My pal Jennifer Ouellette, who writes the delightful blog Cocktail Party Physics, was recently interviewed at Tech Republic. As usual, she’s fun to read.

On that page they embedded the video of Jennifer when she appeared on Craig Ferguson’s TV show, which I totally forgot to do when she was on! So here’s the video of her talking about her book The Calculus Diaries:

See? Told you she was cool.

With the new series of Doctor Who premiering today, why not poke a little fun?

It took me a second to recognize the voice as David Hyde Pierce, and the words are from "Treasure Planet", which I thought was actually quite an enjoyable movie.

But as an astronomer myself, I have to question the word "useless". Why, we have many uses! We help keep the coffee and polyester industries afloat, for one. And without us, people with no actual sense of humor wouldn’t be able to say "So, what’s your sign?" when they meet us, which, let me tell you, is awesomely hilarious every single time we hear it.

Anyway, if you’re expecting more out of me today, you don’t know me very well because I’ll be camped out in front of the TV waiting for the new series to premier.

Trust me. I am a doctor.

Well, it’s been a while coming, but I’m pleased to let y’all know that the third and final episode of "Bad Universe" will air on The Discovery Channel tomorrow, April 19, at 11:00 a.m. Eastern (US) time — but of course, check your local listings.

The episode is entitled "Death Stars", and is about the effects of solar flares and nearby supernovae. Like the other two, this was a lot of fun to put together, though the trip to Sandia Lab still haunts me a bit… but I won’t give that away. You’ll just have to see. I actually haven’t seen the final cut since we put it together late last year, so to be honest when I watch it tomorrow it’ll be a bit like seeing it again for the first time.

Speaking of which, my daughter will be in school when it airs, so I won’t watch it until we can see it as a family. That means I won’t be live-tweeting or anything like that.

And to answer the inevitable question: I don’t know if the network is picking it up as a series or not. I expect the ratings of the airing tomorrow may play into that, so tell a friend! Or tell a few dozen.

I hope you like it, and have at least as much fun watching it as I did making it.

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 Eastern (US) time (midnight UT), and this one is live! So you can call in and ask questions. If you need more info, a pink unicorn will help:

So there you go. Mark your calendar! Twice!

You know, over the past couple of years I’ve compared Saturn’s moon Mimas to the Death Star, an egg, Pac Man, and even now Rick Astley. But while I was prepping the image for that last one yesterday, it suddenly hit me that yet another comparison was in order.

I’ll just leave it here without comment…

… except to say that finding an image of Kenny from the side was almost impossible. At least one where he was still alive.

Not surprisingly, I watch a lot of TV shows about astronomy. Some are good, some, um, not so much. Probably my biggest beef with them is that the visual art is inaccurate or used badly. I’ve seen countless shows where the graphics are simply wrong, misleadingly showing some astronomical event incorrectly. Sometimes that’s no big deal, but sometimes it gives a false sense of what’s going on.

But some shows have fantastic imagery: beautiful, accurate, and in incredible detail. Such as, for example, The BBC’s "Wonders of the Universe", a terrific show hosted by physicist and dreamy science popularizer Brian Cox^*. The effects from the show were done by Burrell Durrant Hifle, who has posted a video featuring 15 or so minutes of these amazing shots [make sure you set it to HD and make it full screen, too]:

Wow!

I particularly like the pulsar about 9 minutes in, and the incredibly dramatic supernova sequence right after. Some of these events are depicted exactly like I picture them in my head, and do a great job of showing you what the Universe is like.

I could quibble about some of the objects shown in the animations — planetary nebulae, for example, would look very different up close than they do through a telescope — but these worries are very small compared to the impact of the overall video and I don’t think detract from the real science. Chalk ‘em up to artistic license.

My only real complaint is that the animations aren’t titled. I’m pretty sure I know what’s what — it’s kinda my thing — but titles would help the casual viewer understand what they’re seeing here. And I expect this video will get a lot of viewers!

You can find more videos by BDH online, too. They really are quite lovely.

Tip o’ the 3D glasses to Doug Troy.

^* I’ve known Brian for a few years now, so I have first-hand knowledge of his dreaminess.

I have a new article up on Blastr, the SyFy channel’s web site for news and info and scifi-y stuff.

The article is about asteroid impacts, and the lack of Hollywood accuracy thereof. I take a typical movie synopsis and destroy it plot device by plot device. It’s like taking all my movie reviews and condensing them down into one run-on snark.

And yes, I know that the illustration for the article (seen here) is scientifically inaccurate. I know what you’re thinking; it’s so obvious: no asteroid is actually flying saucer shaped! At least, that’s what they want you to think^*.

So go over there, read the article, and leave your own complaints in the comments. I promise I will read them all and take them into consideration^†.

^* Dear readers with an impaired sense of humor: I know that’s not really how the picture is scientifically inaccurate. Of course, the actual mistake is that you should see thousands of stars in the background.

^† No I won’t.