Bad Astronomy » Time Sink

Wait just a (leap) second

Phil Plait — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:00:43 +0000

This summer will be a little bit longer than usual. A tiny little bit: one second, to be precise. The world’s official time keepers are adding a single second to the clocks at the end of June. This "leap second" is needed to keep various time scales in synch. It’s a bit of a pain and won’t really affect people much, but if it weren’t done things would get messy eventually.

This gets a bit detailed — which is where the fun is! — but in short it goes like this. We have two systems to measure time: our everyday one which is based on the rotation of the Earth, and a fancy-schmancy scientific and precise one based on vibrations of atoms. The two systems aren’t quite in synch, though, since the Earth counts a day as a tiny bit longer than the atomic clocks say it is. So every now and again, to get them back together, we add a leap second on to the atomic clocks. That holds them back for one second, and then things are lined up once again.

There. Nice and simple. But that’s spackling over all ...

Who knew the Universe was squishy?

Phil Plait — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:29:13 +0000

You may have seen the particle zoo plushies: stuffed versions of various particles like the bottom quark and the electron antineutrino. They’ve been plugged on lots of other websites and I have to admit they’re pretty cute (and maybe even a good way to get kids indoctrinated interested in science).

My friend Scott Romanowksi just tipped me off that they have a new item: the Cosmic Microwave Background plushie. It’s pretty funny:

Doctor Who Series 5 spoiler: new companion

Phil Plait — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:55:31 +0000

OK, major Doctor Who spoiler alert! Well, kinda– not a plot spoiler, but a series 5 spoiler about the new companion.

OK, is that enough? Den of Geek is spreading the rumor that the new companion for the new Doctor is a young lass named Hannah Murray. I’ve not heard of her, but she was on a BBC show called Skins. She’s very young, 19, which come to think of it was how old Rose was supposed to be in the first series (Billie Piper was actually 23 in 2005).

Sticking with the theme, Ms. Murray is a cutie, but I’m starting to wonder. With the new Doctor being played by an actor who is only 27, they may have picked her to make the Doctor look older. I’m starting to suspect that after the next regeneration, the Doctor will be played by a fetus.

Anyway, consider this in the rumor stage. But it’ll be a while before this one’s confirmed, since the first of the last shows with David Tennant won’t air until Easter, and the ...

Sara Hickman sings!

Phil Plait — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:30:18 +0000

I’ve been a huge fan of singer/songwriter Sara Hickman since like 1990. She is a fantastic singer, and her songs are intelligently and lovingly written. I’ve seen her in concert a few times, and she’s wonderful. She lives in Austin, Texas, and is also very giving to the community, sponsoring projects for kids and people in need.

My family spent Thanksgiving visiting friends in Austin, and they knew of my unrequited crush on Sara. So after some finagling, they managed to get her to come to their house and give us a private concert! I was swooning the whole time, but managed to get some video. With her permission, here is Sara singing one of my favorites (I asked her to sing this, in fact), "Simply". It’s a love song. On the video I missed the first few seconds of her description; she’s saying she wrote this song when she was 17 and had a crush on a boy… the actual song starts about 2 minutes in, but listen to her intro since it’s delightful.

She was a total sweetheart, even letting The Little Astronomer use her guitar and play a song she’s learning.

You can ...

BA Bro Blog

Phil Plait — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:29:55 +0000

Genetic material is not a finite resource. It’s not used up like printer ink or oil or raspberry jelly (note to self: need to go shopping). Watered liberally with nurture, nature can produce a lot of talent in one family. For example, my sister sings opera, and she’s really good. Yet I can play trombone, showing that musical talent is not a non-renewable resource.

Writing is the same, y’know. My extraordinary abilities, generally eclipsing those of mere mortals, are not alone in the family font. I present to you my brother’s blog, hosted at his site Plait Solutions. He does computer tech support in his town of Roswell (I know, I know, but this one is in Atlanta, not New Mexico; the only aliens there show up for Dragon*Con), and started a blog to help out his clients and give them some basic, useful information. He does have some solid advice there, as well as the odd ramble or two.

Sounds familiar. But then, what is the root of the word familiar?

