Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I know, religious pareidolia is such an easy target. But seriously, people make themselves look a little, um, weird when they claim a rotten potato is a sign from God.

Now honestly, let’s say you’re God. And you want to send someone a signal, letting them know that you’re thinking of them, and that they should be better people. So, do you make a sign in the heavens, or part a sea, or heal the sick?

No. You appear in a tater. As the owners say:

Pastor Renee Brewster and her husband Bishop Winston Brewster are a very spiritual couple. But the site of their savior in a potato has reinvigorated their faith and their desire to help others.

“That’s Jesus on the Cross. Just looking at it I don’t have to convince,” said Renee.

Well, the apparition does look a little bit like Jesus, but she said Jesus is on the cross. One small problem: the arms are spread out, but there’s no cross. And it looks like he’s standing on some sort of pedestal, which I don’t think the Romans provided. But people see what they want to see, and the owner of said spud is a very religious person.

Which makes me laugh a bit: the word "pareidolia" has the word "idol" in it. I think the Bible has something to say about that.

The owners froze the section of the potato with the Savior in it, which I suppose is better than selling it on eBay. After all, the love of money is the root of all evil.

Normally, after making an awful joke like that, I’d say "You know the deal: what do you see?" but honestly, I don’t see what else this looks like (except for a hole in a potato, but what do I know). If you do see something else, leave a comment.

And remember, like the Bible says… "the tuber shall set you free."

Tip o’ the masher to Jon Voisey.

Several astrophotographers on BAUT have posted their pictures of 2007 TU24 as it tumbled past Earth last night. The pix are very cool. There are two ways in general to take them: let the ’scope track the stars, and the asteroid will appear as a streak as it moves across the sky, or track the asteroid, which will look like a dot as the stars leave streaks.

Both methods were employed by various rock hunters, and the results are interesting. Go take a look!

I’ll have at least one more thing to say about this asteroid later, maybe Wednesday. I’d like the chance to talk about the actual science of it. There’s some nifty stuff going on.

Regular readers know I have a gig on the SETI radio show Are We Alone. The segment is called Brains on Vacation, and you can guess what I talk about.

The new show is out (here is the direct link to the MP3); Seth Shostak and I talk Martian Bigfoot, and have some fun with it as we always do. The show also features one of my heroes and friends, James Randi, who discusses the Million Dollar Challenge and Uri Geller, too.

And what’s this? Seth will be on an episode of the online Star Trek: New Voyages? What a nerd.

I was going to make a long post about my thoughts of The Amaz!ng Meeting 5.5, a conference about activism and skepticism, but others have already made lots of interesting comments (NPR radio host Peter Sagal also has comments on TAM 5, where he spoke last year). For example, Skepchick has several bloggers who attended and wrote about it.

There are lots of pix posted from the meeting; a thread on Randi’s forum is devoted to them. Rebecca has some photos posted on her Flickr account, including the one on the left. That’s Rebecca on the right, and Alison Smith, who does volunteer work at Randi’s Foundation, on the left.

See? Being a skeptic ain’t all that bad.

But I want to add some things. I was asked to MC, which is always an honor. I introduced the speakers, and made wrap-up comments after each one as well. That’s both fun and enlightening; it can be difficult to come up with just a few sentences that both convey and add to the previous speaker’s message and leads into the next speaker as well.

But just some personal observations:

1) Kelly Jolkowski was the first speaker. Her son was abducted many years ago, and she was preyed upon by psychics trying to help her find him. She was a believer at first, but learned that these people are the scum of the Earth (worse than doomsayers, even). She started the website Project Jason to help others who have been the victims of such evilness. Her talk on psychic predators was heart-breaking, uplifting, encouraging, and inspiring. It makes me want to double, triple, my efforts in getting people to think critically. Kelly is a wonderful woman, and I feel awful that I mispronounced her name at first.
2) Mike Stackpole was as awesome as I expected. he gave good, firm advice on how to actually go out and be active in skepticism. I took plenty of notes, and I plan on implementing them.

3) The other speakers were great. Not a sour note in the bunch, and all of it was incredibly motivating and wonderful. From 9-11 Truthers to Sylvia Browne, from skeptical podcasting to mainstream radio, the discussions were interesting, fun, and exceptionally cool. If you read my site, and like it at all, then you MUST attend TAM6 in Vegas in June. We’ll have lots more great speakers and fun activities there.

There’s still so much to do, so many things we need to help others about. What TAM does for me, as I’ve said many times, is breathe new life into me. It gives me the motivation I need to continue on this journey, which is fraught with frauds, liars, hoaxers, well-meaning but misguided people, and of course hundreds of millions of people who are all too willing — and sometimes even eager — to give them their say.

