Blogs / Bad Astronomy

If this weren’t a Cornell University press release, I’d think it was a joke: using nanoparticles electrostatically placed on fabric fibers, a woman has created a (high fashion!) coat that can disable bacteria, viruses, and even oxidize smog, rendering it harmless.

<Homer>MMMMMmmmmmm, shiny nanoparticle encrusted fibers manipulated to diffract light to make the material reflective and control the color.</Homer>

I mean, wow. Cool! But there’s one problem: it’s on the pricey side, at $10,000 per square yard. But that’s only $1100 per square foot, or, lessee… eight and a half bucks a square inch. That’s about a dollar per square centimeter! A bargain!

Now if we could make one that would render creationists and global warming deniers harmless…

Tip of the very tiny chapeau to Boing Boing.

Sigh.

In a recent NASA press release, it was announced that a 400 year old piece of metal — probably a shipping tag of some sort — bearing the words "Yames Towne" will go onboard Atlantis and up to the space station. I don’t have too much of a problem with stunts like this, as it promotes space travel and makes it fun for everyone.

What I do have a problem with is this line from the press release (emphasis mine):

A nearly 400-year-old metal cargo tag bearing the words “Yames Towne” and some commemorative mementoes [sic] are packed in Atlantis’ middeck floor cargo space for the roundtrip flight to the International Space Station. Their hitchhike through the galaxy honors this year’s 400th anniversary of Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in North America.

I would think the NASA Public Affairs Office (where these releases get written) would know the difference between the galaxy and low-Earth orbit. But then, they’ve hired people in the past who are fuzzy on just how old the Earth is. Maybe they’re also hazy on the difference between a few hundred miles and a few hundred trillion.

My fab friend Emily is reporting that the Venus flyby was a success for the MESSENGER probe! Yay!

While it rounded the planet the probe took lots of data, but they won’t be sent back to Earth until July June 7. Then the next step is the first Mercury flyby in January 2008, leading to a series of encounters that’ll settle the probe into orbit by 2011. Space exploration is hard, and takes a long time, but it’s just so cool!

More info here.

Fred Thompson, whom many Republicans are hoping will swoop in at the last minute to save their party’s Presidential hopes, turns out to be just another anti-science shill.

He was on Paul Harvey’s radio show yesterday. I don’t listen to Harvey’s show; let’s just say that he and I are polar opposites when it comes to, well, everything (I prefer Paul Harris). But Thompson was on the show, and talked about global warming. You can just imagine how that went!

But then Thompson pulled out the hoary old nonsense of denying anthropogenic global warming because… wait for it… the other planets are warming too!

NASA says the Martian South Pole’s “ice cap” has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto.

This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn’t even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There’s a consensus.

Bzzzt. Sorry, Mr. Thompson. You may be trying to sound all small-towny and home-spun like Paul Harvey does, but your ignorance is showing. There is a consensus, and it’s this: you’re wrong. Had you actually done any research, like I did, you’d find that the other planets’ warming has nothing to do with the Sun.

I suspect that this little meme will be spreading more and more as the Presidential elections loom. Citizens, it’s up to us to keep know-nothings like Fred Thompson from spreading them.

Update: Of course, the Republican candidates at the debate last night did everything they can to crush science into oblivion (if they actually believed in oblivion). TfK has the goods, as, of course, does PZ. And while I am totally underwhelmed with who the Democrats have up for grabs, I’ll ask you this: why aren’t they asked about science topics like evolution and global warming at the debates? Interesting, eh?

Tip o’ the sun shade to Matt McIrvin.