Welcome to Caturday

Phil Plait — Sat, 31 May 2008 17:00:22 +0000

I’m traveling to St. Louis for a meeting (if you’re in the area, come to our blogger meetup!). But, in the tradition of the web, today is Caturday, a day when you can legitimately blog about your cat.

So why not take the chance to welcome everyone to my newest — sorta — family member, Dinger?

The reason I say "sorta" is because my wife and I got her when she was a kitten quite some time ago, before The Little Astronomer was even born (I have a picture of Dinger peering curiously into my daughter bassinet). We had her for several years, but when we moved to California we decided she might enjoy life on my in-laws farm more, so we gave her to them. She stayed with them for about four years, but now they are moving to Colorado (just a couple of towns over, in fact), so we took her back.

She’s 14. Fourteen. So she’s the newest member of the fam, but in subjective years she’s like 128. She mostly sits around and sleeps, purrs, and growls when Canis Major or Canis Minor get too close (C. Minor is terrified of her, actually). She still ...

Meet the astrobloggers!

Phil Plait — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:41:35 +0000

I’ll be attending the American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis starting Sunday (in two days! Aiiieee!), where I’ll be reporting on all the astronews goodness I can.

A bunch of astronomy bloggers will be there, and following our awesome meetup we had in Austin in January, we decided to do it again. Pamela Gay (Star Stryder, Astronomy Cast), Chris Lintott (Chris Lintott’s Universe, Galaxy Zoo), me, Nancy Atkinson (Universe Today) and probably a bunch of others will be there.

We’ll be meeting at the KitchenK restaurant on Tuesday, June 3, at 7:00 p.m. We’ll be eating, drinking, chatting, bragging, mixing, matching, gerundizing, and probably other things for which there are no words.

Be there, or B2!

Bad Astronomy at the Detroit Science Center

Phil Plait — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:23:43 +0000

I just spent the weekend at the Detroit Science Center in Michigan, where they premiered the Bad Astronomy planetarium show. Hmmm… sounds like a good idea for a book.

Haha. In fact, the show is based on my first book, and I’m in the show itself, hosting it and doing some of the narration (local radio personality Rachel Nevada also narrates). The show covers some popular misconceptions about astronomy like astrology, the Moon Hoax, UFOs, and others.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how the show would turn out. I’ve heard rave reviews of other planetarium shows in the past, only to see them and discover they’re horrid. So it was with some trepidation I sat in the (very nice) planetarium at DSC while Todd Slisher (the VP of science shows) introduced the show. The lights went down, and it began… and it was pretty cool! I liked it! It’s got a good mix of serious and silly, with only a very light helping of cheese; too many shows really lay on the goofiness too thickly, but this one had a light touch that’s refreshing.

The audience seemed to like it too. Lots of them came up to ...

Doubtfully drinking

Phil Plait — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:00:28 +0000

Hey, for you folks in and around the Boulder area, there is a Drinking Skeptically tonight at 6:00 at Old Chicago on the Pearl Street Mall. DS is a series of social events for skeptics, and they are held all over the place usually once per month.

DS in Boulder is new, and this’ll be my first time there. I hope to see some of you there!

Astronomy, the movie

Phil Plait — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:00:59 +0000

So while searching for something on Google, I found out about a movie called, simply, "Astronomy". Weirdly, IMDB’s synopsis doesn’t even mention astronomy itself, and it’s difficult to find any info on it given the popularity of the two obvious keywords. The movie sounds more like a melodrama than anything else. Anyone here in BABlogland seen it? Opinions?

Snow day

Phil Plait — Sat, 03 May 2008 20:37:03 +0000

One thing that amazes me about Boulder is the capricious weather. April 30 was very warm, and after an 8 km bike ride I was exhausted and sweaty. The next day… well, see for yourself.

I do so love it here. When I left Maryland in 2000 to move to California, it was 22 Fahrenheit outside with piles of snow everywhere. Besides a light dusting the first winter there, I don’t think I ever saw snow in California and I certainly didn’t miss it. It’s nice to be able to enjoy it again, even if this May Day snowfall is probably it for six month or more.

And hey, this is my 50th video uploaded to YouTube! Cool. Literally.

