Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Remember when I said Bush hates science?

He’s not alone.

The House and Senate passed an omnibus budget — the budget needed to fund the operation of the government. That would normally be great, but they have made some pretty severe science cuts. At first blush they don’t sound bad, or even really like cuts: in general science agencies got a raise of 1-3% over the previous year.

However, when you account for inflation, those raises don’t keep up, so in reality the agencies affected — NIH, NSF, NASA, and others — got a cut. And while the cuts aren’t crippling, exactly, they come at a time when the US has already ramped up some big projects, which means that any cut at all hurts more than usual.

When I worked at Goddard Space Flight Center we all went through this many times. I was a contractor, so the NASA cuts didn’t affect me directly, but the annual raise I got was sometimes less than inflation. And I had it relatively good, since other people I knew actually got their salaries cut back. Oddly, mortgage companies don’t care what your salary is once they have your name on the dotted line. So a lot of folks were hurt directly by this.

And here we are again. When budgets get hit, it’s usually salaries that take the heat, so this will suck for a lot of scientists.

I didn’t even know the budget was being worked on, so I didn’t call and write my Senators and Representative. I’m a little ticked at the mainstream media for not even mentioning this. Apparently they are more concerned with Romney’s haircut.

I can console myself with the knowledge that the Democrats have now abrogated for all eternity their spines. They caved to the President’s demand for Iraq war funding. Oh — I also heard abstinence-only education got funded for another year. It’s cold comfort that it was at the same level as last year, so they get a hit as well. But funding provably and proven useless stuff at any level is insulting anyway.

Anyway, if you want more, JoAnn at Cosmic Variance has details, as does MyDD (specifically about FermiLab’s hit), and Slashdot.

Glenn Branch of the NCSE — the organization that you should thank profusely for tirelessly fighting creationists trying to subvert our children, reality, and the First Amendment — has written about the email he sent out that led to Chris Comer in Texas being fired forced to resign.

I love what he wrote, especially this bit:

It’s absurd, of course, to regard Comer’s forwarding of my announcement of Forrest’s talk as endorsing Forrest’s view (ask a linguist). But that absurdity pales in comparison to the absurdity of the Texas Education Agency trying to adopt a position of “neutrality” on evolution, when (as the National Academy of Sciences observes) “The scientific consensus around evolution is overwhelming.” As Forrest commented, “Maybe the TEA can’t afford to take a position on what constitutes good science education—maybe it must remain neutral on whether or not to lie to students about evolution—but if so, that’s just sad.”

Go Glenn!

Hat tip to PZ.

As predicted, David Morrison has commented on the new results about the Tunguska impactor:

The main story in this edition of NEO News concerns a proposed downsizing of the energy of the 1908 Tunguska airburst, with associated increase in the expected frequency of such impacts. Mark
Boslough of Sandia has generated supercomputer simulations of the Tunguska atmospheric explosion. In part his models require less energy in the explosion because he includes the substantial downward
momentum of the rocky impactor, rather then modeling it as a stationary explosion. If this revision (down to an estimated energy of 3-5 megatons, and a corresponding diameter of about 50 meters) is correct, the expected frequency of such impacts changes, from once in a couple of millennia to once in a few hundred years. If smaller impactors can do the damage previously associated with larger ones, of course, the total hazard from such impacts is increased.

Remember, this is a statistical frequency. We might not see another 5 megaton blast for a thousand years, or we may get three next month. But over time, the numbers average out. What this all really means is that we’d better figure out a way to push even little rocks aside, which means finding them first. That’s no small task, since they are extremely dim. Most of the time, we don’t see even bigger objects until they have already passed us.

This is a real issue, and one that needs much thought, and much attention.

You can subscribe to David’s newsletter by emailing him at dmorrison at arc dot nasa dot gov.

When last we saw my book Bad Astronomy, it was in Belgrade, Serbia. It’s also been in Australia, so the international hits keep coming.

This time, it’s in Scotland! Edinburgh, to be more specific, and the Royal Observatory there to be really precise. BABloggee Iain Turnbull sent me the proof:

That is very cool. Also cool: I met John Brown, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland at Randi’s very first Amaz!ng Meeting.

Small world. And the book has seen a lot of it… and there’s still more to come.

So, do you own a copy of the book? Take a picture of yourself holding it in some fun location, send it to me, and I’ll post it here!

Science in the UK is in trouble.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council is an organization that helps scientists and engineers do their research. The STFC manages funding, operates huge research facilities, and acts as a scientific advisor for the UK government.

They are also about to get a huge funding cut — as much as 25%. The reasons are not specified, but a website has cropped up so that UK citizens can do something.

It’s called Save Astronomy, and they encourage people to take action. Letters can be written, petitions signed. Maybe the UK government actually listens to its citizens, so something will come of this grassroots effort.

Dave P has more info as well.

The European Space Agency has released news that they may have found an active glacier on Mars!

This picture shows the possible glacier taken by the Mars Express orbiter. It sure looks like one! It’s located in Deuteronilus Mensae, which is in the moderate northern Martian latitude. The feature has not been confirmed as a glacier, but it does show ridging like a glacier, and there appears to be water ice on the ridges as you’d expect to see on a glacier. Followup observations will be made to see if they can find features of water in the spectrum of the area.

Old glaciers have been found on Mars, but this one may be far younger, only thousands of years old. It’s also not clear that, if this is a glacier, where the water ice is coming from. Some say it wells up from underground, and others say it comes from snow.

This is very cool news. I hope it pans out; once again it shows us that Mars is not just a bright red dot in the sky. It’s a place, a location, a world we can — and do — visit.

Hat tip to BABloggee Rav Winston.

A brief story of personal gullibility and skepticism.

We have recently introduced The Little Astronomer to Queen, one of the best rock bands of all time (and not just because guitarist Brian May has a PhD in astronomy). We were listening to Bohemian Rhapsody, and when we got to the operatic part, Mrs. BA asked out loud, "What does bismillach mean?"

The song was a hit when I was in junior high, and everyone was talking about it. My memory of all this is dim, but I do remember talking about what bismillach meant, and someone told me it meant, um, "BS".

Fast forward 32 years (holy Haleakala!), and I relate this story to my wife and TLA. I hadn’t thought about it in years, and after saying it out loud it sounded fishy to me (plus, it didn’t quite fit with the lyrics). One thing we have now that we didn’t in 1975 is teh intertoobs. I fired up Firefox, put in the word, and found out that bismillach (spelling varies) means, "In the name of Allah".

Well, whaddya know. A little skepticism overturned a childhood falsehood I’ve carried with me for decades. Huh. And I’m not even sad about it… in fact, now I understand that passage of the song far better.

And I can imagine what PZ would say about what I thought the word meant versus its actual meaning.

Thus endeth our tale. Party on.