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Posted by: As old as Voyager Jan 8 2007, 07:15 PM

I have just watched the BBC's report on the newly created 3D map of dark matter using Hubble data; and it made my heart sink.

I applaud the BBC for giving airtime to such discoveries, but for such a respected organisation their research was awful.

It's no wonder the vast majority of people are either bewildered or disinterested the the universe as a whole when the facts they are given are completely wrong.

It's a shame that tonight 60 million or so people in the UK and many other people around the world were told Hubble shone a beam of light out into the depths of the universe and studied how it was bent by the gravity of dark matter billions of light years away!

And this was a report from the BBCs science correspondant!

I remain downhearted that perhaps the most important story of the week was reported in such a shoddy manner.

Does anyone else feel space is being let down by TV coverage?

Posted by: Ames Jan 8 2007, 09:09 PM

Yes I do! Don't get me started...

Only programs worth watching are the xmas lectures and The Sky at Night - just caught up with the 650th edition - Fab!

Nick

Posted by: Sunspot Jan 8 2007, 10:37 PM

I saw that report too, without a doubt the worst piece of journalism i've ever seen. Also, I think he said Hubble "fired a beam of light" LOL

Posted by: Stu Jan 8 2007, 10:51 PM

Absolutely appalling and - after yesterday's insulting scheduling of the 650th edition of THE SKY AT NIGHT at 01.55, another sign of BBC TV's disgraceful "dumbing down" of its science content. I was in another room so only heard the "fired a beam of light" line in the background, and was sure I'd misheard, but had it confirmed at my astronomical society's meeting tonight.

COME ON!!!! It's not rocket science... well okay, it is, kind of... but any 9 yr old space mad kid knows that Hubble COLLECTS light, not fires it out of its end like some ***** James Bond villain's laser cannon.

I'm literally baffled how a so-called "science correspondent" could get the story so totally wrong. But then again, this is the same broadcasting company that had Jonathan Cainer on a HORIZON talking about Pluto - the same Jonathan Cainer who wrote in his column today about how Comet McNaught is "a portent" and WILL shine "brighter than anything you've ever seen in the sky before..."

Unbelievable.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 8 2007, 11:10 PM

The thing that worries me is that there must be many things reported by the media which I might accept, but which are just as badly mangled as those subjects about which I know something. Whether through sheer laziness, inertia, or their own agendas, I don't even trust the 'quality' media any more. I used to work for a TV and newspaper group, and I have to say that my illusions were shattered very early on.

Oh, and in case anyone is interested, HRH The Queen Mother *was* a reptiloid alien. Well, I can certainly attest to the fact that the picture desk guys always had to paint her teeth a different colour before publication - they really were quite, er, green...

One of the joys of the WWW is that at least we have somewhere like UMSF; as for the general space policy issues, well...


Bob Shaw

Posted by: Sunspot Jan 8 2007, 11:49 PM

Quite a contrast the BBC online News report about it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6235751.stm

The problem is News networks employ a "science correspondent".... who must cover every aspect of science, which is impossible to do properly. And clearly this one knew absolutely nothing about astronomy/space science.

Posted by: ynyralmaen Jan 9 2007, 12:01 AM

I just viewed the report myself. A link is at the top right of this page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6235751.stm

Incredible. If it was a live broadcast, then I'd have put it down to a slip-up... but an edited piece which surely must have been reviewed when it was written and put together... Argh!

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 9 2007, 01:39 AM

I feel the same way. And not just because of space exploration. Whenever I see a local story covered that involves events I witnessed, or, occasionally, when things I have been involved in have been on the news, it is shocking how wrong reporters get it. I have reached a point in which I don't accept information from television news until I have verified it elsewhere.

The problem, I feel, comes from the fact that news reporters are, by and large, communications majors. In other words, they have been taught how to put together a story that will draw in readers, but they may have no background (and often don't) in the subject they are talking about.

I realized how pathetic the media situation in America has gotten while speaking to a friend of mine, who works for our local NBC affiliate.. She is trained in meteorology, as well as communications. Here in the Knoxville, Tennessee area, we live in a valley, between the Cumberland Plateau and the Smoky Mountains. She was trying to explain why we have had warmer air here in Knoxville than these two regions. She nearly lost her job for using the words "topography" and "altitude." According to NBC management, this was "too sophisticated" for ordinary viewers. This left me speechless.

Posted by: nprev Jan 9 2007, 01:48 AM

Wow. I have to say that as an American I'm probably even more appalled when hearing this. The BBC is considered the gold standard of English-language broadcast journalism by many of us (we're pretty accustomed to extreme scientific ignorance in our own media ) Well, there goes another fond illusion...

Posted by: climber Jan 9 2007, 02:21 AM

We've got the same feeling in France too and I stongly back Bob and Ted when they say that, as I see how bad they report on what I know, it has to be the same for all subjects.
I just finish "Moondust" which is about how the Moonwalkers "felt down" to Earth and all the meaning of the Apollo program (highly recommendable). To give an exemple of how bad the general puublic understand "space" there is an exemple of somebody telling Denis Tito after he completed his flight to the ISS : so, you went to the Moon?!!!
I can hardly stand such ignorence.
I'll never thank Doug enough to have created UMSF.

Posted by: Tesheiner Jan 9 2007, 09:48 AM

Same here, and I'm pretty much convinced it's worldwide and not limited to TV but general media (read newspapers). When I do the every morning scan thru my bookmarks, I always start by UMSF and space related stuff and finish with the local spanish newspapers. Their coverage of space news is simply s*** and I have the feeling that in case I was on the medical business, for instance, I would say the same about med news coverage.

Posted by: ugordan Jan 9 2007, 10:07 AM

Hehe Bob. You sound just like http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2360&view=findpost&p=44268. I don't think there's anything we can do about it, however. Realistically, we are the minority here...

Posted by: 4th rock from the sun Jan 9 2007, 10:30 AM

It's not just the news that are incorrect and dumbed down. You see it everyday business. I work as a web designer and with most clients it is difficult to explain some concepts... like server space! It's like someone buying a car and not wanting to know that it as a tank.
I think that this type of thinking is one of the root problems in todays world. Although we live in a technological society were knowledge means power, most people prefer to know as little as possible... Media just adapts to the market :-(

Posted by: TheChemist Jan 9 2007, 12:59 PM

My latest Sunday newspaper included as a gift a Discovery channel VCD documentary about colonizing Mars (of all things !).
Although it was supposed to be © 2005, I soon realized it was much much older, since it talked about plans to send Pathfinder to Mars !
It also mentioned that Cassini would reach Saturn at 2014, and how wonderful it would be that we would have something landing on Titan at the time

(This is as far as I was able to watch, at this point my wife suggested that I should either stop yelling or stop watching )

This was a documentary that reached about 100,000 homes last Sunday

Posted by: ngunn Jan 9 2007, 01:32 PM

Yes I saw that ridiculous dark matter report on BBC news as well. Has anybody contacted the BBC about it? I've noticed this kind of thing before when they make a brave effort to report a breaking scientific news story. Thery're usually much better when they've had time to digest the information and produce a properly researched documentary. It seems to be within the news team itself that the necessary science background is decidedly patchy. I wonder if anyone in news management actually comprehends how bad the howlers sometimes are?

Posted by: Stu Jan 9 2007, 03:50 PM

Yep. I sent in a complaint last night. No reply yet.

I know, I'm amazed too.

Posted by: ngunn Jan 9 2007, 04:31 PM

Well done. Too many of us (like me) just grumble silently.

Posted by: ynyralmaen Jan 9 2007, 04:42 PM

Considering the reporter's academic background, I'm extremely surprised that this particular howler was broadcast.

Posted by: ollopa Jan 9 2007, 04:42 PM

They've pulled it.

However............

............to enjoy this gem again, simply paste the following into your browser and it should open in Windows Media Player. Quick - while stocks last!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/news/video/73000/nb/73046_16x9_nb.asx



(Poor Andy Coates - NOT his fault, of course!)

Posted by: Sunspot Jan 9 2007, 05:33 PM

The weird thing is, they must have deliberately played the animation of Hubble observing the universe in reverse. It shows Hubble "firing it's beam of light" lol When in fact the light should be shown entering the telescope.

