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Pan-STARRS solves the biggest problem facing every astronomer (Synopsis)

“If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” -H. James Harrington If you want to observe the night sky, it’s not quite as simple as pointing your telescope and collecting photons. You have to calibrate your data, otherwise your interpretation of what you’re looking at could be skewed by gas, dust, the atmosphere or other intervening factors that you’ve failed to consider. Without a proper calibration, you don’t know how reliable what you’re looking at is. Pan-STARRS1 Observatory…

BBC Gets Climate Change Correction Story Wrong(ish)

I already told you about this. In a BBC/David Attenborough special on Africa, this specific statement was made: That part of the African continent had warmed by 3.5 degrees. This was corrected by Leo Hickman. That datum is invalid. Africa has indeed been affected by climate change, but that specific factoid is incorrect. Now, the BBC is patting itself on the back for correcting the special, but they are doing it wrong. From the BBC Story: The presenter then commented on the additional challenges presented by climate change, adding that parts of Africa now face higher temperatures. However…

The Fate of the Species

Skeptically Speaking's 200th show is coming up soon! But first, there is show #199. But before I mention show #199, I want to remind you of show #198, because I was in it: #198 Nature’s Compass and New Caledonian Crows This week, we’re looking at some of the amazing abilities exhibited by our animal cousins. We’ll speak to James Gould, co-author of Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation, about the varying strategies animals use to find their way across all kinds of distances. And biological anthropologist Greg Laden discusses new research on the surprising reasoning abilities of…

Warning to Apple Product Users Who Use Gmail

Google and Apple, you ruined my daughter's birthday! Well, it wasn't that bad, but it could have been. Anyway, this is a warning to anyone who uses Apple products of any kind and who uses gmail as their main mail. Google has started putting email from Apple directly into the spam folder. On her birthday, I sent Julia an iTunes gift card. She is overseas, and this is something she can use there. It never arrived. I checked my Apple account and apparently it had been sent, but I never received the usual email telling me I had been charged for it. Suddenly, it dawned on me. Google and…

Skeptically Speaking: Don't miss these shows

I hear things are pretty busy in the Upper Upper Midwest of Alberta, Canada, and I suppose because of that, Skeptically Speaking has two off-air productions, one with the podcast just out, the other, this week's show, coming out next week. Both are really interesting to me, and I'm sure to you as well. Here are the details: #169 Play Reality ... we’re looking at the intersection between science and play time. Guest host Julieta Delos Santos talks to Dr. Jayne Gackenbach and Teace Snyder, about their book Play Reality: How Videogames are Changing Everything. And we’ll listen back to “The Petri…

Another edition of “As others see us”

To my surprise, I opened this week's edition of the university newspaper, and there was an article about me (it's near the end, on page 18). It's complimentary, if you think words like "scathing" and "godless" are high compliments, as I do, and it's also good to see what some of the students think. However! Yes, I say, However! Those who know the mild-mannered Myers must surely wonder where the fire comes from in his blog. He is perhaps best summarized as a writer who demands an empiricist understanding of truth, disdains misrepresentation of his views, and insists on a fair shake for…

Americans on Energy: New UT Study

Another poll shows increasing and strong interest among Americans in developing Green Technology and related technologies, as well as reduced interest in anti-environmental extremism and petrolatum-related efforts. Previously, we discussed the new poll by the Science Debate people, and now we have new information from the UT Energy Poll. The results are mixed, but interesting. In order of decreasing preference expressed by a voter to support a candidate for president based on their position, voters like expanded natural gas development1, incentives for renewable tech companies, increased…

Western Browsing Rhino Is No More

This refers to a subspecies of "Black Rhino" also known as the "browsing rhino." The Western Black Rhino of Africa was declared officially extinct Thursday by a leading conservation group. The International Union for Conservation of Nature said that two other subspecies of rhinoceros were close to meeting the same fate. The Northern White Rhino of central Africa is now "possibly extinct" in the wild and the Javan Rhino "probably extinct" in Vietnam, after poachers killed the last animal there in 2010. A small but declining population survives on the Indonesian island of Java. msnbc Black…

The two-step of terrific triviality

John Holbo has devised a wonderfully useful coinage (don't be afraid to follow that link! It's only two paragraphs; he'll have to work it over for a few more weeks to expand it to Holbonian mass) that he applies to Jonah Goldberg's intellectual evasiveness. To put it another way, Goldberg is making a standard rhetorical move which has no accepted name, but which really needs one. I call it 'the two-step of terrific triviality'. Say something that is ambiguous between something so strong it is absurd and so weak that it would be absurd even to mention it. When attacked, hop from foot to foot…

Hey, I'm like a biblical patriarch!

