There’s a great article on Science Dailyabout a new photograph taken from the Trifid Nebula with the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope. The photo is pretty breathtaking and well worth taking a moment to appreciate. So take a moment, silly. I’ve included it below in a miniature form, but it’s well worth reading the rest of the article and looking at the larger version of the image. It’s a very good explanation of what makes the Trifid Nebula astronomically interesting, and also of how they took the picture.

Jim

A friend of mine (HI STEVE!) sent me this link today. Well, let me put it in his words:

 Interesting to realize almost every bright spec you see in the night sky is not a star, but actual galaxies compromising of billions of stars. Actually, each spec contains hundreds of billions of stars. wow.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg (be sure to click the “HD” button in the lower right of the video)

Check out this image of the field, you can zoom in yourself. Zoom in to any spec with your mouse scroll wheel, or keyboard +/- keys and give it 10-15 seconds to focus. http://home.exetel.com.au/bmgoau/space/008_1561b2.html

 Wow is right.

This past few weeks I’ve been hard at work with friends organizing the Calgary Beer Core Awards Show. There’s lots of stress and lots of payoff to it, but sometimes it makes the head swirl. That’s how I felt when I got into work today, but seeing this just changed my day completely.

Jim

Holy crap! Somehow, when the mighty demons Rahu and Keta ate the sun last weekend, we made it through! I’m very excited about this. Also, for the record, no world wars occurred. So it looks like the weekend of solar woo was an epic fail. Hardly a shock, I know.

I was just reading this post from the Rogue’s Gallery, and it did a nice job of pointing out some of the other funny woo that was reported.

I get where all this comes from. If you’re some poor and uneducated subsistence farmer (past or present), the idea of the sun turning off would be terrifying. But we know what causes an eclipse. People with even a modicum of education understand that it is simply the fact that the moon’s orbit temporarily blocks the view of the sun. This happens approximately every two years and is perfectly normal.

What slays me is that despite this knowledge, people CONTINUE to think that there are mystical explanations for this perfectly normaland natural occurrence, and that magic and demons can invade the earth because of this eclipse. Please. All this is is a shadow, people. I cast one. You cast one. Dark lords and eerie spells do not live in them.

Someone I know tried to tell me that these things DO have an impact on us. The person works with children and (as with all teachers, child care workers, et al that I know) alleges that they KNOW when it’s a full moon by the behavior of the children. I can’t say what¬†their experience is, I can only say that to the best of my knowledge there has¬†never been any testable, repeatable, valid evidence presented on the subject. That doesn’t mean¬†my friend is¬†wrong, it means I don’t know enough to present arguments to the contrary, but I’m highly dubious.

At any rate,¬†they¬†rationalized all of this by saying¬†that we know gravity¬†affects us. Of course it does. It keeps us sticking to the things beneath us. But the reflection of light from the moon to the earth is not about gravity, is it? I admit I’m no astronomer, but is gravity really any worse during a full moon? or a solar eclipse? And how does the gravitational changes of Saturn moving into Virgo cause us to begin world wars? And at what point does gravity fluctuation equal evil spirits and dark intentions?

Sigh. Some days I can find all of this funny, but today I just find it all sad.

Jim

I just read this, and I gotta say I’m terrified. Very soon, the Hindu demons Rahu and Keta will be eating the sun. They do this. It’s true. And it’s happening very soon! Sure, we thought it was a solar eclipse, but that’s what THEY want you to believe.

This also happens at a time when the astrologers are telling us that Saturn is moving into Virgo, and that every time that happens we have a world war on our hands. HOLY SHIT! I hope Rahu and Keta don’t end up eating Saturn too, who KNOWS what would happen if they entered Virgo!

I absolutely do not do my best to respect the ridiculous faiths of others. I’d like to, and I don’t actively go out to offend anyone, but if you sincerely believe that two demons will soon be swallowing the sun, you’re an idiot. We know what causes a solar eclipse, yet you choose to hide in ridiculousness. That is your choice. I simply see no reason to put up with it.

Recently, a guy in my office was trying to be on my side. He mentioned that the bloody tears of the Virgin Mary were probably caused by some sort of 5th dimensional quantum event. I should not be required to suffer idiots.

