Blogs / Bad Astronomy

One thing that bugs me is the appropriation of scientific words by people who twist them for their own ends. One that really gets me is "natural", as in, "This product is all natural!". They imply that means it’s good for you, somehow, but I counter that arsenic is an element. You can’t get more natural than that!

Another is the word "chemical". People use it like it’s bad. Chemicals kill! We associate them with toxic and noxious substances, cleansers, nasty things added to our food that makes us sick.

But the word means nothing of the sort. Water is a chemical. So is the air we breathe (the components are, at least, including diatomic oxygen and nitrogen).

It’s time to take the word back! Neville Reed, a director of Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry, has said he would happily give one million pounds to anyone who can produce a substance that is 100% chemical-free.

This is impossible, of course, and he said it to publicize misleading advertising like I pointed out above. He got fed up when the advertising standards in the UK defended a ridiculous ad saying Miracle Gro, a chemical fertilizer, was “100 per cent chemical-free”.

That would mean it’s not made of matter. Of course, the company says there is a colloquial meaning to the word "chemical", which is true, but they’re being weasels. Obviously there are chemicals in the fertilizer, even by the traditional or colloquial sense (Apple recently said something similar: don’t believe what we say in our ads).

I think the RSC should make this offer official. Of course, they’d be flooded with nonsense and woo-woo; people claiming they have bottled Dark Energy or the ether or some other phlogiston. That’s inevitable.

But it would also raise peoples’ awareness that the advertising industry dupes them constantly. I’d love to see more folks understanding this. It’s not just products like fertilizer either: it’s political ads, public service announcements, the news, and pretty much everything else you can see on TV or read in a magazine. Even some blogs indulge in misleading statements to sway people — OMG!

A little skepticism goes a long way. And that is guaranteed 100% chemical free.

Roger Ebert is best known as a movie critic on TV, but he has been writing movie reviews for far longer. I’ve read a great number of his columns and his writing is in general excellent, with an obvious and profound depth of understanding of movies.

Ebert has a fierce intellect backing up his writing, and that is on display very well in his review of the execrable "eXpelled: No Intelligence Allowed", the creationist "documentary" that is so chock full of lies that the creators’ pants will be on fire for centuries. Ben Stein was the host of this steaming pile of celluloid, and Ebert aims his keyboard directly at him.

Ebert’s review is dead on target, and I recommend reading it. "eXpelled" was a major flop and will most likely sink beneath the waves of history, but don’t think for a moment that the people out there trying to promote creationism won’t use the same slimy tactics again and again. Being aware of them is half the battle.

… in this case, death from it. Carolyn Collins Petersen is the aforementioned Space Writer, BABlog commenter, planetarium show creator, and also a friend. I’m sure that last bit in no way influenced her review of my book, which is stunningly accurate in its portrayal of my book being really good.

C²P, your check is in the mail.

Also, there is a review on The Melbury Gentlemen’s Club site. It’s a polite review, fitting for "a blog of manners". The previous post is a guide to cigars, which personally interests me as well. Hey, if the world’s gonna end, then a nice cigar is probably your best bet.

Note to my readers: This is also cross-posted on The SkepticBlog, the blog of The Skeptologists.

I want to indulge myself for a moment and follow up on what Ryan wrote about our shoot at Mt. Wilson.

When we shot The Skeptologists, I had never been to Mt. Wilson before. I’ve been to a few observatories, including some small ones affiliated with Universities, Mt. Stromlo in Australia, and the IAC facilities on La Palma in the Canary Islands.

These are all fantastic places to visit, but they’re relatively new. Mt. Wilson has been around for a long, long time, and even better, we filmed in the dome of the Hooker 100″ telescope. When I found that out, I was ecstatic! This was the very telescope used by Edwin Hubble when he was investigating the nature of what they used to call simply "nebulae", what we now call galaxies.

When we got there, I was not disappointed. The ’scope is magnificent! I love the brute force steelworks of it, the criss-crossing braces, the sky-blue paint. The control board was very retro (duh), and had an almost steampunk feel to it.

But the best part was when we went down into the pit, the bottom of the dome where we could stand under the magnificent ’scope. I was peering around, and when I was underneath it I happened to look up. My eyes caught a flash of green, and I realized I was seeing the 100″ mirror itself. It was supported by a maze of steel, but gaps in the bracing and random bits of machinery and metal left a clear view of the glass.

I had an odd moment, thinking of the photons that hit that glass a century ago. They had traveled millions of light years through space before being reflected by that mirror. The galaxies observed by Hubble had emitted countless fleets of them, more photons than there are stars in the sky. The vast majority flew off into open space, and still ply their way between galaxies. But a tiny fraction of those made it to Earth. Some were absorbed by our atmosphere, and some few of those were aimed right down the telescope’s gullet. A fraction of those were absorbed by the mirror itself as well as the other mirrors used by the telescope to focus the light.

Out of the countless octillions of photons that started their journey, only a few made it into Hubble’s detectors. And from those scant particles of light, he and his fellow astronomer (Slipher, Hale, and others) discovered the Universe itself is expanding.

I stood there thinking of all that, and I couldn’t help it. I reached up and touched the back of the mirror. I laughed at myself a little; a skeptic connecting with a chunk of glass. I didn’t feel any vibrations, no sense of Hubble’s energy, no rapport with the history.

And yet… we’re still apes, we humans. We can see something, hear it, taste it; but it’s our fingers that relay so much of the sense of what’s around us. Nothing New Agey or superstitious, just a simian need to fulfill the part of the brain that desires the tactile sensation of connection.

But still. Touching that glass put me there. That part of my brain firing up gave me the extra dimension of sense, the understanding, the knowing, and (yes) the feeling the history of the place. And there is history at Mt. Wilson; our grand explorations of the cosmos took a major leap there. When I reached out my hand, that’s what I was experiencing, if only vicariously.

I remember it better now than I would have otherwise. I can still picture it all, can remember how it felt, and my sense of awe remains unabated.

It was, simply, cool.

And even a skeptic responds to that.

Make of that post title what you will, but it’ll make sense once you watch this promo for the Christmas programming on BBC:

Cool. Looks like they’ve made a Christmas special I’ll be happy to see! I was not thrilled with the last one (the Space Titanic? Srsly?) but I do like the Cybermen. More Doctor Who soon! More running! Yay!

Tip o’ the sonic screwdriver to io9.

The California Literary Review asked me to answer some questions pertaining to Chapter 1 of my book, Death from the Skies!, where I talk about asteroid impacts. They’ve posted my replies on their site.

This is such a broad and interesting topic, and it’s really hard to boil down the important stuff to just a few dozen words. I tend to be a bit, um, wordy, so sometimes I have a hard time saying my name in a few dozen words, but I hope that the Q&A gives you a sense of what’s going on.

The wonderful ladies at Skepchick have posted their holiday gift-giving guide. It’s a podcast, and has lots of good suggestions for you. Of course, books make fine gifts as well.