Posted by: nprev Jan 10 2007, 03:49 AM

...wow. Thanks for the clip, ollopa; now I fully understand the outrage.

My hypothesis: The unfortunate correspondent confused Hubble with the "Doomsday Machine" in the original Star Trek:

http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:Doomsday_Machine_2.jpg

Posted by: AndyG Jan 10 2007, 08:55 AM

Thanks, Ollopa, for posting the link.

I didn't see it live, and was trying to put off watching it until I'd summed up the courage: but now I see that it's one of those things - like moments in Fawlty Towers - which are just so embarassingly awful that I cringed while seeing it. Toe-curling, "please make it stop" comedy.

I rather hope there's been a dreadful misinterpretation of a more technical press release: perhaps with a title something like "Hubble shines light on the Universe's dark matter".

But flip. That's awful.

E- ...And I'm being generous.

Andy

Posted by: Stu Jan 10 2007, 09:12 AM

No, that's not going to wash. The guy was a "science correspondent", he gets paid for reporting science news stories. The story didn't break at five to 6, it was all over the net 24hrs earlier, so all he had to do was go online and read the info while having a cup of coffee. During the afternoon I put together a 30 slide Powerpoint presentation on the item for my astro society meeting that night, with consideably less resources than the BBC has.

Hubble has been up there since (gulp!) 1991, and there can't be many people who don't know that it takes pretty pictures, so is a CAMERA, and cameras COLLECT light, they don't shoot it out of their lenses.

This was lazy, poor and frankly stupid reporting, and it shouldn't be just dismissed as silly. The BBC is publicly funded over here through the licence fee, we have no choice - unless we want to sample prison food - but to pay the annual fee, even if we don't particularly want to watch so-called celebrities poncing around ballroom floors in acres of swishing taffeta, or standing beside has-been singers murdering our favourite songs, or sit through humour-free episodes of "My Family" or other shows. Every year the Beeb takes over £100 from me, and although I can't say it's not worth it - I get to listen to 5 Live while I sit here writing, and get to see The Sky At Dawn, and Spooks - it's episodes like this that make me genuinely angry.

I'm giving a talk to a Women's Institute meeting tonight in a tiny village hall in the wilds of Cumbria. There'll be maybe 10 people there, plus as many bourbons as I can eat and as much tea as I can drink. It's people like that who rely on the BBC and other broadcasters to inform them accurately. They were told that a telescope shot a beam of light out to the edge of the universe. Some will have believed it, because, well, come on, it was on the BBC News... I'll have to set them straight tonight, when they ask about it, as they surely will. I don't mind, but I shouldn't have to set them straight because it's not my job to, it's the science correspondent's job.

God help us when we finally find life on Mars, or receive a SETI signal.

Posted by: karolp Jan 10 2007, 12:56 PM

Hello everyone,

I must admit that I stopped wathching ANY tv about 5 years ago. But a year ago I was still downloading the Polish headline news off the internet as an *.asf file. And in January '06 they told the 40 M people here in their prime time edition that the Stardust spacecraft sampled the comet by firing a probe towards it. And the name of the probe was... Deep Impact. How about that?

And similarly to the BBC, the ONLINE reports issued the same day were well researched and NOT inaccurate. I guess the "internet" people tend to have a better background in sci tech than the "screen" people they employ.

And by the way, to cheer up a bit - presenting sci tech on tv also has some positive aspects to it. I noticed that Polish TV resumed airing reruns of a 1980s French-made science cartoon series. I was wondering whether our members from France could recognise it by the appearance of the depicted character:

http://ww6.tvp.pl/1939,20070105441894.strona

There was also another series about biology and about space science (the latter featured a flying character named Ordie or something close to that).

Best regards from Poland,

Karol P.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jan 10 2007, 04:00 PM

This one has always been one of my favorites:

Posted by: dvandorn Jan 10 2007, 05:52 PM

Yow!!!!! No wonder she broke up... I'm pretty certain that the airframe was never rated for exceeding C!

-the other Doug

Posted by: ynyralmaen Jan 10 2007, 07:37 PM

My favourite was in print, not on the telly...

The Times a couple of years back had a report on an exoplanet I think around 10 times as massive as Jupiter. It was accompanied by the Times's own diagram, showing three disks of vastly different sizes, "to scale", to demonstrate to the reader that the exoplanet's diameter was 10 times that of Jupiter, and around 100 times that of Earth.

Maybe they had a flat-Earther in their graphics dept.

Posted by: nprev Jan 11 2007, 04:05 AM

[rant mode]

You know, I'm still after all these years trying frantically to figure out why truly momentous events & sights like the journeys of the MERs, Cassini, the Hubble Deep Fields, etc., etc, just can't compete in the public's eye with the latest breathless update on Brangelina.

I've been blaming this on poor PR on the part of the space community, but clearly it's much more fundamental than that, and apparently global to boot. It's very easy to blame substandard science education, but again that begs the question: who really enjoyed the regimen of school for its own sake in any subject? Bottom line is what really guides whatever evolves into people's interests, and therefore attention to accuracy, demand, funding...?

It's paradoxical and quite bitterly ironic that fictional, usually puerile 'spaceoperas' flourish commercially while actual space research activities draw minimal media attention, most of which is inaccurate and/or equally puerile when reported at all (at least in the United States). The public's interest in space seems to be there, but tragically disconnected from reality...how to connect these vital dots????

[/rant mode]

Posted by: mchan Jan 11 2007, 07:04 AM

No, he wouldn't. Any correspondent would know that the Doomsday Machine fires an anti-proton beam, not a beam of light. Then again maybe he would if he though protons and photons are the same.

Posted by: edstrick Jan 11 2007, 12:29 PM

".... just can't compete in the public's eye with the latest breathless update on Brangelina. "

Find and read Cyril Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" <classic sf short story or novellete from the 50's> and realize he made a simple numerical mistake. He put the story 300 years in the future and it was only 30.

Posted by: Ames Jan 11 2007, 01:10 PM

"Comet McNaught is passing close to the Sun, whose gravity pulls material off, giving it a big and visible 'debris field'"



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6251663.stm

Posted by: MahFL Jan 11 2007, 03:05 PM

I just read that also and was going to post it. Another pearler eh ?

Posted by: Jeff7 Jan 12 2007, 01:00 AM

Nice.

Another favorite was the article that talked about dust on the Mars Rovers, but how the designers planned for this, and attached small fans to the top of the deck to keep the solar panels clean.

Posted by: mchan Jan 12 2007, 04:19 AM

That caption has now been edited.

Posted by: nprev Jan 12 2007, 04:42 AM

Mchan: Sadly, I think that most of these guys think that photons and (if they know of them at all) antiprotons are tangible objects about the size of a tennis ball, color-coded for easy identification and only found in mysterious labs located in European castles on cliffs surrounded by continuous thunderstorms and populated by clinically insane, cackling near-sighted old men with tangled long white hair. (If I missed a stereotype here, please feel free to fill it in! )

Ed: Thanks for the tip; heard of the story, now have to read it. A fav of mine is Pohl's The Space Merchants...looks like it's almost in the same vein.

[EDIT]: Just had a weird thought, and please forgive me if it's OT. What if UMSF PIs & astronauts commanded huge salaries & led lavish lifestyles? Do you think that public attention to space would increase to the same level as "entertainment"?

This may sound facetious, but it's not. Operational analysis of systems sometimes points to very odd-seeming solutions. This conjecture is purely intuitive, but let's fantasize for a moment that fame & fortune are very visible rewards of scientific excellence; would public attention be refocused thereby? [/EDIT]

Posted by: djellison Jan 12 2007, 08:44 AM

Damn right it has - should have seen the email I sent

Doug

Posted by: edstrick Jan 12 2007, 11:19 AM

"...A fav of mine is Pohl's The Space Merchants...."
I think that's a collab between Pohl and Kornbluth. Many years later, (90's?), Pohl did a sequel by himself. Kornbluth, as I recall, died of malignant hypertension induced heart attack or stroke. The hypertension was supposedly post WW-2 stress related or something. A great loss to the field. (I may be confusing this with Henry Kuttner, who also died young in the 50's)

Posted by: Stu Jan 12 2007, 11:28 AM

They replied to my complaint re the now infamous "Hubble shooting a beam of light" report...

