Pluto Has Three Moons

My good friend Dan Durda just sent me a very exciting email: a team has discovered two more moons of Pluto!

According to the press release, these tiny moons were discovered in May 2005 using images from the Hubble Space Telescope. The two as-yet unnamed moons orbit Pluto at distances of about 50,000 and 65,000 kilometers (for comparison, Charon, the previously-known moon of Pluto discovered ion 1978, is about 20,000 km from Pluto). Their sizes are not known, since they are so very far away, but the larger of the two may be 110-160 km in size, and the smaller about 100-140 km (again, for comparison, Charon is about 1170 km in diameter, so these are pretty small moons). They are extremely faint: the brighter of the two is at a magnitude of 23, meaning that the faintest star you can see with your unaided eye is still about 6 million times brighter than this moon. Pluto itself is about 4000 times brighter than these moons, so it’s hard to see them against Pluto’s glare. That’s why they haven’t been firmly detected before.

It’s not possible to get much more info about these two moons from the current data. They are too small to directly resolve, so they appear as point-like objects. That means the sizes can only be estimated using their brightness. Also, the orbits are estimates using the limited data, but it seems clear that they are indeed objects orbiting Pluto, and not chance background stars or some other distant objects orbiting the Sun.

As the team themselves say:

What led us to believe the objects near Pluto in the HST images are satellites of Pluto?

Several factors:

First, both satellites appear to be moving through space with Pluto, and they also appear to be moving around Pluto, as one can see from the images. Since we commanded the Hubble Space Telescope to track Pluto during the imaging, objects not moving with Pluto (like stars and asteroids) appear as streaks in the images, rather than a point-like source moving with Pluto. It is highly improbable that an object would appear to be moving with Pluto unless it was really in orbit around it.

Second, both objects appear to be true point sources in the images, which is evidence that they are real, physical objects in space as opposed to optical glints, stray reflections, or other instrumental signatures in the instrument. HST ACS camera experts like George Hartig who examined our images do not believe that any known instrumental effects could generate signatures that mimic the satellite candidates we had found

Third, the information we have about the orbits of the satellite candidates is consistent with their orbits being in the same plane as Charon’s, and also nearly circular. This is extremely important, because it is very highly unlikely that any image artifact or other astronomical body would mimic such motion while also appearing to travel with Pluto.

Fourth, we determined that the new objects are small enough that they would not have been detectable in previous (less sensitive) Pluto satellite searches quoted in the literature, and that their gravitational effects on Charon’s orbit would not have previously indicated their presence.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Marc Buie and Eliot Young located faint images of both satellites in HST ACS data taken for a Pluto mapping project they spearheaded in 2002.

So for now, consider this discovery tentative but almost certain to be confirmed.

This is very exciting, and I congratulate the team for their hard-won effort!

By now you may have seen this meme going around the blogosphere, where you can calculate how much your blog is “worth” in some sort of weird correspondence between links and money. I played with it, of course, but it seemed too self-indulgent to me to actually post it.

But then I started thinking… antiscientists aren’t going broke. Intelligent Design guru and known truth-stretcher Michael Behe is getting rich off his book. Antiscience is well-funded, and garbage-spouting pays quite well indeed.

So with this in mind, I thought it would be amusing to plug in some antiscience sites to see what I got in terms of their “dollar” amount. I’ve been doing a lot of Mars debunking lately, so naturally I put in Richard Hoagland’s site.

What I got was more than amusing. It was downright eerie in its accuracy.

First, here is my site (click the image to get a higher-res version):

Hey, more than a quarter million! Not bad! I wish that were real money. Sigh.

And then we have Hoagland’s site:

If you have a hard time seeing it, let me cut to the chase. Here we are for easy comparison.

The truth hurts, don’t it?

P.S. Yes, I know, these two sites aren’t blogs. Actually, Hoagland’s actual blog is “worth” at the time of this writing $19,194.36. Mine is $138,312.30. ’nuff said.

P.P.S. … and lest you think I am picking on Hoagland, Nancy Lieder’s Planet X website and Bart Sibrel’s Moon Hoax site also rate a big zippo on this scale.

For your weekend pleasure, I’ll point you BABLoggers to an interview I did with Rick Wood on Audio Martini, sponsored by BadPsychics.com. We talked about the Moon Hoax, Mars nonsense, and the philosophy of Bad Science — and why people are still bamboozled by it even though we are solidly into the 21st Century. Here’s a direct link to the mp3 file.

This is a brilliantly written essay speaking out against Intelligent Design. I couldn’t have written it better myself.

Interesting. I kept thinking of Martin Niemöller as I read it.

Until recently, I was leaning toward Walken. But I’ve seen “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”, and I’ve found a better candidate.

You kinda have to vote for a guy who can do that.

Well, this is a bummer. Back on May 5, 2005, I reported that the Mars Polar Lander had been found. MPL was a NASA probe that crashed into Mars, presumably due to a combined hardware and software error (due to a glitch, the landing rockets may have switched off when it was still well above the surface, so it crashed instead of landing softly). In that May 5 entry in my blog, I showed where the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor may have spotted the doomed lander. I was careful to note the identification wasn’t 100% positive…

… and, unfortunately, it turns out MPL was not seen after all. As reported by the team who designed, built, and operate the Mars Orbiting Camera ^*, the image that sure looked like MPL before has changed significantly since then, indicating it’s not the crashed remains of the probe. Here’s the before and after picture (click it to get a bigger one):

Basically, what was thought to be light from the lander was really noise in the image, akin to static on your radio. This is a bummer, as it was rather cool to be able to see it. It doesn’t really change anything– the probe is still crashed, and we still aren’t precisely sure why (though we’re pretty sure). But having some imaging evidence might have led to better images, and more clues as to why the accident happened.