We must fight this. We will fight this, and the fight will be ongoing and no doubt infinite in length. But it will be fought.

So, are we still alive?

(checks outside)

Hmm, beautiful day, a little nippy, but blue skies. The Rockies are still standing. The news sites are reporting on the Republican primary in Florida and Britney Spears, so clearly that’s normal.

But wait! My pwnage by Wil Wheaton got on both Fark and Digg and my server is still running! It must be due to TU24!

Feh.

So, let’s see; I said this would be a non-event. Others — specifically someone going by the moniker TU24dotORG claimed it would rain down death and destruction, going so far as to make videos, create a website, and even make up a threat level assessment (which, as I write this, is still at its highest setting):

And here we are, many many hours after closest approach, and nothing happened. Nothing at all.

Shocker. Man, I really really can’t stand the type of people who take a harmless event (or a non-existent one) and scare people with it. I still don’t know their motives; hoaxers, honest but misguided, or mentally unbalanced. But it’s clearly one of those three. Because, as I have said many times, they are most certainly wrong.

Now if I hadn’t been overrun with things to do (and suffering through a massive sinus attack right now), I would have posted making predictions about how this doomcrier would backpedal furiously when the time came… and passed. In all honesty, my first prediction would have been that (s)he would say something like "Give it some more time."

That is what TU24dotORG did. On the TU24 website, now 8 hours past perigee (closest approach) as I write this, it says:

For those who can’t read the image, it says:

For as long as TU24 is near Earth’s magnetosphere there is a possibility of disturbance. This website is not (and was never) about impact. If you’re wondering why “nothing happened” you’re counting your chickens too soon.

That’s right, you must wait for the consequences, because, after all, electricity flows so slowly it may take days or weeks for the effects to occur!

Yeah, right. They dare say something like that, after showing a video that had all sorts of dire consequences listed.

There is a link that goes to a section of that site with a discussion forum. It says:

This is about effect, not impact. There was never a real chance for impact. (Why do people continue to talk about it?)

TU24 will be tracking us for about 6-7 days, starting from the 29th. This is made clear on the front page of this website.

During this time there could be some effects.

I’m not sure what (s)he means about "tracking us". Does the asteroid have a gun, and it’s waiting in the bushes? What the asteroid is doing in reality is moving away from us at many miles per second. If anything were going to happen, it would have happened hours ago.

When someone (quite correctly) posts "Oh, please. The asteroid has been approaching us for weeks. Now, it’s past the point where it was closest to us. NOW you say there will be effects?" the website owner replies:

This is the last time I will answer this very simple question.

It is not about the closest approach date and time.

It is about TU24 being in our magnetosphere. (As per the video)

For now and the next several days this is a very real possibility.

That’s just plain old ridiculous. If the asteroid ever did enter our magnetosphere (it’s unclear; it depends on the exact shape of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time and the path of the rock) then it did so before perigee and stayed in there for some time. Magnetism doesn’t just hang out and wait a few days to make its effects known. Had this Electric Universe nonsense had any validity at all, the effects would have been immediate.

TU24dotORG was wrong. Totally and completely. It’s just that simple.

I’ll also note that replies are turned off on the TU24 discussion board for that thread. Hmmm.

So now I predict the doomsayers will backpedal more. The asteroid didn’t have an electric charge. It was charged, but it wasn’t a negative charge. It didn’t penetrate our magnetosphere deeply enough. Something from the Sun neutralized it.

Or they might go the Nancy Lieder route and point at every little thing as a sign from the asteroid: a storm over the central US. An earthquake in Turkey. A light bulb breaking in Piscataway. Their dog barked in the middle of the night.

Mark my words: there will be many, many excuses, but no apologies. And no doubt they will play up the January 30th encounter of asteroid 2007 WD5 with Mars, though again, nothing at all will happen.

There is one absolutely guaranteed truth out of all of this (besides that science was totally right and antiscience was totally wrong): they or someone else will be back. It will be the Sun’s new cycle, or the Mayan 2012 nonsense, or something pulled right out of thin air. I sometimes wonder if it matters what the event actually is. All that really seems to matter is that something cool happens in the sky, and someone, somewhere, has to soil it by using it to scare people.

Well, feh. When it happens there will be scientists around, people who will tell you the actual truth. And if there does come a day when something worrisome this way comes, we’ll still be there to tell you the truth.

That’s what science is, and that’s how it works. And it does work.