Dear Mr Atkinson

Thank you for your e-mail regarding the 'Six O'clock News' broadcast ton 08 January 2007.

I understand you found a factual error in the programme regarding the Hubble Space Telescope. Let me assure you that we aim to keep all of our reports factually accurate on all occasions, however it is inevitable that some mistakes may occur on occasion; obviously we aim to keep this as minimal as possible. We always aim for the highest standards in reporting.

Nevertheless, please be assured I have registered your comments regarding this issue and have made them available to the 'Six O'clock News' production team and the senior BBC management. Feedback of this nature helps us when making decisions about future BBC programmes and your comment will play a part in this process.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact the BBC.

Regards

Adam Sims
BBC Information

Not good enough, just a fob off letter. I'm taking it further, particularly in light of yesterday's comet caption (well done Doug!)

Posted by: djellison Jan 12 2007, 11:58 AM

A total fob-off.

The problem isn't that they reported things totally factually incorrectly - the problem is that such a thing is able to happen when the facts are all set out ready to understand on multiple web-pages.

I've written to correct perhaps a dozen science stories over the past couple of years - all things that 10 seconds with google show to be wrong, but still they - the BBC - one of the most highly regarded organisation in the entire industiry - get badly wrong.


Doug

Posted by: MahFL Jan 12 2007, 12:12 PM

Another one from Yahoo's slideshow....

"The McNaught Comet streaks across the evening sky over Devil's Head mountain......"

Posted by: ngunn Jan 12 2007, 12:30 PM

Now that was indeed naughty, if true - but I could have sworn McNaught was quite decently attired in a long flowing gown . . . .

Posted by: edstrick Jan 12 2007, 01:41 PM

This "Streaker" is clad only in long flowing hair, like Lady Godiva.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 12 2007, 06:33 PM

Rubbish!

I've had a haircut, ooh, not six months ago!

Ygor did it, and very stylish it was, too - the extra fingers help with the scissors.

Bob Shaw

Posted by: nprev Jan 12 2007, 07:27 PM

...yeah, I'm convinced that Franky lacked the fine manual dexterity required for the job!

You know, that sure is part of the problem, though: the public fears science, in whatever form, and the media knows this & tries to make it warm and fuzzy, never placing any burden on the audience to think. Fear usually does result from (and I do not use the word pejoratively) ignorance.

Sigh...I was going to write "how do we make people less afraid of science?", but that's definitely not a morally appropriate way to frame the problem. Maybe the question is how do we make science as interesting to the general public as the latest antics of Donald Trump & Rosie O'Donnell? (Surely some of the dogfights that inevitably occur during project development could at least compete with that! )

EDIT: Got it!!! How about a reality TV series called "The Mission"? Premise here is to follow the late developmental stages of a medium-class project (say Mars 2011?) all the way until launch, complete with headaches, squabbles, joy, and triumph. If done correctly, this would be truly compelling viewing and thereby a huge boon for UMSF.

Posted by: Steffen Jan 19 2007, 12:29 PM

Newspapers even get the basics wrong, adding the wrong spacecraft photo to an article etc...

Posted by: djellison Jan 19 2007, 12:35 PM

Well - technically the NOVA 'Mars Rocks' and 'Welcome to Mars' programs kind of did that - An anxious Steve watching one of the Mini-TES getting shock tested etc.

Doug

Posted by: climber Jan 19 2007, 12:38 PM

Yep, and that's why I recognized Adam and the gang the other day in LA
May be I'll be in the MSL's

Posted by: PhilCo126 Jan 23 2007, 12:29 PM

Not Astronomy, but spaceflight this time ...
On 23rd January, a Belgian newspaper published 2 full pages on the upcoming Moon program and that China will beat the USA to the Moon by 2024... while Japan & India will just start with unmanned probes in 2009.
Moreover, even the UK will start a separate program " Moonlight " to start exploring the Moon by 2010...
And the Moon should be point of departure for a Mars mission ...
Top of the bill, the article stated that it was possible to buy real estate via crazyshop website and that Israeli's were buying it all ...
Seriously...

Posted by: Tesheiner Jan 31 2007, 04:02 PM

A local newspaper published this monday an article about Corot's "first light".
The "bad astronomy" in this case was due to an incorrect (imo) translation of "Corot sees first light" into something like "Corot detects the first light of the stars".

Posted by: djellison Feb 9 2007, 01:19 PM

You would expect space daily to do better than put a picture of THEMIS the INSTRUMENT (in space aboard Mars Odyssey since '01).... On a page about THEMIS the MISSION ( 5 spacecraft launching this month to study Solar interaction with the earth )

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/THEMIS_Launching_Aboard_Delta_II_On_Feb_15_999.html

Posted by: ngunn Feb 9 2007, 01:38 PM

Yes you would, but...

Hands up anyone (other than Doug and Emily) who doesn't find all these acronyms confusing? They fail completely in their purpose as names because they are 1/ on the surface meaningless 2/ unimaginative and therefore unmemorable and 3/ not even unique, apparently. I'm just glad Cassini is called Cassini and not something like SOASHIVS.

Posted by: nprev Feb 9 2007, 02:25 PM

That's true, but unfortunately PBS only reaches a very small audience here in the US, and they don't do much advertising. It would be a lot better if one of the major commercial networks here (CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) did something similar with all the bells & whistles involved in the reality TV genre.

Posted by: dvandorn Feb 14 2007, 11:58 PM

I have a slightly different issue to bring up, though it sort of fits in with this general topic.

Last night, The Science Channel (formerly known as Discovery Science) ran a show on its Tuesday night "space lineup" that talked about how Cassini was *scheduled* to arrive at Saturn in 2004, and in the meantime let's look at the Pluto Express probe that's currently being designed...

And then there is the "By Jupiter" documentary they run once a month or so, which is an hour-long promotion of the "upcoming" JIMO mission.

Why not just run documentaries on how VentureStar will soon replace the Space Shuttle, or even better, run some of those old ones which promise us that men will walk on the Moon sometime in our lifetimes?

In other words, there is either a really severe lack of up-to-date documentaries on space and astronomy, or the people who run The Science Channel are so ignorant of what's really happening that they think it's OK to keep repeating these dated programs, which refer to probes that never were and never will be.



-the other Doug

Posted by: nprev Feb 15 2007, 12:14 AM

Yeah...I've noticed that too.

I think they're trying to squeeze every last bit of return-on-investment from these old chestnuts, accuracy/currency be damned. Unfortunately, they almost certainly won't ever get called on it. Specialized cable channels like this are designed for relatively small audiences, so informed criticism from the knowledgeable few among those is unlikely to amount to much pressure to reform from their viewpoint.

People like UMSFers are watching these shows already knowing the details of what they should tell us & hoping for a few nuggets of new information. The real tragedy is that the majority of the audience (which is watching out of genuine curiosity & a desire to learn) is getting outdated information which will warp their understanding and potentially diminish their interest/arouse suspicion if they later receive contradictory information. In this way, it's a real disservice.

Posted by: PhilCo126 Feb 15 2007, 08:13 PM

Luckily there're some good programs around as well

Posted by: John Flushing Mar 1 2007, 03:16 AM

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that despite all of our modern technology, we simply do not have a light bulb powerful enough to do something like that.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan May 23 2007, 04:39 AM

This one's not TV but I though it deserved notice:

Telegraph U.K.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/23/nchelsea123.xml

By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent, Last Updated: 1:59am BST 23/05/2007

.... Spirit, and Opportunity, its twin, have been sending back information and images from the surface of Mars for more than three years. They were only expected to be there for three months when their missions started in 2004....

Posted by: Stu May 23 2007, 05:28 AM

Easy mistake to make; the poor lad obviously didn't know that the final design review removed the little R2D2 rockets from the rovers' wheels that were going to blast it back off Mars and bring it back to Earth again...

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Oct 3 2007, 09:59 PM

Here's a good one. I saved a pdf in the event AP corrects the story:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071003/ap_on_sc/takei_asteroid&printer=1;_ylt=AkWu2xArgq7Xs6eFZ.CCaMNK2ocA

Asteroid belt is named for George Takei
By SAMANTHA GROSS, Associated Press Writer
Wed Oct 3, 9:07 AM ET

A piece of outer space named for George Takei is in kind of a rough neighborhood for somebody who steers a starship: an asteroid belt.

