From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Tue Aug 19 2003 - 12:29:46 PDT
----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Plait
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 1:47 AM
To: badastronomy_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: [badastronomy] Bad Astronomy Newsletter Issue #42 (Aug. 18, 2003)
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for Your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark
Printer at Myinks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
http://us.click.yahoo.com/l.m7sD/LIdGAA/qnsNAA/1.XolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
THE BAD ASTRONOMY NEWSLETTER
Issue #42
August 18, 2003
http://www.badastronomy.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/badastronomy
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Bad Astronomy Newsletter #42
Contents:
1) Website moved, email works!
2) Mars won't kill you, but pseudoscience might
3) Trashing Planet X on Tech TV
4) SIRTF, SMART-1 to launch!
5) Subscribe/Unsubscribe info
* * * * * * * * * * * *
1) Website moved, email works!
After many trials and tribulations, I finally moved the Bad Astronomy
website to a new webhost. This went into effect on Friday, August 15.
This move should be transparent to users; you just type in the same
old URL and you get to the new site. By now, the computers which keep
track of addresses should all be updated to the new machine, so most
everyone should see the new site.
My new webhost is Blue Virtual, and they are proving to be very
friendly and helpful. My big thanks to Fraser Cain from The Universe
Today for recommending BV to me!
My email is working, too. So now I am once again getting viagra and
Nigerian oil scam messages. Calloo callay!
Blue Virtual's website is
and Fraser's The Universe Today is
* * * * * * * * * * * *
2) Mars won't kill you, but pseudoscience might
Mars is now getting really bright in the night sky. Pretty much anyone
with the ability and clear skies has seen it, and it only gets easier
as time goes by; it gets brighter until August 27, and rises earlier.
Of course, some people can't leave well enough alone. There is a rumor
spreading on the web that Mars will get as big as the full Moon!
That's silly. That's a relatively harmless rumor, but of course
others are worse. Mars's approach will cause earthquakes, some say.
The power outage in the US northeast was caused by Mars, say others.
Need I say it? Yeah, I guess I do: that's all a load of, um, hooey. I
wrote a page about it at
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/news/index.html
You can see why the other planets don't affect us at
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planets.html
(which was written for the May 5, 2000 "Grand Alignment" of planets,
which goes to show you that nonsense never seems to go out of style).
Also, Rob Roy Britt from space.com wrote about Mars:
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_030818.html
Of course, his article came out after mine. HAHA, Rob! I beat you into
print! And in his article he doesn't even link to my site. Shame on
you, Rob. Before you start wondering what I am doing, maybe I should
mention that Rob is a friend of mine. I just wanted a chance to tease
him in front of a few thousand people. Of course, he gets hundreds of
thousands of readers, so I guess he gets the last laugh.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
3) Trashing Planet X on Tech TV
On Thursday night, I will be on the TechTV program "Unscrewed",
trashing Planet X and the Moon Hoax. The show is a bit more, ah,
informal than the shows I am usually on, so I was able to speak my
mind a couple of times, when usually I am more restrained. It was
very liberating.
The show is very funny, but not meant for the kids! Make sure they are
safely tucked away before watching. Be Ye Fairly Warned.
The show airs at 11:00 p.m. Eastern time, 8:00 p.m. Pacific. It was
taped last week. See here for more (this will give you a pretty good
idea about the show):
http://www.techtv.com/unscrewed
If you're under 18, ask your parents first. If you're over 18, well,
ask anyway. Can't hurt.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
4) SIRTF, SMART-1 to launch!
Two satellites are about to be launched, and they are both *very*
cool.
SIRTF is the Space Infrared Telescope Facility. It is a telescope
with an 85 centimeter wide mirror, designed to observe objects that
emit infrared light. It will observe planets in our own solar system,
look at stars just about to be born, peek into the hearts of dusty
galaxies, and peer deep into the Universe to survey distant galaxies.
It is the last of NASA's Great Observatories (whose stellar components
included Hubble, Chandra, and the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory),
though not the last of amazing astronomical satellites NASA will
launch in the next few years. But SIRTF will bring to infrared
astronomy what Hubble did to optical. I have a personal fascination
with brown dwarfs, objects on the cusp between giant planets and tiny
stars. SIRTF has the capability to detect thousands of these little
guys. That's pretty neat.
SIRTF is scheduled for an August 23rd launch. Check out their great
website for more:
Also due for launch is SMART-1, a European probe bound for the Moon!
Like the NASA probe Deep Space 1 (yes, named after the Star Trek
show), SMART-1 has an ion engine. Instead of a chemical reaction which
pushes a "normal" rocket, SMART-1 uses a powerful magnet to accelerate
electrically charged xenon gas to tremendous speeds. The gas gets
flung out the back, pushing the rocket. It's a gentle push, which the
European Space Agency describes as "the equivalent to the pressure
exerted by a sheet of paper held in the palm of a hand". But it gets
applied for a long time. A chemical rocket burns out in a few
minutes, but the SMART-1 ion drive stays on for weeks and months. It
will take months to reach the Moon, but it will do it more
efficiently than any probe has ever done.
Ion drives are an interesting technology. Even though they accelerate
a probe more slowly, their far longer "burn" time means that higher
velocities can be achieved. Amazingly, an interplanetary probe using
an ion drive could beat out one using a chemical propellant. Both
NASA and the ESA are seriously investigating these drives, as they
should be.
One more cool thing: The whole probe weighs only 367 kilograms!
That's only 800 pounds or so to you Americans. My car weighs more
than four times that much.
You can read more about SMART-1 at
http://www.sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=10
When it gets to the Moon, it will look at our nearest neighbor's
composition, as well as look for ice frozen in deep, dark craters
near the lunar poles. It may give clues about the details of the
Moon's origins as well. Not bad for something smaller than a typical
kitchen refrigerator.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
5) Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information
If, for some weird reason, you want to unsubscribe to this
newsletter, just send email to badastronomy-
unsubscribe_at_yahoogroups.com with no body text. Make sure you send it
from the address to which the newsletter is sent! Alternatively, you
can unsubscribe from the Yahoo!Groups website. Go to
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/groups-32.html
for more info.
Remember, the newsletters are archived on the website at
http://www.badastronomy.com/newsletter/index.html
so even if you unsubscribe you can still read them there. I suggest
staying subscribed so you get them as soon as I send them.
Also, I do *not* sell your email addresses, but I am pretty sure the
evil Yahoo! people, which is why I am moving this newsletter to my
own website eventually. Take a gander at the Yahoo!Groups privacy
message if it makes you feel better, or worse:
http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/
Note that the email addresses *are* visible to me, but I have no
prurient use for them. If that makes you nervous for whatever reason,
feel free to unsubscribe and simply read the archived newsletters at
the website listed above.
**************************
Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
badastro_at_badastronomy.com
http://www.badastronomy.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
badastronomy-unsubscribe_at_yahoogroups.com
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Tue Aug 19 2003 - 12:43:42 PDT