You recall that nice scarlet letter "A" for atheism t-shirt? I like it so much that I've decided to get it tattooed on my forehead. And this is so important to me that I'm also dragging my kids into the tattoo parlor to have it done to them. After all, my beliefs are important and this minor procedure will make my children more attractive, so they shouldn't object — it'll also make it easier to find partners with a similar cultural background. This is a win all around; I really don't understand why Skatje is hiring a lawyer to oppose me. I'm lying (the kids will be relieved). I think everyone…

Parallel Evolution

"Parallel Evolution" is not really a kind of evolution, but rather, an observation we make about the pattern of evolution in particular cases. Many species have a "woodpecker adaptation" by which a hard sharp thing is used to get at grubs and other insect (or non insect) meat hidden beneath bark. Some of the sharp things are beaks, one bird uses a cactus spine, and there is a primate with a special elongated finger for doing this, and most or all "woodpeckers" (bird like or otherwise) have related adaptation allowing them to figure out where to poke through the bark to find their prey. This…

Flex your muscles a little, infidels

I'm seeing some mixed signals on the series "A Brief History of Disbelief" — it's appearing in very few station's schedules right now, and it's tempting to suspect that it's being buried by the media, especially since right wing groups detest it: That "A Brief History of Disbelief" might be controversial is unsurprising. Right-wing groups, such as the Concerned Women of America, are already ramping up opposition to Miller's program, which originally aired on the BBC in 2005. Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council deemed the work of the actor-director-author Miller to be "an evangelistic…

Prions popping up all over the place

Just a few weeks back, I discussed new research showing that prions had been found in urine. Now, a new paper in Nature(Nature summary) shows that the prion protein has been found in the mammary glands of sheep affected with scrapie: The inflamed mammary glands of sheep have been found to contain protein particles that cause scrapie, a sickness similar to mad cow disease. This suggests that the suspect proteins, called prions, may also be present in the milk of infected animals. If prions exist in the milk of cows infected with both an inflammatory illness and mad cow disease, formally…

Good Recent Swedish Popular History

I don't read much in Swedish. On a whim I decided to check what recent Swedish books I've read and liked outside work. Turns out they're all popular history. Alla rekommenderas varmt för den som delar mina intressen! Kring Hammarby sjö. 1. Tiden före Hammarbyleden. Hans Björkman 2016. Local history. No, I'm from Borås. Ola Wong 2005. Eventful family history in China and among German-speaking Romanians, Banater Schwaben. (Yes, the title is in English.) Svenskarna och deras fäder - de senaste 11 000 åren. Bojs & Sjölund 2016. On DNA and the post-glacial peopling of Scandinavia. Det svenska…

October Pieces Of My Mind #1

The New Dawn rose I've been pampering has almost outgrown its trellis. Movie: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Two film-making high school boys befriend a girl just as she is diagnosed with leukaemia. Grade: Pass With Distinction. Heard this ad for contact lenses offering prices that are "up to 70% of what you usually pay". You may want to think that through again, guys. Swedish Racist Party representative makes confused motion to Parliament about removing state subsidies from newspapers that don't actually have those subsidies, capping the percentage of the media that members of a given…

I AM THE CARPENTER!

AHHH!!! 2011-- FreeOK, I give a talk vaccines, including a bit on herd immunity, and why it is important for everyone, including those of us who are not immunocompromised. 2013-- Started a new job! Had a ton of bloodwork done to get baseline readings, just in case I get exposed to another pathogen. 2014-- Go to Africa, need to make sure my vaccines are all up to date. I have two vaccine cards (a lovely 1970s avocado/lemon/lime green, they should probably be in a museum)-- Physician: "*twists face* This one card says you got one MMR, and this card says you got one too, and I think the dates…