Mo’stronomy in Motown

Phil Plait — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:07:26 +0000

I’m going to be heading to Michigan in May to attend the premier of — get this — the Bad Astronomy planetarium show!

I’ve been working with folks from the New Detroit Science Center for some time now on this project. Well, to be more honest, they’ve been working really hard, and I’ve been heckling them. Last year I flew to Detroit to film some segments for it, and from what I have seen the show will be funny, informative, silly, and perhaps with a slight hint of fromage. I have not seen the final product, so it’ll be as big a surprise to me as it is to everyone there.

I’ll be at the NDSC all day on May 10th from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and giving a talk at 1:00. They’re charging a nominal fee for this, seeing as how I’ll be a huge star after the premier. Click here for the flyer. I’ll be happy to sign books, too; they’ll have copies of my first book there for purchase. The second book, Death from the Skies!, won’t be out until October but as usual I’ll be shilling it mercilessly and without remorse.

While I’m in Michigan I’ll ...

Europe: Days 4 and 5, and going home

Phil Plait — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:26:41 +0000

And so my adventure in Big Science ends.

We returned from the LHC, driving back across the ring, this time on the surface of the Earth and not 100 meters below it. We got back to the hotel, and I found myself dropped back in to the mundane world where protons were just constituents of what I saw around me, and travel speeds were measured in kilometers per hour, not large fractions of the speed of light.

I prepared for dinner, washing up and basically relaxing for a few minutes. It was hard to believe — maybe the best word under the circumstances — that I was done. Still, I was in Europe, in Switzerland, and there was still fun to be had and friends to enjoy.

We went to Geneva for dinner, parking a kilometer from the restaurant so we could walk through the magnificent city. Did you know that in Lake Geneva there is a fountain, the tallest in the world, jetting water straight into the sky 140 meters high? It was magnificent. Chris’s son thought it was a volcano at first, and I could hardly blame him.

We walked through old Geneva to the restaurant, and there we sat for ...

Europe: Day 2

Phil Plait — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:43:50 +0000

Day 2 started nice and early, which was a mixed blessing. It gave me a new chance to try to adapt to being 7 hours ahead of myself, but at the cost of getting like three hours of sleep. Well, a bit more than that, but at some point in the middle of the night that little circadian clock in my brain ticked over and said "Why are you still sleeping? It’s 7 o’clock at night!", while I grumpily told it Shut up, it’s 2 a.m.

Circadian clocks are notoriously deaf to such logic.

Anyway, I woke up in time to meet Gia’s lovely son Michael. I had brought along a meteorite to give him as a sort of house guest gift (the least I could do for eating their food and sleeping on their sofa was giving them a chunk of iron that fell from space) and he was pretty excited about it. I heard he showed it to his science teacher, and I’ll have to find out how that went.

The morning was spent doing the usual ablutions, and when Gia, Brian and I were ready it was off to the London City airport, a ...

UK: Skeptics in the pub

Phil Plait — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:00:53 +0000

We weren’t sure if we could pull this off, but now it’s official: on Monday, April 21, at 7:00 p.m. James Randi and I will be doing a Skeptics in the Pub: a free public skeptical talk in London. I’ll be doing the Moon Hoax talk, and Randi will be grumpy and charming and very very entertaining.

It will be held at The Penderel’s Oak, 283-288 High Holborn, London, WC1V 7HP. The phone number there is 020 7242 5669. I hope to see more of you left-side-of-the-road drivers there!

My thanks to Sid Rodrigues for getting this set up for us.

Weakly wrap up

Phil Plait — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:36:50 +0000

I just got back from LA a few hours ago, and even with a nap I’m still pretty tired. Way way too much happened to blog about easily. But here’s a quick rundown:

We wrapped principle shooting on Skeptologists yesterday (Saturday). It was a whirlwind five days, and it was fantastic. It was amazing how rapidly and easily the six of us on the cast got along and became a team. Of course, through various means we mostly knew each other from previous ventures, and that helped. We went from not really being sure how this was all going to work (typical for a pilot!) to having a living, breathing show in just a few days. I can’t speak for the others, but it really looks like we all had fun and could easily make this a viable program.

I have tons of pictures and such — wait until you see the places we went to shoot! — but until I can find my camera battery recharger you’ll have to wait (I know it’s around here somewhere). It’s also not completely clear how much we can say about the show and what we did, but I can tell you that in ...

