Blogs / Bad Astronomy

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.

The California Literary Review asked me to answer some questions pertaining to Chapter 1 of my book, Death from the Skies!, where I talk about asteroid impacts. They’ve posted my replies on their site.

This is such a broad and interesting topic, and it’s really hard to boil down the important stuff to just a few dozen words. I tend to be a bit, um, wordy, so sometimes I have a hard time saying my name in a few dozen words, but I hope that the Q&A gives you a sense of what’s going on.

For the past few months I’ve been doing a series of short astronomy videos with producer/director Tom Lucas. Unlike my own videos I do in my house, these are professionally made, and I’ve been very happy with the past few.

Yesterday the sixth episode was posted, called "Hubble’s Hotties". It’s a Top Ten List of Hubble images, except it’s only really the Top Six. Sorry, but there’s only so much you can squeeze into five minutes!

It’s also available in high-res (click the link under the video on the YouTube page).

We filmed this at the Denver Museum of Science & Nature, and I’m grateful for the use of their facility. And I’ll be back there on the 11th of December to give a talk about asteroid impacts and my book, Death from the Skies! It’s a great place, and I hope some of you can join me there.

If you happen to live in the UK (or someplace that gets BBC 2), then you should watch Brian Cox on the show "Horizon" tonight at 9:00 p.m. He’s a gifted speaker, and the topic is the nature of time. I live here in the Colonies, so I’ll miss it, but I’m hoping to catch it on the web somehow (I also have a couple of moles in England who send me stuff sometimes, too).

In the meantime, here’s the trailer for the show.

If the music sounds familiar to some of you, it’s from Doctor Who. That already makes me want to see the program. And, of course, some of you might want to see it because Brian has a certain, um, appeal to a lot of folks. I just like the topic, and Brian himself, so I’m looking forward to watching this when I can.

Tip o’ the bowler hat to Gia.

Does this NASA photo from the rover Opportunity show a wooden log on Mars?

Hard to tell? Then look at the zoomed-in image, and ask again: is this a log (petrified or otherwise) on the surface of the Red Planet?

Duh. No.

But if you read some websites, you might think it is. So what’s going on here?

The quick answer is: this is another in a long line of examples of pareidolia; people seeing familiar things in random or semi-random patterns. In other words, this looks like a log, but it ain’t. Remember the Martian Bigfoot? Yeah, this is the same kind of thing.

How do I know? Well, lots of reasons. For one thing, this photo is from 2005. Had any scientist studying Mars seen this and thought it was actually wood, I think they would have said something by now.

Second, there’s no evidence at all of any macroscopic plant life on Mars. The vista shown here is a vast range of desert. What are the odds there would be a log smack dab in the way of the the rover as it moves across Mars? Note too that the tracks go right over the object; Opportunity literally ran it over. That means lots of people in the control room on Earth saw this object, yet no one said anything about it being a log. And if you think they’re covering it up, then why did they publish the image in a press release?

Third, look to the right of the "log". There are two rocks that look a lot like it:

That image is slightly different from the one I displayed above, with better contrast. See how the rocks are the same color as the "log"? And look at the patterns on the rocks; they’re the same too. The linear patterns even line up with those of the longer object! This indicates we’re looking at a rock here.

And finally, fourth: I mean, c’mon. A log? On Mars? Sheesh.

Clearly what we’re seeing here is another rock, probably different than the flat rocks that are paler, but very similar to the darker ones. It looks like a petrified log, but then we know that many things look like other things. Wasp nests look like Buddha (or the StayPuft Marshmallow Man), and rocks look like Bigfoot (which is like a case of meta-nonsense, given we’re talking Bigfoot).

It’s certainly an interesting object, since it’s long, and all the other rocks are not. I imagine that geologically there’s some story behind it. But I really really don’t think it involves wood.

But that won’t stop the goofballs out there, breathlessly playing this silliness up. One site said this photo was leaked. Yeah, leaked, as a frackin’ press release on the NASA site!

Cripes.

Another site goes on about how maybe it’s a log and maybe it’s not, but who can trust NASA? After all, it’s so easy to fake pictures. But they don’t make the logical connection that if NASA faked the image, then (again) why did they publish it in a press release but make no mention of the object itself?

It’s frustrating that unthinking nonsense like this gets spread so quickly through the web. It’s the Ebola of science, and far too may people are far too willing to pass the virus on. It relies heavily on people not understanding science (and skepticism) all that well, and them also not understanding that seeing is not necessarily believing.