Prosecuting faked HIV vaccine results

Remember this? Wait, what? Faked HIV vaccine results The researcher accused of manipulating his reagents to 'show his HIV vaccine strategy worked' admitted he did it: Investigators say former Iowa State University laboratory manager Dong-Pyou Han has confessed to spiking samples of rabbit blood with human antibodies to make an experimental HIV vaccine appear to have great promise. And the government is prosecuting him for it: Responding to a major case of research misconduct, federal prosecutors have taken the rare step of filing charges against a scientist after he admitted falsifying data…

Links for 2011-09-02

How where you live affects the life you prefer. Or not. | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network "How do people value a better life? The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently released the Better Life Index, an interactive graphic that lets you rank 11 different dimensions (income, environment, life satisfaction, etc.) to see how different countries perform, and then "share" your ranking. Since it launched a few months ago, the OECD has been collecting data about what different people who visit the website rank as the most important values to a better…

Links for 2011-08-02

The Virtuosi: Physics in Sports: The Fosbury Flop "Physics has greatly influenced the progress of most sports. There have been continual improvements in equipment for safety or performance as well as improvements in technique. I'd like to talk about some physics in sports over a series of posts. Here I'll talk about a technique improvement in High Jumping, the Fosbury Flop. The Fosbury Flop came into the High Jumping scene in the 1968 Olympics, where Dick Fosbury used the technique to win the gold medal. The biggest difference between the Flop and previous methods is that the jumper goes…

Thursday Fine Art Blogging

Shhh! There's an Artist at work: That's SteelyKid hard at work on something. I think she was writing my name, though it might've been writing Emmy's name. It's a little tough to tell from the photographs. Of course, the real purpose of making art is to be able to discuss it: This led to my new favorite SteelyKid conversation: SteelyKid: That's a car. Kate: Is the car going somewhere? SteelyKid: No. It just stays on the paper. She went on to explain that the car had been inside the marker, but then she took the top off the marker, and put it on the paper, and the car came out. Which is…

Links for 2011-07-08

Evil and Riddles: The Grey King | Tor.com I don't need to re-read this, really I don't. And yet... (tags: books sf review blogs tor nostalgia literature) Cheryl's Mewsings » Blog Archive » Anthologies: Some Data "On Saturday I mentioned that I had been sent some data about gender splits in anthologies. I have since been taking a close look at it and want to present some of the data. I am doing this: Because I think it is better to be talking about lots of data than about individual books; Because I'm a bit tired of being told there's no evidence for gender bias; and Because I think…

Another Reason Why I've Been Preoccupied Lately

Relevant data: Due date in early November, blood tests for Bad Things came back clear, and while we haven't gotten Official Word from the doctor, everything looked fine to the ultrasound tech yesterday. Gender is going to be a surprise, as it was with SteelyKid. We told SteelyKid about it last night, and to the limited degree that she understands, I think she's excited. Last night at bedtime, I mentioned that she would need to give up her pacifier soon so the baby can have it, leading to the following conversation (more or less): SteelyKid: "Mommy has a baby in her tummy, and it's going to…

Links for 2011-05-07

Gary Williams: The greatest craze to hit College Park - The Washington Post "As soon as you first saw Williams, coaching AU from 1978 to 1982, you knew he was destined for great things. Or else, for a padded room. He was crazy. Good crazy. You would grab him for a quote as he strutted off the court, but your hand would slip because everything he wore was sopping wet. In 33 years, he has barely changed except somebody pruned his face and slipped a gray wig on him. The body's rail lean; he's still coaching on his haunches. Or he did until he hung up his straitjacket up for good this week." (…

Finnestorp War Booty Find in Offa

Bengt Nordqvist has published a preliminary account in Offa of his amazing finds from the Finnestorp war booty site. Check it out (in German)! I hope to contribute to the Finnestorp project in some way or another in the future. For more about war booty finds, se an earlier post of mine. Indirectly, Finnestorp has had a decisive influence on my own work for the past five years. Bengt has long been working at the site with the Gothenburg metal detectorists. One day in the early 00s when I was a grad student with an office at the Museum of National Antiquities, Tim Olsson came along to check…

Great Science Fiction Podcast

I've been a devotee of Escape Pod, the weekly science-fiction short-story podcast, for 2.5 years now. Its audience has grown and grown and grown until Escape Pod is now the world's second-largest paying market for sf short fiction regardless of medium. It's second only to Analog! Steve Eley, who runs the thing, is a fixture in my life, the way Oprah wouldn't be even if I watched TV. Now, in a blog entry, Steve's giving the world a look behind the scenes at Escape Artists, Inc. Though you'd never guess it from Escape Pod's solid record of weekly publication, things have been rough for the guy…

