Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I have claimed for a long time that Wikipedia is doomed to fail, because it is simply too easy to vandalize (though of course I am open to arguments). Sure, a bollixed page can be fixed, but for some amount of time entries can be changed, and if it’s a lesser-traveled topic it can be wrong for months or more.

Still, vandalization can be funny.

Take the Wikipedia entry for the MESSENGER spacecraft. Looks fine, right? Yeah, well now look at the version that was up for a while before it got caught. Notice any difference? I have a small piece of that page presented in the image here on the right.

I have no idea why this person did this, but it’s pretty funny. I wonder if my Canuckian friends think so too? Fraser? Comments?

Maybe Fraser is the one who did it! Hmmmm.

Still and all, it’s fixed now. But what nefarious country will be next? Will the New Horizons probe go to Mexico? Will Cassini orbit Bulgaria^*? We may have to get Homeland Security in on this.

^*You just can’t trust those sneaky Bulgarians.

Yeah, you’ve seen it by now, but I feel I must be complete and show it anyway:

It sure is pretty! This is the only released still of the Enterprise from JJ Abrams’ new Trek movie. I didn’t realize the Enterprise had rotary turbines! I guess that helps for that added boost when you’re in the Mutara Nebula.

I got an odd email a few hours ago. It was from Google News! They are introducing a new idea called News Commentary, allowing people who are in the news to make comments on the actual news articles Google displays.

They saw my name pop up in a news article about Mercury, and asked me to leave a comment… so I did.

How cool is that?

I wonder where this will go? Most ideas those Google folks come up with tend to take off, you may have noticed. I’m not sure where they’re headed here, but I’ve learned that when it comes to Google, I’ll at least hitch a ride for a while.

For those keeping track at home, the article that mentions me is from National Geographic, written by Victoria Jaggard, a woman I met at the AAS meeting last week. Pretty nifty.

Interesting news: a new X-Files movie is being filmed, and, according to series creator Chris Carter, they won’t be doing the mind-numbingly dumb alien conspiracy thread that got so twisted and self-contradictory that even Fox News wouldn’t be able to defend it.

“We spent a lot of time on (the mythology) and wrapped up a lot of threads” when the show went off the air in 2002, says Chris Carter, creator of the series and director of the new movie. “We want a stand-alone movie, not a mythology conspiracy one.”

Well, good. I stopped watching the series when it became clear that Carter had no idea where the story was going, and in fact I was so soured by the experience I haven’t watched any TV series where this was also obvious ("Lost", comes to mind… and I started watching "Heroes" only reluctantly, and look what happened there in the second series… barf). I loved many of the standalone-plotted episodes, and would equally love to see a full-length movie where a plot like that was really carried out, and not suddenly resolved like a few of them were.

Also, seeing Scully and Mulder together again… cool. I really liked their characters and their interactions, and of course I am but a mortal man, and Scully is teh hawt.

X-Files, Star Trek… lots of interesting movies coming out soon! And of course, Cloverfield opens tomorrow. I’ll get a review up as soon as I humanly can.

<Movie guy voice>In a world where movies are more important than reality comes one company not afraid to speak out…</Movie guy voice>

Seriously, very cool vid featuring my buddy Brian Cox who gives us a tour of the Large Hadron Collider. Some (stuffy) folks think this kind of thing is a bad idea, sexifying science. Those people are dumb. This stuff is great!

P.S. Brian’s fab wife Gia has a post talking about his upcoming appearance on the BBC show "Horizon".

I just received word that The Open Lab 2007 book is now available online to purchase! The book contains 53 of last year’s best science blog posts, including one by me.

I read several of the included blog posts, and this year’s book looks to be at least as good as last years… which was pretty good. So go buy a copy!