Blogs / Bad Astronomy

In Part I of our saga, I talked about being on Penn and Teller’s Showtime program debunking the Moon Hoax. While at that meeting, Penn asked me if I knew who Joe Rogan was. Well, duh: comedian and host of "Fear Factor". Then Penn informed me that Joe is a nutzoid conspiracy theory freak who thinks the Moon landings were faked! (By the way, I am paraphrasing, but only slightly, what Penn said).

Then Penn laughed, and said how cool it would be to get Joe and me on his radio show together so we could duke it out.

And thus we come to Part II of our saga.

First, I’ll cut to the chase: I did the show with Joe Rogan. We got along great; Joe is funny, smart, quick-witted, and in fact a nutzoid lunatic — something I’m sure he’d agree with — and really wrong about the Moon Hoax… but I like him! We had a lot of fun on the show together.

Penn has it up as a podcast now, so you can hear it for yourself.

Stick through to the end when Joe goes ballistic; Penn and I were laughing our heads off. Joe is really funny.

So while you’re downloading that, here’s the back story.

At TAM 5, Penn invited me again to be on his radio show. I gave my Moon Hoax talk on Saturday, and right afterwards I was whisked away to Penn’s house, called The Slammer — he has his radio studio there. If you haven’t seen The Slammer (it’s been featured in more than one TV show) it’s based on a prison house. When you get there, you have to be buzzed in through the gate. You go through the gate, and are stopped by another gate. You have to wait for the first one to close before the second will open (an obvious security feature at prisons).

Once inside, well, it’s like a funhouse. I could have spent days there poking around, but we were short on time. Still, I did a smart thing. Right after my talk at TAM I had to go to the bathroom, and I was going to use the hotel facilities when I was struck with a thought: I bet Penn’s bathroom is a whole lot more interesting than the hotel’s!

I was right. It’s done up just like a prison bathroom, with stainless steel everywhere. The fixtures were a lot nicer than a prison bathroom (I assume) but otherwise it was convincing– in fact, I was told some of Penn’s friends won’t use that bathroom due to "bad memories". Draw your own conclusions. Anyway, the toilet seat was what made me laugh out loud: it’s made of transparent plastic, and there is razorwire embedded in it. Here’s proof:

So we get to the studio, and things started up. Joe called in, which is perhaps all for the best– Penn told me a couple of harrowing stories about how Joe treats hecklers at his comedy gigs. I will absolutely NOT repeat them here, but if you ever meet me in person, ask me. I’m sure Joe would like to have his rep enhanced, so I’m happy to relay the stories.

I have to add that the table in Penn’s studio at which we sat had a laminated top, and underneath was arrayed a whole slew of vintage nudie playing cards. I was immediately reminded of my dad’s old Playboys from the 1960s. Concentrating became difficult.

Still and all, the hour went just beautifully. I was nervous about how it might go, but Penn is the consummate host — he was very outgoing, and said several times that he had been expecting great things from the show, but the actual event exceeded his hopes. Joe and I sparred a little bit, but just a bit. He really is extremely well-versed in the Moon Hoax theories, and knew his stuff. I think he really does think it was faked, but I also think he is still open to good arguments. Well, some– he didn’t buy everything I said (which is fine) and we had several moments of confusion over the dust disturbances left by the landers on the Moon, but overall it went really well. In fact, I would say I kicked Rogan’s backside all over the studio.

OK, maybe that’s unfair. But as I’ll get to in Part III of this tale, Rogan turns the tables and I find myself, well, not doing so well when we have our rematch on Penn’s show. But with that we will deal when the second show goes on Penn’s website. Soon, my young paduwans, soon.

In the meantime, check out Penn’s pictures of me, Joe Rogan, and other guests. Here’s mine of us (click it for a bigger version):

And finally, Esquire magazine has a great interview with Penn and Teller. It sums them up pretty well.

Astronomers at Space Telescope Science Institute just released a new image, and it’s a beauty.

