Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I find myself agreeing with Lardfork.

Who doesn’t?

Buy your own! BTW I am not affiliated with Lardfork in any way. I just think heliocentrism rawks.

A little while ago I wrote about how useless it is for the governor of Georgia to try to pray for rain to end the drought in his state. I also said:

I bet that a month from now they’ll get rain, and they’ll say, “See? We did it!”

Guess what?

I was right:

But if we pray and it doesn’t rain, does that mean the answer is no? Not necessarily, said a handful of Atlanta thinkers.

“The answer is at some point it will happen,” said [Rabbi Steven] Lebow. “Maybe we’re just not ready for it yet.”

This is bad thinking at its baddest. No matter what, this means eventually their prayers will be answered, even when it’s crystal clear that the prayer had nothing to do with it.

This kind of magical thinking is really dangerous. Why bother actually trying to do anything, when we can just wish for it to be so? And even better, if we wish long enough, why, look! Our prayers were answered!

I’ll note that maybe Governor Purdue may not put as much stock in prayer as he claims; he asked President Bush for help as well.

I’ll also note it still hasn’t rained in Georgia.

James Randi’s Amaz!ng Meeting 5.5 (because it’s not a full blown meeting) looks pretty good, and I have proof: the schedule has been posted. Lots of good speakers there, including ghost hunter buster Alison Smith, author and skeptic Michael Stackpole (I met him at Dragon*Con in 2006 and he is way cool), Sylvia Brown buster Robert Lancaster, and more. Including a pool party!

Man, I wish I were going. But wishing does nothing, so instead I’ll simply lament. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go.

Note: Discovery HD will be showing the Kaguya Earthrise video in high-def format tonight (Wednesday) at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time!

When I posted the Earthrise picture last night, I was so gung-ho on the images themselves (and how dark the Moon looks) that it didn’t occur to me to think about the lunar landscape itself. Trust my old buddy and planetary/asteroid/moon expert Dan Durda to actually examine the surface and determine what you’re seeing (click to embiggen):

The big crater is Shackleton, and is 19 km across (roughly the size of Washington, DC). The other crater labeled is a little over a kilometer across, the same size as Meteor Crater in Arizona. A few years ago I stood on the rim of Meteor Crater in Arizona and marveled at the size of it… yet look at how dinky it is in comparison to Shackleton! And keep this in mind: Shackleton is a relatively small crater on the Moon. Tycho, for example, is 85 km across. Clavius is well over 200 km across.

Shackleton is special, though. It sits right on the Moon’s south pole. Parts of its rim stick up so high off the surface that they are almost always in sunlight, all the time. The Sun would never set for, say, a series of solar panels situated there. Weirdly, for parts of the crater floor, the Sun would never rise, and there is some evidence (still shaky, and not confirmed) that there may be deposits of water ice there. That’s why NASA is interesting in exploring this region of the Moon. It would make a great place to set up a power station for any future base, and might also be a supply of water. A twofer!

Pictures like this really bring home — so to speak — how alien and different the Moon is from the Earth.

Is it true that NASA is secretly building a flying saucer spaceship? Or it this disinfo, generated to muddy the issue and confuse the sheeple?

Or is it really just the (upside down) heat shield for the Orion capsule being built by Boeing so that humans can get into space and once again get to the Moon, then return safely to Earth?

I report, you decide.

Tip o’ the spacesuit visor to Damaris Sarria, who is becoming an astronaut.