No transfat = teh suck

Phil Plait — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:38:26 +0000

OK, I’ve had enough.

I want my transfat back!

I was at Target recently picking up a few things, and saw that Ho Hos were on sale. Yes, the little chocolate-like log things; when I was a kid I loved them, and I still sometimes buy them so I can be a kid again for a little while (like I need an excuse). Plus, I’ve been a good boy: I finished my book, I’ve been working on the blog and the website, and doing other things that need to get done. I want to treat myself. So I buy a box.

In the car I opened the box, got out a Ho Ho, and took a big bite… and almost spat it back out. It was awful, like someone had injected it with pure suck. After a moment to overcome my shock, I reached for the box. With increasing dread, I looked over the ingredients, and there were the words I knew would be there:

"Trans fat 0g"

AIIIIIEEEEEEE!

What are companies thinking? Do they really honestly think that by removing all semblance of flavor and replacing it with — I’m guessing here — toe cheese, they’ll be able to keep customers, just because ...

A beautiful and annoying visitor

Phil Plait — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:34:32 +0000

My brother-in-law (not the title character in this entry) just bought himself a fantastic digital SLR camera, and has been merrily snapping away. He stayed with us this past weekend, and after a light snowfall got this shot of a visitor in our driveway:

It’s definitely a woodpecker, and he caught it just as it was taking flight. Thing is, it matches the pictures we looked up of a Gilded Flicker, but a guidebook I found says they only live in the desert. What was he doing in Boulder?

I’ll tell you what he was doing. He was eyeballing the siding of my house, sizing it up for a vicious pecking. We’ve been woken up a half dozen times at 6:00 a.m. by woodpeckers attacking the house. When we first moved here, I noticed a lot of houses had plastic owls hanging up, or drawings that looked like faces two feet across hanging over the neighbors’ eaves. I recognized them as being woodpecker scarer-offers, and had second thoughts about living here.

I love Boulder, I really do. But I will eat the next frakkin’ bird that wakes me up that early. I’ve taken to keeping tennis balls outside the door ...

He must not be a space booster

Phil Plait — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:51 +0000

A Russian farmer is suing the Russian Space Agency Roskosmos for one million rubles because a rocket booster fell on his farm.

The story is a bit weird. If the booster came down and smashed his house, or crushed his outhouse, or flattened his dog, then sure, sue away. But the thing fell in his yard, as the article pointedly says, missing his outhouse (phew!). Sounds to me like he has a goldmine on his hands.

Problem is, stuff falls from rockets relatively often in that area, which is along the Russian launch path, so the novelty worth of the booster may not be that high. You can’t beat a quotation like this from the Roskosmos spokesman:

Technologically speaking, these parts are supposed to fall off during a launch. They fly, they fall, they fly, they fall. It’s how they work.

Well, yeah, boosters and such fall. But the article also mentions things like bolts, engines, and casings? I suspect there may be a translation problem here; he means fall to the ground, not fall off. Still. Yikes.

Anyway, given how cash-strapped the Russian agency is, I can’t imagine he’ll get anything from them. He should put the thing on eBay if ...

Doctor Who Season 4 starts April 5

Phil Plait — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 23:32:54 +0000

The new season of Doctor Who starts on April 5!

W00t!

Mild spoilers below:

The first episode is called "Partners in Crime", and Catherine Tate returns as Donna Noble, which anyone who reads this blog should know by now. Personally, I think her character had a lot of room in it for some great development between her and the Doctor. When he said he doesn’t need anyone, and she replies, "Yes you do, ’cause sometimes I think you need someone to stop you,"… well. The Doctor is a tortured man, and I’d like to see more of this. We got a glimpse of that in "Family of Blood" and the season 3 finale as well. I certainly hope they develop this idea more in Season 4, and given what spoilers I’ve heard… well, we’ll see.

Two weird maps

Phil Plait — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:30:25 +0000

I know coincidences happen; I certainly see no evidence for any sort of universal harmony aligning the stars or anything like that. Any stellar alignment is a matter of our own brains interpreting data.

Literally.