What you’re looking at is galaxy cluster Abell S0740. If galaxies are island universes, then clusters are archipelagos. Some are small, like this one, but others have hundreds or thousands of galaxies in them. In many of them, there is a central elliptical galaxy which dominates the cluster, and this cluster is no exception. The central galaxy grows through cannibalism, eating other galaxies and assimilating them. Sometimes the evidence for this is that the central galaxy has multiple cores — think of them as the undigested remains of its conquests — and sometimes the galaxy gets "puffed up" as the energy of the consumption is transferred to the stars in the galaxy. The central galaxy in this image has the look of the latter to me, but I’m not an expert. By the way, most of the little pinpricks of light you see surrounding the central galaxy are globular clusters. Cool.

The other galaxies in this cluster are a mess. This is expected. Imagine taking a hive of bees and compressing it. As the bees get jammed together, they get disturbed, right? Well, the same thing, kinda, is happening here. When you jam a few dozen galaxies into a small volume, their gravity starts to make a hash of things. They pass close by each other, disturbing their shapes. You get outright collisions as well.

That spiral above doesn’t look too happy to me. I think a few passing galaxies have distorted its shape. You can see blue regions in it as well, which are locations of star formation. This can get triggered when passing galaxies gravitationally poke gas clouds in a neighboring galaxy, slamming them together, which in turn makes them collapse and form stars.

Now look at this one:

This is what’s called a polar ring galaxy. If a small galaxy ploughs right through the center of a bigger galaxy, the bigger one can form a massive ring of stars surrounding a cylindrical mass in the center, like an axle on a wheel. We’re seeing this one nearly edge-on, and it looks a lot like a normal spiral galaxy seen edge-on. But if you look carefully, along the disk you can see a dark gap, which indicates this is really not a disk seen edge on, but a ring.

Then there’s this thing:

I have never seen a galaxy like this in my life. The press release says it’s another ring galaxy seen edge on, but man. That’s really weird.

I think what’s most interesting about this cluster is that according to the release, the central galaxy has a mass of about 100 billion times the Sun. But that’s about the same mass as our own Milky Way Galaxy! So in fact the galaxies in this cluster aren’t all that big. And I’m wondering just how many of the galaxies you see in the image really belong to the cluster; some of those much smaller spirals may be part of a different cluster farther away. Or I might be totally wrong, and they might just be dinky galaxies. It looks like I’ll have to find a paper on this cluster and do some reading. I love it when images from Hubble make me think, and I love it more when they make me rethink things I’ve already thought about!

Oh– don’t forget, I have more info on galaxies in my first ever episode of "Q & BA". And keep sending me questions!

So by now you’ve probably heard that a NASA astronaut evidently blew a fuse and is under arrest for kidnapping another woman. Yeah, you read that right.

This story is about as bizarre as it can be. Lisa Marie Nowak, a NASA Shuttle mission specialist who flew to the space station last year (and who is also a Navy captain) has had some sort of crush on a fellow astronaut for some time. I am not too sure this is all that clear yet, but apparently she felt that another woman was moving in on this guy. So she decided to kidnap the other woman… which meant driving 1500 kilometers from Houston to Orlando to capture her at the airport.

The story gets weird from there.

She put on a diaper so that she wouldn’t have to stop for bathroom breaks. She was caught with a wig, a trenchcoat, a BB gun, latex gloves, and pepper spray when she accosted the other woman in the airport parking lot. She’s being held without bail (as my friend Wheatner points out, "I suppose that’s reasonable when the suspect could potentially leave the planet.")w

It is seriously tempting to laugh at all this, but then I read that she is married and a mother of three children. That’s a big bucket of ice water thrown on this situation. But I can’t help wondering what the atmosphere is like at NASA Public Affairs right now.

If you want more info, this story is everywhere. The Orlando Sentinel has a lot of details, as does the LA Times. But a search on Google News will turn up lots more. I’m at an astronomy meeting right now (these things always seem to happen when I don’t have easy access to the ‘net) but I’ll try to stay on top of this.