An asteroid between Mars and Jupiter has been renamed 7307 Takei in honor of the actor, best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original "Star Trek" series and movies.

"I am now a heavenly body," Takei, 70, said Tuesday, laughing. "I found out about it yesterday. ... I was blown away. It came out of the clear, blue sky — just like an asteroid."

The celestial rock, discovered by two Japanese astronomers in 1994, was formerly known as 1994 GT9. It joins the 4659 Roddenberry (named for the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry) and the 68410 Nichols (for co-star Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura). Other main-belt asteroids have been named for science fiction luminaries Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.
......

Posted by: nprev Oct 3 2007, 10:20 PM

I was afraid of this. George Takei has cornered most of the accessible resources in the Solar System!!!

EDIT: After rereading the byline, this is obviously a Gross error...

Posted by: edstrick Oct 5 2007, 09:52 AM

I keep hearing the news as the asteroid was RENAMED.. Uh.. I don't think it ever had a name... just a number.

"Who is Number 2?
"You are Number 7307."
"I am not a number, I am a free asteroid!"

It's not just the press...yesterday, driving home from work, a radio news item on the San Diego sinkhole/landslide detachment pit or whatever. A local government official "blamed it on gravity".

Well... duh!

Posted by: Stu Jan 4 2008, 06:31 AM

Don't know if any other UK viewers caught it, but reporting http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7168517.stm on ITV's 6.30pm news last night, the gorgeous but occasionally slightly scientifically-challenged Nina Hussein said that the 180LY distant star was "in a galaxy far, far away..."

Wow, how did we miss a galaxy just 180LY away?!?!?!?!

Posted by: Stu Jan 4 2008, 06:53 AM

Off topic a wee bit, I know, but doesn't seem worth starting a new thread...

Just saw this page up on Space.com...

Can't help thinking that advertising an online astrologer on one of the world's most viewed space-related websites is just... oh, what's the word... ah yes, that's it: stoopid...!!!

Posted by: tty Jan 4 2008, 07:03 AM

We didn't, it's called the Milky Way, and 180 LY is certainly far, far away....

Posted by: ngunn Jan 4 2008, 01:42 PM

Yes. They just can't stop themselves. Every astronomy-related story has to be introduced by some sci-fi cliche. The fact that in this case the choice of phrase has the effect of reinforcing an especially persistent strand of public ignorance is clearly of no concern to the news editors. 'Far, far away' is (of course) anywhere north of Watford, and a Galaxy is a large family car.

Posted by: Mongo Jan 5 2008, 06:10 PM

I thought that 'Far Far Away' is where Shrek went to meet the in-laws?

Bill

Posted by: nprev Jan 5 2008, 06:23 PM

I'm waiting to see what will happen if the potential Martian asteroid impact becomes likely enough for the mass media to get excited about. The sheer torrent of stupidity would be entertaining indeed...and depressing.

BTW, here in LA on the CBS AM radio news station I keep hearing these annoying commercials for some outfit called the "International Star Registry" that purports to name a star for your friend or loved one for a nominal fee (fifty bucks, I think). I know that this is complete @#$%, but of course the general public doesn't. IIRC, this group or another got sued by (I think) Sky & Telescope, and the plantiffs lost!

Still think that the IAU should get into that business and generate official star names for a nominal fee, then use the proceeds for astronomy-related grants, scholarships, etc. Much better than lining the pockets of these bloody con-artists.

Posted by: hendric Jan 6 2008, 04:09 AM

Will all the deep surveys going starting up, I'm surprised nobody has started an International Galaxy Naming company. Hell, maybe I should...

Name-a-Galaxy! Who would want a single star, when you can have a whole island universe named just for you or your loved ones! Tiered pricing, starting with ellipticals ($25), going up to spirals ($50) and barred spirals($100), and ending with the choicest: Galaxy Mergers! ($250)

Posted by: nprev Jan 6 2008, 04:31 AM

Oh, crap...dude, PLEASE no!!!! I could live with a star officially named "Mildred P. Snordwinkle", but a whole damned galaxy???

Does make you wonder if this scam has occurred elsewhere in other times, in other civilizations. Maybe we live in the alien equivalent of the Mildred P. Snordwinkle Galaxy (translation permitting), which name precedes our own moniker of the Milky Way...which, in its way, might just serve as the ultimate proof of Mach's Principle...

Posted by: Stu Jan 6 2008, 08:38 AM

At first glance this is quite an amusing subject, I know, but for us "community astronomers" the whole star-naming thing is a nightmare, and worse than that it actually causes some people quite a lot of hurt.

Several large national retailers were offering "Name A Star" gift boxes for Christmas presents this year in the UK, and I had - as usual - a dozen or so phone calls, or conversations with people in the street or at work, with people either asking me if they should name a star after a loved one, or telling me they'd already bought one for someone, and I had to tell them that, as lovely an idea as this is, it is a total waste of money, because no-one has the right to offer star names for sale. It's not illegal, but I could set myself up in business and charge people to have a blade of grass by Kendal Castle or a grain of sand on Arnside beach named after them or a loved one and it would be just as "official" as offering to name a star for them. Some people take this news in their stride, and just decide not to go ahead with the present and buy a book token or something, others get angry that they might have been conned. The ones who have already "bought a star" are usually either gutted or angry, or both.

But worse are the phone calls I get from people at other times of the year from people who want to know if I can come around to where they live and show them, and/or their family, the star they have had named after someone who's died. I've had children calling asking me to show them where the star they named after their mother or father is, grandparents asking where the star is they've named after a dead grandchild, husbands and wives wanting to see the star named after their deceased partner, it's just awful to have to tell them that... well, to have to tell them the truth.

This really annoys me, and has done for years, because people buy these "stars" in good faith, often for a loved one as a romantic gift, thinking they can take them outside on a clear night and, standing there arm in arm or hand in hand, show them "their star". That’s not possible because the stars on offer are all far, far below naked eye visibility. Other people “buy star names” in memory of someone who's died, thinking it will somehow immortalise them. It doesn't; that star would only bear the buyer’s chosen name on a list in that company's database, not on any official star catalogue or registry that astronomers or scientists use. Patrick Moore will never mention “Irene’s Star” on The Sky at Night, Neil deGrasse Tyseon will never mention “Tiddles’ Star” in one of his books because the names are 100000% unofficial.

One of the companies does say this on its website: “Will astronomers call the star by its new name? No. In professional astronomical and scientific circles the star you name will be referred to either by telescope co-ordinates or by identity number.” but of course it's buried away in the small print in these packages and people have already paid for the thing by then, so it's too late.

So yes, this is amusing at first thought, but when you've had someone break down in tears at a "skywatch" event when they've found out that the star they "named" after their beloved grandmother isn't actually theirs at all, it isn't quite so funny.

And that's why I hate the whole star-naming thing. It's just wrong.

Posted by: nprev Jan 6 2008, 02:13 PM

...thanks for the wake-up call, Stu. Did not realize that there was sometimes such a brutal emotional toll from this chicanery.

Posted by: lyford Jan 6 2008, 06:27 PM

In my wild and impetuous youth I did this for my fiancee.... found out the real deal a few years after and was quite embarrassed. Still, it IS named after her, but the name is just not recognized officially by the IAS....

I agree with you 100% about the scamminess of the companies involved, especially if you are expecting to pay for an actual registration service. I would definitely steer people away if they have not done so yet. But if someone has already done it, I would phrase my critique a little more carefully before crushing their fantasy - since the act is undoubtedly tied in to emotions of some strength.

We often go to a campsite and have special names for "our trail" - but that name is never going to be recognized by the Forest Service. The hopeless romantics among us have "our song," etc, so "our star" is not that off base.

If you view them as more like the astronomical equivalent of the guy that goes around Saturday nights selling roses to all the couples during dinner, it makes more sense. Or else think of the fee as being paid to have someone record and remember that star in the name of someone.... just like "our tree."

You do get a framed plaque.... and unlike selling http://www.moonshop.com/, I never really expected to get something REAL, any more than if I took my family to http://medievaltimes.com/ and was expecting to see "real" knights. The romantic and entertainment value was worth the cost, even if it was based upon a fiction, and many people pay much more for their frivolous date night excesses. The geek side of me is VERY upset that it is not the actual official agency recording, but I don't think that matters as much to most folks.