I know this may come across as unusually dickish of me. I understand that. I am not a faithiest, the newly coined term for people of a scientific bent who feel the need to accommodate the faithful. I will do my best to not be a jerk about it (though I will no doubt fail), but I simply won’t allow the ridiculous foam-at-the-mouth woo crap to be presented as fact with no argument, solely accepting that people the right to accept whatever cockamamie stories they want to in lieu of any actual thinking.

Seriously, read the article. It’s practically a cold read as the guy tells us such insights as the potential for a growing conflict between Iran and the West. HOLY CRAP! The guy’s a visionary!

I just can’t keep my mouth shut on ignorance of that intensity. But I guess it will be just me by myself shrieking into the gathering darkness when the sun is swallowed and North America is flooded with darkness.

Jim

Yes, it’s true. NASA is going to blow up the moon. They cannot possibly understand the global ramifications of what they are planning, and we’re looking at something a million times worse than a nuclear winter, the tides will all completely cease, and women’s monthly cycles will take years to complete.

Please tell me, loyal readers, that you recognize sarcasm.

I’ve had a bunch of people tell me that they heard that NASA is going to blow up the moon, and they heard it from legit news sources. So naturally, they’re disgusted. I’ve had people ask me what right the Americans have to blow up the moon, I’ve had people ask how they’ll handle the billions of dollars in damages this will no doubt incur, and I’ve had people ask me if NASA has any idea that knocking the moon out of orbit is a bad thing.

I kid you not.

The whole point of this blog is to promote science and reason, and one of the major aspects in my mind is promoting the idea that you have to do the research before you can have an informed opinion. When I heard about this story, it made no sense to me. What possible benefit would NASA realize with such a plan? Rather than coming up with my own ill-informed theories about global domination of Americanism or how this proves that 911 was an inside job, I went to the source.

NASA has a very cool project underway called LCROSS, for Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite. As the mission overview explains, they’re trying to confirm the hypothesis that there is water ice in a permanently shadowed crater near one of the moon’s poles. The plan is to launch a Centaur rocket into the crater and follow it with a bunch of equipment that will collect and relay data about the debris plume.

Will this result in the moon being destroyed? No. In fact, out of curiosity I just did a quick google search and found this answer that says:

What we could do to get some number is compute the amount of energy that would be needed to stop the Moon dead in its tracks around the Earth. If this were to happen, it should theoretically fall and crash into the Earth. The energy needed to stop the Moon is equal to the kinetic energy of the Moon which is given by one half the mass times the velocity times the velocity. Now, the velocity of the Moon is 1022 meter per second. This is roughly equal to the maximum velocity of the SR-71 “Blackbird” spyplane7. Unlike the Blackbird, the Moon has a mass 7.3477?É‚Äî1022 kg. The total energy we need to generate is 3.8e28 J of energy. This is slightly less than 10 trillion megatonnes of TNT8.

And no, that’s not exact. It’s an oversimplification of the problem for sure (admitted by the author in the next paragraph), but it goes to show that we’re not at threat of doing this. Also, please understand that orbits are not static things. The moon was not always there and will not always be there. In fact, it’s not in the same where it was a year ago. So let’s chill out a little bit.

If they can find water ice on the moon, it means a lot of new possibilities for our very necessary next steps in space exploration. The moon could theoretically be a refuelling station, something that could change everything about how we interact with our solar system. This is huge.

That took next to no time to find out. But all those people who asked me those ridiculous questions didn’t go to that effort. This is what I find so frustrating these days. People allow their imaginations to run wild with absolutely no understanding of things. Their paranoia, already whipped into a frenzy by the Zeitgeist people, lashes out whenever they see something they don’t understand.

Of course, I’m preaching to the choir. You’re on this site because you’re interested in science and reason presumably. But the choir’s important too. My parents sing in one at their church and they call it their ministry of music. So maybe we need to steal that thought, choir. Go forth and share the message of rationalism. When your friends come to you with this ridiculous stuff, maybe the answer is that we need to sit them down and show them how we determine what’s real and what’s not.

Jim