Danish Rubber Goat

I'm a big fan of Danish archaeology. In my opinion it is the best in Scandinavia, both regarding the sites they have and what they write about them. This love of Danish archaeology has been a strong incentive for me to learn to read Danish easily, though I still have a very hard time understanding it when spoken. (Rumour has it that Danish babies learn to speak on average several months later than other European ones, simply because it's so hard to discern any words in their parents' fond gurglings.) Swedish and Danish aren't really separate languages in the sense that e.g. French and German…

I'm sure there's a paradox in here somewhere

The Colorado NPR station KUNC recently ran a credulous fluff piece by some guy named Marc Ringel, touting "healing at a distance", some sort of magic handwaving that he claims is "scientifically" supported. The Colorado skeptical community, of course, has expressed their scorn in email to the station, and also brought it to my attention. They also mentioned an excellent website reviewing the evidence for intercessory prayer. The most interesting revelation to me: I've heard of tests of intercessory prayer, where people pray or don't pray for a patient and then the outcomes are evaluated to…

My Year in Blogging

Here's one to send you into the vaults, Dear Reader: following John Lynch's lead, I offer links to the first Aard entry of each month this year, each with its first sentence (disregarding carnival announcements). Jan. "I miss the porn surfers." [link] Feb. "One thing I've never fought about with my ex-wife nor my wife is money." [link] Mar. "My friend Stefan Kayat is a truly original man of many talents." [link] Apr. "Archaeological periods are defined by artefact types." [link] May. "Archaeology consists of a myriad of weakly interconnected regional and temporal sub-disciplines." [link] Jun…

If only we were molluscs, we'd be safe

In a story about large snakes thriving in California, Hank Fox noticed an interesting warning. As for other potential prey, human beings - like rodents, beavers and deer - are mammals, government scientists confirmed. This is obviously why we pay the government scientists the big bucks: to keep hairy bipedal animals with mammary glands informed about their taxonomic status. I'm imagining some blase Californian reading the article which tells them that these pythons eat small mammals, completely unconcerned, until, like a howling siren of alarm, the paper informs them that they happen to be…

Call for Nominations: 2008 Gene S. Stuart Award

A press release for you archaeoheads: An award of $2000 is made to honor outstanding efforts to enhance public understanding of archaeology, in memory of Gene S. Stuart, a writer and managing editor of National Geographic Society books. The Award is given to the most interesting and responsible original story or series about any archaeological topic published in a newspaper or magazine with a circulation of at least 25,000. The award will be presented at the 2008 Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, March 28, 2008. Past winners have included…

Slovak Chamber Grave Perfectly Preserved

Yesterday I met a Slovakian colleague, the amiable Matej Ruttkay of the Institute of Archaeology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences. We had an animated conversation in broken German about 1st Millennium graves and he showed me loads of find pix. Matej's own excavations are absolutely ace, with some really weird Style II metalwork, not actually very far from the Scandinavian prototypes yet clearly of local make. But what blew my mind was the pix and news of the Poprad-Matejovce chamber grave, excavated by Matej's colleagues last summer and not yet widely publicised. It's an extremely well-…

Help Wanted: Adjunct Physics Faculty

We've got calls out to the local grad programs, and I've mentioned this on Twitter a couple of times, but it can't hurt anything to post it here as well: we've got a huge overabundance of first-year engineering students that is forcing us to open extra sections of our intro physics classes to accommodate them. The problem is, we don't have people to teach the new sections. Thus, we are looking for an adjunct to take one section of intro physics or introductory astronomy labs, starting in April and running through mid-June. If you're within convenient distance of Schenectady, NY, and might be…

Cordwood House

Yesterday I joined my friend Dendro-Ãke, his cousin and their charming wives to check out an example of an old exotic building technique near my home. On Skutudden Point near Baggensstäket (an area I keep writing about, it's just full of history) are a number of little 19th century buildings along the shore, and at least one of them is a cordwood house, Sw. kubbhus. This building method enjoyed some popularity in Sweden (and a much greater one in Norway) in the 19th century and until the end of WW1. It's a bit like brick masonry, only you use cordwood instead of bricks and clay daub instead…