Hi Jenn!

[Note (added Oct. 30, 2005): this entry was featured in the Carnival of the Godless #26.]

Reader Ray Wagner was the first to bring this to my attention, though it soon got a bunch of time on different blogs…

Michael Behe, perhaps the key proponent of Intelligent Design (woe be unto them), was grilled last week about ID at the Kitzmiller vs. DASD case in Dover Pennsylvania, what some wags have dubbed “Scopes II”. Basically, at one point, the issue came up about what defines a scientific theory. This is, in my opinion, a huge tactical diversion: scientists use the word “theory” differently than non-scientists do. To a scientist, “theory” is pretty much synonymous with “fact”. Not precisely, and I am oversimplifying, but close enough. What a non-scientist calls “theory” is what a scientist calls a “hypothesis” or even a “conjecture”.

I say this is a diversion because the people who tend to twist the truth (what a non-scientist might refer to as “lie”) about ID love to say evolution is “just a theory”, which is what scientists call evolution. But of course, to a scientist that means a lot. Gravity is a theory too, as is General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and a lot of other things on which we base all of modern science (and don’t kid yourself, the technology you use every day is based on these “theories” as well).

So this whole “definition of science” nonsense is just that: nonsense. Of course, if ID proponents can give their nonsense the imprimatur of science, they can get it taught in the classroom.

So it’s not surprising that Behe would go through some verbal calisthenics to get ID labeled as science. When asked about what science is, he redefined it right there in Dover, making it broader so ID falls under the umbrella of scientific theory. As an aside, I think it’s funny how many fundamentalists have never heard of the word “hubris” (after all, why be satisfied with a definition dreamed up by the National Academy of Sciences, the premier organization of scientists on the planet?). The meek shall inherit something, but evidently it ain’t the Earth. Well, maybe only the last 6000 years of its history.

Anyway, he came up with a pretty funny definition. Here is the transcript of Behe’s testimony ("Q" is the lawyer, "A" is Behe):

Q But the way you define scientific theory, you said it’s just based on your own experience; it’s not a dictionary definition, it’s not one issued by a scientific organization.

A It is based on my experience of how the word is used in the scientific community.

Q And as you said, your definition is a lot broader than the NAS definition?

A That’s right, intentionally broader to encompass the way that the word is used in the scientific community.

Q Sweeps in a lot more propositions.

A It recognizes that the word is used a lot more broadly than the National Academy of Sciences defined it.

Q In fact, your definition of scientific theory is synonymous with hypothesis, correct?

A Partly — it can be synonymous with hypothesis, it can also include the National Academy’s definition. But in fact, the scientific community uses the word “theory” in many times as synonymous with the word “hypothesis,” other times it uses the word as a synonym for the definition reached by the National Academy, and at other times it uses it in other ways.

Q But the way you are using it is synonymous with the definition of hypothesis?

A No, I would disagree. It can be used to cover hypotheses, but it can also include ideas that are in fact well substantiated and so on. So while it does include ideas that are synonymous or in fact are hypotheses, it also includes stronger senses of that term.

Q And using your definition, intelligent design is a scientific theory, correct?

A Yes.

Q Under that same definition astrology is a scientific theory under your definition, correct?

A Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences. There are many things throughout the history of science which we now think to be incorrect which nonetheless would fit that — which would fit that definition. Yes, astrology is in fact one, and so is the ether theory of the propagation of light, and many other — many other theories as well.

Q The ether theory of light has been discarded, correct?

A That is correct.

Q But you are clear, under your definition, the definition that sweeps in intelligent design, astrology is also a scientific theory, correct?

A Yes, that’s correct. And let me explain under my definition of the word “theory,” it is — a sense of the word “theory” does not include the theory being true, it means a proposition based on physical evidence to explain some facts by logical inferences. There have been many theories throughout the history of science which looked good at the time which further progress has shown to be incorrect. Nonetheless, we can’t go back and say that because they were incorrect they were not theories. So many many things that we now realized to be incorrect, incorrect theories, are nonetheless theories.

That last paragraph is funny– he’s so desperate to get ID called “science” that he admits that things can be scientific and not be correct. This is of course correct, but it sounds to me like a typical ID bait-and-switch: he can say “you don’t have to agree with me that ID is right, but it is science” knowing full well that if any real scientists comes out and agrees that ID is science– wrong, but still science– they’ll somehow conveniently forget that last part.

The ultimate irony is the bit about astrology. Astrology is far more of a science than ID is! Astrology makes predictions, and can be falsified. In fact, astrology’s predictions always fail, and it has been falsified repeatedly. I’m not saying astrology is science (and I am saying it’s wrong), just that astrology has some characteristics of science. That’s why people call it a pseudoscience.

ID is not science at all. It is argument from incredulity and argument from ignorance, pure and simple; trying to find things that are not yet explained by evolution and saying “a designer must have done it”. That’s foolish; science tends to fill such gaps. Eventually they narrow down to nothing. ID’s toehold over such a gap is tenuous indeed. Much like Behe’s toehold on what’s science and what ain’t.

And ID ain’t.