Such is the case, I assume, when two separate BABlogees independently send me links to the same site for two different reasons. The site in question is Strange Maps, which is about, well strange maps.

Case 1: Dan Fingerman sent me to a Strange Maps page about a Dutch map showing what Mars would look like if it had water on its surface. This is an interesting idea, and of course with modern technology (specifically, laser ranging topographical maps of Mars taken using orbiting satellites) we have much better such things, but I’m fond of the old style of map-making. This one has that Percival Lowell feel to it that makes it cool. Why it has south facing up I’ll never know.

Case 2: dj empirical told me about a Strange Maps page with a fairly unusual map of the sky, with star names and constellations re-imagined by an eccentric (read: whacko) Brit who thought our starry vault needed more Hitler and ...

Lab Out Loud interview

Phil Plait — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:00:04 +0000

I was recently interviewed by Dale Basler and Brian Bartel from Lab Out Loud, a podcast for the National Science Teachers Association, and it’s now online. I was a member of NSTA for several years back when I was doing education workshops at Sonoma State University. They do great work for teachers across the country, equipping them with the science they need to educate students, so I was really happy to do the interview.

We talked about eggs and the equinox, my first and second books, and spent most of our time talking about the need for skepticism, especially in the classroom. I suggest going to their site and taking a look around, or you can download the interview MP3 directly.

Turns out they had a warmup interview with someone else as a prelude, an apertif if you will, for mine, too. Think of it as a calamari appetizer.

Bad Bad Movie Physics

Phil Plait — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 04:15:25 +0000

I like the scifi blog io9, I really do. I read it every day, and I get a huge kick out of it (though avoiding the Doctor Who spoilers is tough).

But they had a post recently that kinda, well, blew it epically.

The topic was bad physics in movies. You might think that my calling them out on this is just due to insane jealousy on my part because they’re getting to be a popular blog and they didn’t link to my movie reviews even though I was among the first (if not the first, thankyavurrymuch) to review the science in movies on the web, and of course being an honest man I cannot necessarily dismiss that. Happily, though, my ego has the ability to charge on undeterred.

The io9 folks decided to rate several popular movies on how they treated various topics in physics, like faster-than-light (FTL) travel, communicating with aliens, sound in space, and so on. They did it like a check list, so if a movie abused a given topic, it got a check in that column.

Problem is, they got a whole lot of things wrong in their checklist! For example they only fault the Star Wars movies ...

Barking mad

Phil Plait — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 16:11:09 +0000

I know I haven’t been posting much lately; it’s been an interesting week. I’ve had several projects keeping me busy, including one cool one that I’ll be telling y’all about later. I also have some old friends visiting, so we’ve been out and about, and I get home too tired to write anything.

We went hiking in the Flatirons yesterday; they are a series of huge blocks of sedimentary rock that were uplifted off an inland seabed when the Rockies pushed their way up through the crust 300 million years ago. They’re the icons of Boulder, really, and fantastically beautiful. There’s a park at the base, and we had a great time walking around and playing in the small patches of snow leftover from some unusually warm days last week.

As I was walking along a trail, I noticed this piece of bark that had peeled off a Ponderosa pine. How could I not take a picture of it?

Pareidolia follows me everywhere. I guess that’s the point of it.

Blink!

Phil Plait — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 08:24:12 +0000

Warning: Doctor Who intensive material follows. Spoilers for "Blink", too.

So as a reward to myself for finishing up a pile of work, I watched the Doctor Who episode "Blink." This is the second time I have seen it, and it was even better this time. Honestly, even if you are not a Who fan, this one episode stands out. I’d put it up against any other single episode of any show, including "Out of Gas" in Firefly.

Anyway, I think I have found an inconsistency, and it’s making me insane. What follows are spoilers, so if you’ve seen it, help me out. If you haven’t, then get it! Watch it! Love it!

So the detective shows Sally the cars and the TARDIS parked in the police station. He says they’ve had it a while, it’s their crown jewel of the collection. What must have happened is that after the Doctor and Martha are sent back to 1969 by the angels, the police found the box at the house and moved it.

But then later, maybe that evening, Sally and Larry are at the abandoned house, and she finds the TARDIS in the basement!

I can’t see how that’s anything but a mistake. I ...