My Bird Ring

My son just got back from a happy week on Hallands Väderö, a small island nature reserve off the southwestern coast of Sweden. It reminds me of my own visit there at about his age and the bird ring I found. We were staying in BÃ¥stad on the mainland for a week, and I remember having a lot of fun despite my parents having a number of violent tearful fights. The worst of them got sparked when I complained about how boring my visit to Hallands Väderö had been: my dad was angry with me for complaining, my mom defended me, and soon they were fighting again -- so I thought it was my fault. And…

Tern Island

[More blog entries about sweden, nature, photography; skärgÃ¥rd, foto, stockholm, natur.] Tärnskär ("Tern Island") is a low seal-like grey cliff on the outer margin of the Stockholm archipelago. My buddy Dendro-Ãke only goes there when an eastern wind is blowing, because if your engine dies and there's any other wind, you end up on the other side of the Baltic. The archipelago is a really amazing land/seascape. Imagine a flat gneiss and granite plateau criss-crossed by huge faults and crevices. Now run a few glaciations across it, sanding it down real good, so that everything is…

What's The Financial Crisis Got To Do With Me?

As a scholar working in an abstruse subject I live a life largely divorced from what concerns most people. We have no newspaper subscription. I really don't have much of a clue. But I am aware of the poor state of the world economy. Now, how has it affected me so far? The only effect of the financial crisis on my life that I am aware of is that the mortgage my wife and I took out in December is absurdly cheap. We currently pay less per month to live in a 114 sqm house than we did last year to live in a 80 sqm apartment. In the long run, it seems the crisis will have both good and bad effects…

A trip to the Peloponnese

Last year we went to the the Peloponnese for our summer holidays. This year... we did again. My only excuse for this post is for the bits vaguely related to the pol /econ stuff I've posted. There wasn't much of that visible. Had I not known, I wouldn't have suspected a country in crisis. We took enough cash to cover our bills, and paid everything except the car hire in cash, for which a few of the smaller places seemed restrainedly grateful, but I can't recall anyone asking for cash rather than credit cards. We saw a local office of Golden Dawn (in Gythio) and another one for New Democracy…

"Chopper" responds

Yay, more fallout. Need I say more? Oh go on then: This is a complete fabrication.... I dispute the description “abuse”, and suggest “use” as replacement... Prof Wadhams is apparently not content with people commenting on, or indeed even reporting, his work... This is ridiculous... This is an attempt to spuriously link the complaint to the Royal Society... If anything, my action demonstrates that bullying behaviour by senior academics can at some level be successful... That last one, correctly, says that this isn't just a matter of fun for the peanut gallery; its more serious than that. Note…

As the days of my life are but grains of sand

Paul links to What Can We Learn About Human Psychology from Christian Apologetics? The article itself is an exercise in proving itself right: the only people reading it will be those who disagree with Christian Apologetics. But I digress; the point I was trying to make was the connection with "the GW debate" and perhaps Sou's Talking to contrarians. Why do you do it? Or why not? Most people are talking past each other, or in many places (perhaps canonically WUWT) deliberately going to places where they can be sure they won't be disturbed by contrary opinions: either because they won't meet…

Intro to ERVs: Envy my env

This next installment of 'Intro to ERVs' is about the coolest protein on the planet*, Env. Weve got all the enzymes protected in their nice little core-- but retroviruses are enveloped viruses. Theyre coated in the membranes of the cells they budded off of. Thats where env comes in! env codes for the protein that sticks out of the lipid membrane. It is responsible for binding to new host cells and mediating fusion between the viral membrane, and the target cell membrane. To use HIV-1 as an example, the envelope gene codes for a 'precursor protein', glycoprotein160 (gp160). Its called a '…

That prayer boondoggle

The best analysis of American Heart Journal prayer study that I've seen yet is over at Rhosgobel. It uses solid methodology, and its results are clear: prayer didn't help, and might even have hurt. I've read the paper. It was hard. Every time I saw the word "prayer" on the page (and it's used like several times per paragraph), my eyes would cross and I'd giggle, and then I'd get cranky because millions of dollars were wasted on this stupid, if well done, study. There was absolutely no justification given for this work, other than "Many patients report using private or family prayer to cope…

