear before, and UFO proponents still manage to completely mangle what I’m saying): if you want me to think that UFOs are not just misidentified mundane objects, then all you have to do — and it really is this simple — is provide me with evidence.

Here, let me make this even clearer:

PROVIDE ME WITH EVIDENCE.

What do I count as evidence? Hard, physical data. Not eyewitness reports (because even the most highly-credentialed person in the world can misidentify something, or not understand what they are seeing, or may suffer from an episode, or decide to lie, or just be simply wrong). Not fuzzy photos. Not fuzzy video.

I want hard, physical data. I want an alien on the White House lawn. I want a piece of metal with clearly non-terrestrial isotope ratios of components, or be composed of some currently non-discovered element. I want some piece of predictive evidence — a map of an alien world that can eventually be verified, or an alien-given advance in physics that can later be verified with the LHC or some other cutting-edge technology. And nothing vague like "a unified field theory exists"; it has to be definite and precise, so that there is no controversy.

Do you think this is too demanding? I have news for you: you’re asking me to believe in something that will revolutionize all of human existence. I think demanding some actual evidence for such a thing is not only not too much to ask, but is to be demanded.

Of course, by asking for actual evidence, I’ll be called a cynic, a liar, a government stooge, and (my favorite) a debunker (since you can’t debunk something that isn’t already bunk). I’ll also be called closed minded, which is incredibly ironic, since I can be persuaded by evidence of the existence of actual alien visitation, but people like Stephen Bassett cannot be persuaded out of their beliefs by the lack of the same evidence.

If you have this sort of evidence, then by all means let me know. I’ll report it here. But in the meantime, I suggest people read Mr. Bassett’s demands of President-elect Obama, and keep an open mind yourself on which of us is being more open minded.

Tip o’ the tin foil beanie to Fark.

This post sat as a draft for a long time, and I should have posted it ages ago. It’s about the election, but it’s something we should all keep in mind anyway, for now and forever.

Watch this video. We need more like it. And I’m amazed some people can’t figure this out. it’s really pretty simple.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Today in the United States is the holiday of Thanksgiving, one of our more deeply tradition-laden days. I suspect most people in other countries know this as the time we eat turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie (though not me, I prefer chocolate pie). And then there’s the shopping the next day, of course.

But there is also the tradition after which the holiday itself is named: giving thanks. People do it in different ways, of course. At a family dinner many years ago, my then-young niece suggested that we go around the dinner table and everyone could say what they were thankful for. It was a sweet idea, and we’ve done it many times since, when we’re all gathered.

But there’s something about it that bugs me, and again it’s the word itself. To give thanks, there has to be something to receive it. For some it’s God, which is their personal choice. For others it may just be fate, or happenstance. That bugs me. I have an appreciation for math and some basic statistics; I know that, ironically, rare things happen all the time because there are so many seconds in a day, and so many of us humans walking the Earth. Tell me that I am a one-in-a-million guy, for example, and I know reflexively there are 5999 more of me out there somewhere.

Egads.

So sometimes things just happen. But I also know that the world is what we make of it. We make decision, consciously and unconsciously, every second of every day, day in and day out, for all our lives. The big decisions stick with us, and maybe smaller ones that went the wrong way. But they’re our decisions.

So I’m not the kind of guy, you might not be surprised to learn, to give thanks to some entity or entities named or otherwise. To me, it’s not a matter of giving thanks. It’s a matter of assessing what you have, what you want, and being glad or sad about the way things did or didn’t go.

Should I thank the random nature of the Universe that a young woman in 1992 decided to take astronomy in summer school, setting up the circumstance that I would see her every day in the Astronomy Department at UVa? And should I thank Fate that she was someone I had already met through being in the band together, but we never hit it off… only to stop and talk with her before class that hot, humid summer? And whom do I thank for me finally getting the guts to invite her to the Fourth of July picnic at my friend’s house, a date that had been ongoing for 16 years now?

Or should I just be glad things worked out that way, and I was able to take advantage of the opportunities that arose?

Should I be thankful that the one particular sperm swam some small percentage faster than the others, producing a zygote that would eventually be the daughter I see today, possessed of a lovely singing voice, an aptitude for music, drawing, writing, and science? I’m just glad it worked out that way, and that my wife and I did the best we could — and still do — to raise our daughter. Knowing all this is started out somewhat randomly doesn’t lessen the fierce feelings I have for my daughter now, and the pride I feel every day when I see her.

I decided in the late 90s to write a book. I wrote magazine articles first, then started giving talks, then got an agent, then the book contract. We needed blurbs for the cover, so I sent a copy to my hero, James Randi, whom I had never met. He wrote an enthusiastic endorsement, and then invited me to speak at the first of an annual conference he was planning.

Now I’m the president of his educational foundation. I am paradoxically humbled and proud to be in this position. Whom do I thank for that?

Oh, wait! I have an answer for that: Randi. And my agent, and my friend who introduced me to my agent, and and and. I’m glad they were able to help me, and I’m glad I took the initiative to jump on those opportunities when they arose.

And so in this case, the thanks really do have someone to receive them. I bet that’s true in a lot of cases.

I thank my family for their support, and my friends over the course of my life for shaping that life. I’m glad for the opportunities, but I’m thankful to the people.

The world is what we make it. It’s the people who make the difference. I am who I am today — we’re all who we are today — because of people, both good and bad, influencing us, both in good ways and bad.

And it’s what we’ve done with that experience. Events happen, but it’s up to us to do with them what we can. Be glad for that, be thankful.

The world is what we make of it. Make it a good one.