I am not defending the practice of the companies, but rather think we can spin it a little better for the "victims." (Actually I am just trying to rationalize for myself since I fell for it...)


EDIT

PS - this whole discussion reminds my of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's essay, http://research.amnh.org/~tyson/18magazines_naming.php

Posted by: Stu Jan 6 2008, 07:44 PM

I try not to crush people when I tell them the truth; I can actually - believe it or not - be very subtle and sensitive when I need to be.

But I can't agree that this practice is anything other than a scam and anything less than cruel in many cases. The differemce between romantically naming a trail or a rock or something is that these Star Registry companies very deliberately and shamelessly market their services in such a way as to look very official, and they deliberately target kind and good-hearted people in their advertising, playing on people's desire to express love for family or partners, and suggesting that their deed will somehow immortalise the person the star has been bought for.

We often go to a campsite and have special names for "our trail" - but that name is never going to be recognized by the Forest Service. The hopeless romantics among us have "our song," etc, so "our star" is not that off base.

I think it's a long way off, sorry. These companies are taking money off people for something they don't own the rights to, which is just wrong. Seriously, if you'd seen the looks on people's faces that I have when I've had to tell them that no, actually their grandmother or dead husband isn't "up there" for all to see - and these are people who've come to me for an honest answer because they've suspected the truth, I don't just shout it out without being asked - then you wouldn't think this so harmless.

Still, it IS named after her, but the name is just not recognized officially by the IAS....

Actually, it isn't. It bears her name in that company's database, and that's all. No-one else who looks at the night sky - from now until the Sun swells into a red giant, and beyond - will ever call it by her name. If you really want to immortalise her, you great softie, do it the old fashioned way - discover an asteroid or a comet and name that after her.

Posted by: lyford Jan 6 2008, 08:31 PM

Well, that's what I meant - I named it unofficially and paid too much to have someone print a pretty plaque and keep track of the coordinates in their database. That's how I can rationalize it now.

But I know that the companies only make money by giving the impression that they are official, which is at the very least unethical. It is a scam.

And as for discovering and then naming, that didn't work out for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Naming, did it? Or http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/.... *Sigh* Or maybe I am misinformed on that as well.

Stu, I know I got nothing to stand on, but I was young at the time. I am not disagreeing with your argument, just telling my story.

Posted by: nprev Jan 6 2008, 08:46 PM

Hate to say it, but the continuing & widespread deceptive practices committed by these parties really can only be redressed by the IAU getting into the business and driving them out of it. 'Star naming' clearly isn't going to go away of its own accord; the only way to make it something real (yes, I do use the term loosely) for people is to have the IAU assign star names, which at least would have some sort of enduring status.

Of course, nobody's gonna call, for example, SAO 133390 "Bill Smith's Star" except the person's loved ones; still, it's a trivial effort to record the moniker, and who knows; someday, it might well become a true memorial if the record survives & the star becomes important in some way. As a charitable act and, happily, a smart business move, the IAU could accept a significantly smaller fee for the service (by not providing the claptrap props) and thereby drive these <unspeakably obscene epithet/noun>s out of business for good.

You got my back up on this, Stu; it was heartbreaking to hear that you've encountered people who have been emotionally injured by these bastards, to say nothing of ripped off. It damn sure isn't right, but this is all I can think of to fix it since court challenges to the 'industry' have failed.

EDIT: I went here: http://www.iau.org/CONTACT_US.25.0.html --and sent this:



Sir or madam, I am a member of the online forum unmannedspaceflight.com, and recently the obnoxious new 'industry' of naming stars by numerous companies was a topic. One of our members, who is a local observational astronomy popularizer, told us that some people he'd encountered were literally heartbroken to discover that a star that they'd "named" for a deceased relative had no official standing. Clearly, these unsavory firms are not only deceitful, but also actually causing emotional damage.

Therefore, I propose that the IAU should begin its own star-naming service in order to end this shameful, and apparently global, exploitation of the general public. This could be easily done in a Web-based schema by providing a random star from the SAO or other surveys and subsequently recording the chosen name in a database. The current star-naming companies provide elaborate certificates, etc. in order to justify their fees (which seem to be on the order of US$50), but an IAU service of this nature--minus the accoutrements as described-- could charge considerably less while providing an officially sanctioned name for the object. This is in fact the goal of these well-meaning but uninformed people.

Given the apparently large market for this service, the funds acquired could be used for charitable endevours such as grants and scholarships for students in the space sciences. Certainly this would be a far better application of the results of this phenomenon than the current situation, which merely enriches unscrupulous opportunists at the financial and emotional expense of a great many people, and furthermore casts the entire field of astronomy in a bad light. Thank you for your attention.

Posted by: lyford Jan 6 2008, 09:50 PM

Good idea, nprev.

You know I just realized the disconnect here - for me it was just some fun - but from your comments now I can imagine how harmful it would be if someone was doing it seriously as a way to honor a loved one. It would be a shock like finding out the ashes you paid to have scattered at sea were just dumped in the drain that runs to the ocean.

I was coming at this from a completely different angle, hence my Medieval Times analogy, and now I see what the furor is - and can completely understand the outrage.

Posted by: djellison Jan 6 2008, 10:00 PM

I know of a case where a family 'named a star' after their son who tragically died aged a few months old. I couldn't bare to tell them the truth after seeing the finder chart on the wall with the name at the bottom. I hope they never find out to be honest.

Posted by: Stu Jan 6 2008, 11:32 PM

I know what you mean, it's a dilemma sometimes. But I have no doubt - at all - that some of the companies rely on knowledgeable people's "don't upset them with the truth" instincts to protect themselves and maintain their business.

Posted by: nprev Jan 7 2008, 12:27 AM

To say nothing of the embarassment once they realize that they've been had; probably a lot of customers just don't want to mention it to anyone, so the scam goes on.

God, Doug; that's just awful about that couple and their son.

I encourage everyone to go to that IAU contact link in my previous post and ask them to start naming their own stars. With any luck, the first use of the proceeds could be to buy the customer lists of these charlatans (once the IAU puts them out of business once and for all) and legitimize them...

Posted by: ollopa Jan 7 2008, 01:12 AM

Another cool project for Google, methinks. Since there are more stars than people who have ever lived (or likely ever will), this has real outreach potential. Even an informal database on Google Sky might give a new impetus to skywatching. "Aunt Ethel is just to the right of Regulus. Whaddya mean you haven't heard of Regulus?"

Posted by: Stu Jan 7 2008, 10:38 AM

... except - as I understand it - all the stars these companies offer are far below naked eye visibility, so a Google-type database would be next to useless for people who a) don't know the sky, and don't have a telescope.

This is something only people who have actually spent years looking at and studying the sky can understand, just how hard it is to find things in the sky. The bright stars might be obvious, but none of those are up for naming, only mega-faint stars are. So a Google-type database/interface thingy would have to be written in such a way as to give people who have no knowledge of the sky whatsoeever directions to "their" star. That means locating the constellation it's in by entering its exact co-ordinates. Then you'd need to determine that constellation's location in the sky... that constellation's visibility in the sky for that viewer (no point someone in New York looking for Crux Australis or Pavo, etc)... that constellation's visibility in the sky at that time of year if it is visible from their latitude (no point our New Yorker looking for Orion in July, etc). Then, with all those things tackled, you'd have to find a way to teach the viewer how to "star hop" from a bright nearby star to the area where their target star is, and then you'd have to help them distinguish that star from all the others.

Sounds easy? Just pour some sugar or salt into your hand, tip it out onto a tabletop and look at it...

...that's what a starfield looks like through a telescope.

The best astronomy outreach is still organising a star-watch or an eclipse-watch in a park or school field, getting together a whole bunch of amateur astronomers with telescopes, inviting the pubvlic, and then just showing people cool things in the night sky. Whenever we hold one here in Kendal I come away bouncing like Tigger, it's such a buzz. The looks on people's faces when they see a galaxy, or Saturn's rings, or the Moon's craters through a telescope for the first time is just incredible. And introducing people to the stars... pointing out Vega, Deneb and the Pole Star to them, helping them find Orion and Taurus in the sky, introducing them to the characters and legends behind Perseus, Andromeda etc, it's just magical, and as good as Google Sky gets it will never replace the experience of having someone stand with you on a cold and frosty night and tell you "See that star overhead? That's..."

