Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I have now done two live video chats, both of which were fun and successful. Well over 100 people participated each time, and I got lots of great questions… some of which made it to YouTube.

So I want to start doing this on a weekly basis. But what day? I need to do it in the afternoon or early evening Mountain time (currently UT - 7 hours), say as early as 17:00 or as late as 19:00, and it will last an hour. Pretty much any day of the week is easy for me, but I have a global audience, so I figure why not ask?

So what day is good for you? To get a sense of this, I have created a poll over at BAUT. To vote, log in and simply pick one or more of the choices. If you are not a BAUT user, registration is fast, easy, and free.

I will take the poll results under advisement, though I may not stick with the results religiously. I just want to get a feel for what everyone wants.

Thanks!

I love optical illusions. First, they’re fun. Second they give us insight into how we think, which is pretty nifty. Pareidolia is a personal favorite, of course, but I also like simple illusions that fool us.

A new study^* of how we perceive things shows that context is critical. We know that of course, but what these researchers found is that under some circumstances, our brains make things up as filler more often depending on context.

For example, a vague or faint background allows our brains to fill in the blanks more readily. If you see something, and the background is indistinct, your brain is more likely to add in details that simply weren’t there than if the background is very distinct.

I wonder if this might explain seeing ghosts or aliens in dark rooms (along with my own personal explanation). A vague shape is prime for this effect, and coupled with pareidolia I wonder if this doesn’t very well explain the vast majority of paranormal phenomena.

Texas, c’mon! I mean, really.

According to sources found by Greg Laden, it looks like the Texas Board of Education may get a creationist majority on March 4.

Perfect. Florida barely squeaks by from securing their reputation as a haven for anti-reality goofiness, and so Texas stands ready to pick up the baton.

Any Texans here? Get out the vote! Make sure people like stealth creationist Barney Maddox are relegated to the trashbin of history.

When you look at the constellation of Orion from your area, what do you see?

This?		Or this?

Light pollution — unwanted light that goes up into the sky instead of illuminating the ground — has been steadily degrading our view of the sky for decades. Longer. As a civilization, we are less and less tuned to what’s happening in the sky, and it’s my feeling that this is one reason people fall for doomsday scares and astronomy scams on a regular basis.

We need to educate people about light pollution, and this week, there’s something you can do. The GLOBE at Night program wants people (that means you!) to do a very simple thing: go outside, look at Orion, compare the view to some simple sky charts, and make a report on what you see. The whole thing will take maybe ten minutes of your time, and will help map out light pollution across the planet.

The GLOBE folks are doing this all week, from today, February 25, to March 8. This is the time when the Moon will not interfere with observations. If it’s clear where you are, go out and take a look at Orion!

Last year, they had 8500 observations. This blog has three times that many readers. Let’s see if we can front-load this survey!

Better yet, do this with a kid. Let them look at Orion, test their eyesight, see for themselves what their sky is like. If you are a teacher, make it a class project! It may quite literally open their eyes.

You’ve probably heard the goofy nonsense that the world is supposed to end in December 2012. These predictions are based on ancient Mayan prophecy (and if the ancient Mayans were so good at prophecy, then why didn’t they foretell the collapse of their own civilization?^*) and even worse bases of thinking.

So of course Hollywood is making a movie of it. Variety reports that Roland Emmerich (who made Day After Tomorrow and the equally specious 10,000 BC coming soon) has sold his idea of global apocalypse in 2012 to Sony pictures, which has greenlit the blockbuster.

I’ve been planning to debunk this garbage for a long time, and now I guess I’d better get on it. Enthusiasm for this doomsday-of-the-day will probably start ramping up for real now, and it’s bad enough already.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: what do policemen, doctors, firemen, and debunkers all have in common?

They wish they were out of work. But they never will be.

On Thursday Feb. 28 and Friday Feb. 29 at 19:30 (Mountain time), I will be giving my "Seven Ways a Black Hole Can Kill You" talk at Fiske Planetarium in Boulder, CO. This is my first talk here in my new hometown, so I’m pretty excited! They have details online, and directions to Fiske too.

I actually put this talk together several years ago when I was at Sonoma State University, since we did a lot of work on education using black holes. But I’ve updated it to reflect what I learned writing the black holes chapter of my upcoming book, Death from the Skies.

In honor of this event, I have added a calendar to the blog listing BA events. You can get to it on every page of the blog; it’s listed as "Events" in the upper right just below the BA logo. And yes, I totally stole this from Rebecca when I saw she had done it.

I hope to see you there!