The Bottleneck Years by H.E.Taylor - Chapter 56

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 55 Table of Contents Chapter 57 Chapter 56 Petrov, October 19, 2057 The Daedalus reached Petrov in late September. On the internet a coterie of space enthusiasts and the climate concerned had followed their reports religiously, but until then there was little coverage in the corporate media. For twenty-four hours they were media stars again. The trip had been uneventful, which in the tech-besotted, bloodless language of the space agencies and corporations meant there were no major accidents and nobody died. The asteroid was less than a…

Live-Blog Event: The Astonishing Simplicity Of Everything (Synopsis)

“My main interest is the problem of the singularity. If we can’t understand what happened at the singularity we came out of, then we don’t seem to have any understanding of the laws of particle physics.” -Neil Turok The birth of space and time is perhaps the most fundamental question in all of physics, and may be the ultimate key to understanding where "all of this" comes from, including matter, radiation, the laws of nature, the forces, and all of reality. Of course, it might not even have the answer we expect, as space and time themselves may turn out to be eternal, or dynamical, changing…

Weekend Wonder: Keep The Universe Going! (Synopsis)

“The universe is big, its vast and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. And that’s the theory. 900 years, never seen one yet, but this would do me.” -Steven Moffat They say that the best things in life are free, and I'm a firm believer in that. In fact, that's part of the reason I think the stories I'm always telling -- about the Universe, how it is, how we know it, and how it came to be -- should be free as well. But I'm not going to lie: in terms of effort, time, energy, and (for my contributors) money, telling…

Everybody Wants to Rule the Quantum World (Synopsis)

The biggest, most surprising revolution that came along with the development of quantum theory, quantum mechanics and later, quantum field theory, was the overthrowing of the idea of a deterministic Universe, replacing it with a Universe where only a probability distribution of outcomes could be theoretically known, even if you knew all the initial conditions of a system. Image credit: Institute of Physics (IOP), via http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/apr/16/alice-and-bob-comm…. But one of the most intriguing concepts to come along with this was borne out through Niels Bohr's…

Weekend Diversion: the Moon as no one’s seen it (Synopsis)

“When I look at the moon I do not see a hostile, empty world. I see the radiant body where man has taken his first steps into a frontier that will never end.” -David Scott, Commander, Apollo 15 The Moon is perhaps the oldest sight known to humans and our animal ancestors here on Earth, with its features mostly unchanged for billions of years. Have a listen to Camera Obscura sing their soothing song, Lunar Sea, while you consider that for nearly all of human history, we were only able to see just barely over 50% of the Moon. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Tomruen, viahttp://en.…

Weekend Diversion: The Forest Man of India (Synopsis)

“The trees are man’s best friends; but man has treated them as his worst enemies. The history of our race may be said to be the history of warfare upon the tree world. But while man has seemed to be the victor, his victories have brought upon him inevitable disasters.” -Nathaniel Egleston When things you've grown to love leave your world, whether they leave of their own volition or they're taken from you, it can be agonizing. Have a listen to Damien Rice’s song, The Animals Were Gone, while you consider the following. Imagine that you live along a great, rushing river, with a huge sandbar…

Throwback Thursday: The Foolish Fallacy of Cold Fusion (Synopsis)

“Between cold fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. …because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here.” -David Goodstein So, you want to reach the fabled "breakeven" point when it comes to nuclear…

Messier Monday: The Omega Nebula, M17 (Synopsis)

“For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.” -John F. Kennedy If you went back in time to the birth of the Sun and the Solar System, what would you see? You wouldn't simply have a protostar with a gas-and-dust filled nebula around it, with the seeds of what would become our planets. Sure, they would be there, but they'd be immersed in a giant molecular gas cloud with hundreds-to-thousands of stars just like ours, as well as some that were far more…

Ask Ethan #51: Is Astrology A Science? (Synopsis)

“When I was ten all I knew was that I hated the weird words used to describe whatever it was that was wrong with my brother — to this day I think it all happened because he was overtaken by evil spirits that got loose in that haunted house ride at the carnival that summer. It’s easier for me to make sense of it that way than it is for me to face the other way — reality.”  -Tim Cummings It's one of the oldest and most alluring ideas to all of humanity: the notion that what happens in heavens affects what happens on Earth. Image credit: Regina Valkenborgh, via NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the…