Posted by: akuo Jan 7 2008, 11:51 AM

Not so. There are only a couple of hundred stars with proper names. There are plenty of naked eye stars with just Baeyr or Tycho catalogue number at best.

Posted by: Stu Jan 7 2008, 12:30 PM

I meant that they're neither offered by the star naming companies, or by the IAU. As far as I know. But even if I'm wrong in that, here's the bottom line - none of these companies has any right to name a single star in the night sky. No getting around that.

Think of it this way. Here's a pic I took of Kendal Castle (where I hold the Kendal "skwatch" events at, by the way) back in September...



Now, if I set up a website, offering to let people name the blades of grass on that hillside and hilltop after a loved one for £25 a time (or for another £20 you can have one of the stones in the castle wall named after your loved one instead, let's call it our Deluxe Package) for which they would get just a fancy-looking certificate, how hard would you laugh? Well, that's what these star registry companies are doing. Taking money off people for giving names to things they don't own.

Posted by: nprev Jan 7 2008, 12:49 PM

Just so. That's why the IAU, the only agency with the internationally recognized authority to assign nomenclature to astronomical objects (by definition!), needs to step in & derail these predators.

Posted by: gndonald Jan 12 2008, 03:19 PM

Not really from the Television Media, but something that I spotted today in the NZ Herald, its an article about someone who works for Virgin Galactic entitled http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10486347&pnum=0 which included the following piece of information about the trips to orbit Richard Branson is planning to offer:

Emphasis mine.

I'd like to know just how they plan to deal with the time dilation...

Posted by: dvandorn Jan 12 2008, 05:10 PM

Reminds me of the only morbid chuckle I came across on February 1, 2003. In CNN's coverage of the Columbia disaster, at one point, the titles that run under the talking heads read "Columbia broke up while traveling at 15 times the speed of light." I looked at the person I was watching the TV with and said "Well, that was the problem, right there!"

-the other Doug

Posted by: nprev Jan 12 2008, 05:45 PM

"C: It's not just a good idea, it's the law!" (An oldie but a goodie...)

I wonder how much the lines have blurred between TV & movie space operas (did not say 'science fiction', because so few actual SF shows have ever been made, IMHO) and reality in the eyes of many people in the general public. Reason I ask is that I've met many people over the years that are surprised to learn that we haven't had a manned Mars landing yet, and seem to take for granted that people are zooming all over the Solar System, if not the Galaxy. (Amazing, but true!) One of the main questions I get is whether the MERs or Cassini are manned...

The depressing flip side to that is why aren't these people clamoring to sign up for the next flight out? God knows I would be if I thought that space travel was easy and routine.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Mar 4 2008, 06:32 AM

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080303-mars-avalanche.html
By SPACE.com staff, posted: 03 March 2008

...The camera was tracking seasonal changes on Mars when it inadvertently caught the avalanche on film...

Posted by: nprev Mar 4 2008, 06:42 AM

Dan, think I'd have to call that hilariously ironic rather than inaccurate...yep, bet that's a seasonal change alright, moving at 15m/sec!!!

Posted by: elakdawalla Mar 4 2008, 06:43 AM

um, nprev, I hate to say it, but I think Dan was referring to the space.com reporter's take on what medium was being used to record the avalanche

--Emily

Posted by: As old as Voyager Mar 4 2008, 09:39 AM

A little off topic, but an inaccuracy nonetheless...

In Sheffield (UK) there used to be a bus called the 'Bright Bus' which ferried (gifted?) school kids around the city.

To enhance its 'Bright' (ie intelligent) image it was adorned with the names of many luminaries of physics such as Einstein and Newton.

What detracted from this was that the name 'Hawkins' was also emblazoned across the vehicle's side....guess the signwriter wouldn't qualify to ride the bus!

Posted by: nprev Mar 4 2008, 01:40 PM

Splarg; of course, thanks, Emily, and sorry, Dan! Gonna go drive a few more nails with my forehead before the short bus comes...

Posted by: centsworth_II Mar 12 2008, 11:40 PM

Porno at CERN
"The claim is that... the LHC might produce not only black holes but also another class of objects
called wormholes... mostly in tabloids like the Sun and New Scientist.... science pornography."
http://resonaances.blogspot.com/

I thought this was so funny: "Tabloids like the Sun and New Scientist", that really puts New Scientist
in its place. I like New scientist, and I wouldn't say they are inaccurate, but they do skew toward
the sensationalist. I think science pornography is a good way to put it. But as I already said... I'm not
complaining.

Posted by: gndonald Apr 1 2008, 03:10 PM

I've picked up the April 2008 edition of APC (Australian Personal Computer) and there is an (advertising) feature article entitled "Computers in Space" (paid for by HP).

Most of it is a fairly accurate descriptions of the constraints facing the use of computers in space (power, gravity, radiation).

It also has a picture of what they claim to be the Shuttle Discovery, it is in fact a picture of the first launch of Columbia. (See: http://www.klabs.org/home_page/sts-1/columbia_sts1_big.jpg The article (credited to one David Braue) also has the following when it starts to discuss future uses of computers in space:

I thought that NASA had canceled this one two years ago

I wonder where on Earth (or off it) the author did his research.

(Correction made after confirming picture in article is of Columbia)

Posted by: Stu Apr 24 2008, 04:24 PM

Resurrecting an old topic, I know, but if anyone wants to read an interesting debate on the star-naming issue, this week's http://www.astroengine.net/?p=194#more-194 has two rather opposing viewpoints...

Posted by: laurele Apr 24 2008, 05:47 PM

I find it hard to imagine that anyone could believe they actually "own" a star. Aren't there international agreements in which countries reject any concept of "claiming" celestial objects such as the moon, planets, etc.? One would think anyone "naming" a star would understand that the act is symbolic. How can someone own something no human being can even reach and can only view from afar? We don't even know that the names currently being used will still be in use by our descendants 100 or more years from now. I do agree that the companies charging people for this are predatory, as anyone can use computer software to create their own certificate and print it out, which is really the only thing recipients are getting.

Since there are funding issues regarding space exploration, how about considering the idea of universities and agencies like NASA or the ESA selling people the right to symbolically name a star with the proceeds going towards research, exploration, etc. as another person in this thread suggested? Universities and agencies could join to create a single large database to coordinate such an effort. Donors could choose the projects they want to support (for example, funding of a specific telescope or mission). At least purchasers would know that what they are really doing is making a contribution towards the advancement of astronomical research and exploration as opposed to handing over money to charlatans.

Posted by: volcanopele Apr 24 2008, 06:24 PM

Io is my moon. It's mine. I own it.

I guess one fund raising effort would be to to sell the naming rights to dunes on Titan or minor craters on Mimas.

Posted by: nprev Apr 25 2008, 12:21 AM

Why not? I'm certain that the IAU would put the money to far better use then the hucksters ever could. I like the idea of using it for scholarships & fellowships for space science grad students.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Apr 25 2008, 02:17 AM

I think it's a bad idea. Once you start bringing money into the picture you make the IAU controversial. People will argue and debate where the money should go, which nation's universities got more etc, etc. What happens if some really rich person decides to blow a whole bunch of money naming stars after their favorite politicians? Meanwhile you've given credibility to the whole silly notion and the hucksters will continue to ply their trade since there is no means of enforcement of the IAU designations anyway. I might start a company and say that I don't recognize IAU and half of my profits will go to feed starving children in Africa so register with me. There's really no end to where this could go once the concept is given some kind of serious sanction.

The best response is information. I would venture that civil remedies for fraud are even possible in the U.S. right now if enough people wanted to get together for a class action suit forcing a more clear disclosure by these companies that the "naming" has no real standing anywhere.

Posted by: nprev Apr 25 2008, 02:52 AM

Hmmm...persuasive, Dan.

I may be being naive about this. You're right, once money enters the equation then things get very complicated indeed. The only thing I can think of is if the IAU set up an independent trust for the funds and contracted or established a third-party non-profit organization to manage the finances, but of course the registration effort would require capital to accomplish, presumably from the name sales....argh.