So if you see something like this, think about it before sending it on to the next victim. Does the claim really make sense? Is it supported by the data you have, and is there evidence against it? And you can always look to my blog here for more, or to other places like the BAUT forum, where lots of smart and knowledgeable people look into claims just like this one.

It’s amazing how much bad thinking is out there in cyberspace. But don’t worry. Its bark is a lot worse than its byte.

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.

Dave Mosher over at the Discovery Channel blog collective (not to be confused with our own beloved Discover Magazine Hive Overmind) asked me if I could write down my thoughts about UFOs, so he could post it over at their site to support a show they’re airing about flying saucers. Because I’m a swell guy, I did.

The essay is based on a question I get all the time when I give lectures, and it’s so important to me I’m reposting it here. In fact, I have a YouTube video with a slightly longer version of this as well.

Here’s the written version…

When I give public talks, I can almost guarantee that during the Q&A I’ll get asked: Do I believe in aliens and UFOs?

My answer usually gets a laugh: “Yes, and no.”

As far as aliens go, I suspect pretty strongly that there’s life in space. We know of over 300 planets orbiting other stars, and we’ve only just started looking. In our Milky Way Galaxy alone there are probably literally billions of planets. Life on Earth got started pretty rapidly, relatively speaking, after the crust cooled and liquid water formed, so we know it’s not tough for life to get its start… and it’s entirely possible there is microbial life inside icy moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn.

So thinking aliens exist has a pretty decent scientific basis. But them coming here is an entirely different beast.

There are tens of thousands of UFOs reported every year. That’s one of the reasons a lot of people think aliens are visiting us: there’s no way that there could be that many reports if some of them weren’t real!

But that’s bad reasoning. In fact, the vast majority of reported UFOs are mundane things in the sky. The planet Venus is incredibly bright; most people don’t believe me when I point it out to them. They think it’s a nearby airplane, or some other bright earthbound object.

Not only that, but if you’re driving, it appears to follow you through the trees because it’s so far away. If it’s low to the horizon, turbulent air makes it flicker and change color. Does this sound familiar? How many UFO reports have you heard that say a huge object (people often mistake brightness for size) was following someone in their car, and it was rapidly changing color?

Yup. Venus.

Manmade satellites pass overhead several times an hour, and some brighten tremendously as a solar panel or mirrored surface catches the Sun. Meteors blaze across the sky, ice crystals refract sunlight and moonlight, atmospheric effects make a distant object appear distorted and weirdly-shaped. All of these have been mistaken for alien spacecraft.

So I know that most people misinterpret what they see. But there’s something else too. If alien spaceships are really out there abducting us and playing chicken with our airplanes, then you’d expect that people who spend more time looking at the sky would see more of them. And who spends lots of time looking up?

Amateur astronomers, of course. They are dedicated observers, out every night peering at the sky. If The Truth Is Out There, then amateur astronomers would be reporting far and away the vast majority of UFOs.

But they don’t. Why not? Because they understand the sky! They know when a twinkling light is Venus, or a satellite, or a military flare, or a hot air balloon, and so they don’t report it.

That, to me, is the killer argument that aliens aren’t visiting us. If they were, the amateur astronomers would spot them.

Of course, you might say “But just because they don’t see UFOs doesn’t mean they aren’t real. It just takes one to prove aliens are coming here!” That might be correct, but remember, we started off thinking they’re coming here because so many UFOs are reported! Once you realize that the overwhelming majority of UFO cases are just everyday things, then that “it just takes one” argument gets a whole lot weaker.

But I’ll surprise you, though: I agree. It really only does just take one. But that one better have good proof! Something better than a single eyewitness, a badly sketched object, a fuzzy photograph, or out-of-focus video (heck, with digital effects the way they are today, you can’t even trust video that’s crystal clear). It needs a sample of non-terrestrial metal. An actual alien. Some incontrovertible evidence that is impossible to deny.

But we never get that. Why not? I think it’s because we’re not being visited. When Klaatu comes and lands on the White House lawn, I’ll be willing to change my mind. But until then, well, keep watching the skies. Learn what’s up there, and what isn’t. You might someday spot the genuine article.

But even if you don’t, you get to discover what’s really up there… and there’s treasure aplenty in the sky to be had, even by us folks stuck here on planet Earth.