Not seeing a way to make this unmistakably clean all the way through, in addition to your concerns about special interests naming things en masse for less-then-honorable and certainly not traditionally heraldic purposes.

Posted by: tedstryk Apr 25 2008, 03:23 AM

The problem is that the language that they used, when taken at face value, their claim is true. You pay and they include you in their registry. The deception is by implication.

As I understand it, the lawsuit they actually won was against a competing star registry that virtually cloned their site. They have had to put "International Star Registry star naming is not recognized by the scientific community. Your stars name is reserved in International Star Registry records only." This is, of course, in tiny print at the bottom of their page. Their tactic is to threaten to sue individuals and planetariums that can't afford to fight them in court.

Posted by: nprev Apr 25 2008, 02:30 PM

I just googled "cartographic nomenclature conventions" trying to find out how terrestrial mountains, rivers, etc. get their names established and found a truly bewildering hodgepodge; doesn't even seem to be an international standard extant, just the ancient principle of the discoverer makes the call. (This is interesting because there are a lot of mountains, lakes, rivers, etc. on Earth, esp. in remote regions like Alaska, that have yet to be named!)

Astronomical nomenclature assignment actually seems to be much more disciplined then the terrestrial process via the IAU conventions, which is a bit surprising. Watch out for the next wave of scams: "Name an Alaskan lake after a loved one!"

Posted by: Stu May 8 2008, 06:52 AM

Slightly OT, sorry, but I thought it might give people a giggle or roll their eyes in horror...

I was in my local library the other day, handing back an overdue book - so overdue the machine went off like a Geiger counter when the book was scanned, v embarrassing! - when one of the assistants there asked me if there was "anything interesting happening up there at the moment". Yup, I told her, May 25th, a new probe lands on Mars, it'll be big news, look out for it on TV... I'm giving a talk about it a few days later at the Museum, etc, etc... "Hang on," she says, "I'll put it in the diary. She gets the diary out, flicks thru to May 25th and writes...

"probe from Mars lands..."

Probe FROM Mars?!?! Wow, that would make the news wouldn't it?!

"No," I corrected her, "we've sent a probe TO Mars... it lands there ON the 25th..."

"Oh," she replies, "can't they send us probes, then?"

I know, I know... I despair too, but sometimes the kindest thing to do is to just walk away, shaking your head...

Posted by: ElkGroveDan May 8 2008, 01:30 PM

I believe the 'invading probe' discussion is http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5086&pid=113212&st=15&#entry113212, Stu.

Posted by: Stu May 8 2008, 01:34 PM

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.......!!!

(but laughing, guiltily...!)

Posted by: Juramike May 8 2008, 03:39 PM

Obviously she's thinking "sample return". Excellent!
Keep the momentum building!

Posted by: djellison May 8 2008, 03:56 PM

That's in the 'They have the internet on computers now?' ballpark of utter subject-unawareness.

Posted by: nprev May 9 2008, 12:14 AM

That almost defies belief. You really have to wonder just what kind of a mental picture of the Universe such people have...

Posted by: edstrick May 9 2008, 07:30 AM

You SURE she's not the same as the blond big-wigged martian lady from MARS ATTACKS! ?

ack! ack-AkAk!

Ach-thbt! <no.. that's Bill-the-Cat>

Posted by: Stu May 11 2008, 04:28 PM

Seen in a discount bookstore recently...

( People of a nervous disposition might want to sit down before looking at this picture... )

Yes, you did read that correctly...

Posted by: Juramike May 11 2008, 04:41 PM

Ummm. OK.

Maybe the directions are to use the telescope to view the Horoscope section of the local newspaper held upside down 100 feet away.
And BTW, you could probably also use the telescope to look at the moon and stars and stuff like that....

Posted by: nprev May 11 2008, 04:48 PM

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. The Oxford University association is particularly poignant.

If anyone can contact Stephen Hawking, send this along; he'll rip someone at Oxford a new one.

Posted by: Stu May 11 2008, 04:50 PM

The charitable Stu thinks "Printing error, crept through quality control, should have been spotted but wasn't..."

The world weary Stu thinks "IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!" (slap slap slap!!!)

Posted by: nprev May 11 2008, 04:52 PM

Uh, gotta go with 'world-weary' here, big guy; this is just plain unforgiveable.

I mean, seriously: this is just beyond belief, and I'm certain that the Oxford astronomy department faculty will absolutely flip out if they see this! Somebody's head is gonna roll like a bowling ball.

Posted by: dvandorn May 12 2008, 01:40 AM

And here's another example of what this thread is about:

I'm sitting here watching "Faces of Earth" on the Science Channel, a geologic history of the planet, and they've gotten around to mentioning the K-T impact. The exact line they used was "Something, likely an asteroid from space, hit the Earth."

No kidding! Gee, and here I was always under the assumption it was an asteroid from New Jersey... but hey, if they say it was from space, who am I to argue?

*D'OH!*

-the other Doug

Posted by: nprev May 12 2008, 02:03 AM

No...despite this error, be afraid of New Jersey, be very afraid! They're gonna pour "kawfee" all over the planet, and convert it all into diners just off the Turnpike!

At night, the Sopranos come...

Posted by: Stu May 13 2008, 07:03 PM

I showed the "astrology telescope" pic at my astronomical society meeting last night, and I swear several people almost fell off their chairs laughing... or was it crying? Hmm, not sure...!

... actually, that's a VERY clumsy way of passing on my thanks to Doug for coming up to talk to us all at that meeting here in Kendal last night. It was a superb evening, Doug's talk was brilliant, no other way of describing it, and he really impressed everyone there. There's a full report on the meeting on my blog http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/Cumbrian-Sky/entries/2008/05/13/eas-meeting-report---may-2008-talk-by-doug-ellison-umsf/3644if anyone wants a look.

Thanks Doug!

Posted by: ElkGroveDan May 13 2008, 07:34 PM

Actually Stu we want to hear the post-event pub crawling report.

Posted by: Stu May 13 2008, 07:47 PM

Afraid there was no "crawl" to report, not with some of us at work at 7am next morning and Doug on an early train home again... just a quiet (well, 'quiet' apart from the ignorant SOB who was swearing loudly at the bar, trying to prove how hard he was...) pint in an old-fashioned pub around the corner, setting the world (well, ESA!) to rights while the pub darts team got soundly thrashed in the room next door...

Posted by: Gladstoner May 13 2008, 08:05 PM

.

Posted by: climber May 13 2008, 08:32 PM

May be this telescope is only limited to Zodiacal contellations observations?

Posted by: djellison May 13 2008, 08:41 PM

Stu and I got into full on ESA ranting mode in the pub

All credit really has to go to Stu for pulling together an excellent astronomy society - friendly, interested etc. Without a proper audience, I would essentially be a mad person in front of an empty room going 'Look, MARS'.

Posted by: nprev May 13 2008, 09:32 PM

You guys need to take it on the road...let me know when the LA tour date is!

Posted by: Stu May 13 2008, 09:38 PM

The only problem with having Doug as a guest speaker is that he's an impossible act to follow. Not (just) because he's a genuinely brilliant speaker, but because his laptop has more frakking special effects than Industrial Light and Magic, and I know from past experience that next month, when I give my news round up, each time I change the Powerpoint slide there'll be people whispering in the darkness "Huh... call that a transition? Doug's pictures rippled... or burst into flames... or dissolved into lovely twinkly stars..."

Posted by: AndyG May 19 2008, 07:59 PM

Rarely a day passes...

Getting the award tonight has to be the BBC (once again). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7407963.stm informs me that a laser has created temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun.

Ok, so 10 million degrees Celsius is technically hotter than 5800K. But we know what they meant to say...

Andy

Edit: The story has been altered. The website, I'll grant them, shows good editorial response by the BBC - but shouldn't sloppy-copy be nipped in the bud?

Posted by: nprev May 19 2008, 08:46 PM

Er, isn't that what all of us essentially are most of the time? God knows I've endured enough weird looks, nicknames such as "Mr. Mars", and other such things over the years from friends & colleagues. I just applaud you guys for having the guts and motivation to do it in front of a mass audience!

(Sorry; just had to mock the state of being!)

Posted by: tedstryk May 21 2008, 03:38 AM

Has anyone else noticed that the science channel keeps running ads across the bottom of the screen for the landing of the Phoenix rover? Sigh.....

Posted by: nprev May 21 2008, 03:54 AM

You gotta be kidding me. (Have to admit I'm hooked on The Deadliest Catch, so watching that now...)

Posted by: Stu May 28 2008, 12:55 PM

I know I shouldn't laugh at this coverage of the Phoenix landing, seriously I do, but, well, I couldn't help it. It's inaccurate and disrespectful, and a part of me feels really guilty for laughing outloud like I did, but...

... and watch the little video at: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1211879.ece

Shocking, I know, but DEFINITELY going to be used in my Phoenix talk on Saturday morning...!

Posted by: nprev May 28 2008, 01:29 PM

Funny, I admit... ...but one does have to wonder how much damage has been done to human progress over the millennia by mocking asses.

Posted by: djellison May 28 2008, 01:31 PM

BBC News did very well on Monday evening.

Phoenix will be on the surface for 90 days ( and then what, it's coming home? )
Jet engines helped it land on the surface ( what, like on a Jumbo Jet? )
It will look for signs of life ( this is pure fiction, coming from every side of the media, and it drives me bad )


Doug

Posted by: Stu May 28 2008, 01:34 PM

I know, but The Sun isn't really a widely-read journal of popular science anyway, to be honest I just thought it was a bit of fun. Every other newspaper I've seen has supported the mission's objectives and covered the story really well, which was good to see.

Posted by: ustrax May 28 2008, 01:39 PM

And Euronews also...
I remember on the landing day morning they keep on repeating that Phoenix took nine years reach Mars...and no...it was not mpletaphorical...

Posted by: Sunspot May 28 2008, 01:40 PM

I tend to ignore reporting on traditional news sites... the inaccurate reporting just annoys me too much. I suppose they think it just doesn't matter, because people won't know any different.

Although nothing quite compares to BBC's TV's News piece about a year ago on how Hubble had "fired a beam of light across the universe"

Posted by: ugordan May 28 2008, 01:42 PM

I hear you, brother. I'm having seizures looking at how much crap local media puts out when it comes to astronomy. Just when I think they cannot possibly get any more ignorant, they redefine the boundary.

My best advice now to friends reading astronomy news in the media is: DON'T.

Posted by: Stu May 28 2008, 01:54 PM

The other side of the coin is...

Quite a few of my work colleagues saw The Sun's coverage and asked me about it, giving me a great opportunity to tell them what was REALLY happening on Mars with Phoenix, and explain why it was so exciting and important. It was an open door I could walk through, and at the end of the day I had given out half a dozen Phoenix stickers to some of my fellow workers to pass on to their kids. A couple are going to bring their kids along to my Outreach talk at the Museum on Saturday morning, too.

Result!

So, you got lemons, you can either wrinkle your nose up 'cos they're too bitter, or you can make lemonade. OR you can stick an umbrella and some sparklers in the glass, and make great lemonade!

Posted by: nprev May 28 2008, 02:00 PM

On the positive side...I e-mailed around the MRO Phoenix pics yesterday to my co-workers and not only got tons of oohs and ahhs but some genuine interest and good questions. One guy's in-laws live in the Phillippines, and he forwarded my e-mail there; another has friends in Germany who thought that they might be interested as well.

Maybe one grass-roots countermeasure to the stupidity of the media is for each of us to stand up & represent even in very little ways. We can't all be Doug, Stu or Rui (at least I know I can't!), but it is possible to pass along at least a small taste of the magic and wonder we all feel to others.

Posted by: remcook May 28 2008, 02:01 PM

In yesterday's Times: a 2-page article on Phoenix. Excellent! However..
<rant>
The (big) headline says: "Flight of Phoenix can answer the big question: was there life on Mars?"
eeehmm...wasn't the phoenix team quite careful in pointing out Phoenix was not in fact designed to detect life?
What's with this fixation on the life question anyway? Sure, it's something the public is interested in, but I'm sure they could be interested in other things too if they were given a chance. But instead the media is only paying attention to the life question, and scientists often seem to spin their research such that it is related to life, since that will give them more chance of funding perhaps. It's a endless circle, pushing out attention to all other subjects in planetary science for the general public. I think it's a shame...
</rant>

Posted by: nprev May 28 2008, 02:07 PM

The Phoenix team has been doing their level best to manage expectations from day one, which was extraordinarily wise of them. I'm sure that they were well aware that the mass media would blow this up into at least a "maybe" search for life; if they'd done otherwise, it would have undoubtedly turned into a pass/fail for the whole question.

It seems impossible to overestimate the power of the popular press to exaggerate!

Posted by: MahFL May 28 2008, 02:16 PM

Seems Phoenix sunk deep into the ground......

"TUCSON, Ariz. - A day after an orbiter's radio shutdown blocked NASA from telling its newly planted Phoenix Mars lander what to do, orders were on the way to get its robotic arm moving." By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN, Associated Press Writer

LMAO, and at the same time shaking my head slowly.....

and from the BBC.....

"It will begin examining the site for evidence of the building blocks of life in the next few days".

That's not totally accurate is it ?

Posted by: centsworth_II May 28 2008, 02:32 PM

The first sample tested will be from the very surface. I don't know specifically what tests will be done, but I kind of hope they won't waste precious recourses looking for organics in that sample. They will eventually be looking for for organics, the "building blocks of life", but not in the next few days, I think.

Posted by: MahFL May 28 2008, 03:52 PM

They have everything planned to the last detail, they won't be wasting anything.

Posted by: centsworth_II May 28 2008, 06:35 PM

Two ways to look at it:
1. To do good complete science, test a surface sample for organics even though there likely will be none.
2. To conserve resources, assume there are no organics in the surface and save the resources for deeper samples.

I suppose they could put off testing the surface (for organics) at first and test it later (or not) depending on how the testing on deeper samples goes.

Posted by: As old as Voyager May 28 2008, 08:05 PM

Interested as I am in big engineering stuff, I just watched Megastructures (Channel 5 UK) about the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station.

Apparently the IceCube neutrino detector situated there under the ice will...detect neutrinos frozen in the ice millions of years ago.

Posted by: gndonald May 29 2008, 12:24 AM

Or to ruin the chances for follow up missions, look what happened to Viking after I & II came back with ambiguous results...

Posted by: nprev May 29 2008, 12:38 AM

Well, case in point, and the reason for expectation management.

The Vikings were very ambitious in their goals re life detection, but the pre-mission criteria for interpretation of the results did not fit well with the actual observations, so the Viking findings have been contentious.

Detection of organics as a mission goal is much better defined with no core assumptions about the existence or non-existence of extant life, and therefore it's significantly easier to derive a useful conclusion from the results (confined to the potential habitability of this particular locale), which is eminently sensible. Gotta bound these problems in order to make any sense of the results.

Posted by: jasedm May 29 2008, 09:30 AM

I saw this article too remcook - the funniest part of it was where the journalists obviously ran a spellcheck program, as they refer to a photo taken of the descent of Phoenix by the 'Mars Renaissance orbiter'

Posted by: djellison May 29 2008, 10:07 AM

That's my bad http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000715/

Posted by: nprev May 29 2008, 11:24 AM

...Somehow, I doubt that the MRO team is in any way displeased; it's not an inaccurate characterization.

Posted by: djellison May 29 2008, 12:17 PM

Well - at least I did it on purpose.

Posted by: elakdawalla May 29 2008, 03:47 PM

"Renaissance" sure would be less painful to type. I wish the powers that be who name these things would give some consideration to the poor folks who have to try to write about them for the public. At least "2001 Mars Odyssey" can be shortened to "Odyssey" without confusing people, but there's absolutely no convenient way to shorten "Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter" and still leave it obvious which spacecraft I'm talking about. I've made it my policy not to use spell-out-the-letter acronyms for naming missions (so "MESSENGER" and "SELENE" are okay, but "MRO" and "MER" are not), but I'm pretty tired of typing out "Reconnaissance," and now there's a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to spell out every d*** time. Oy vey.

--Emily

Posted by: ElkGroveDan May 29 2008, 04:27 PM

If you use a PC I'm pretty sure you can configure one of your "F" keys to insert a frequently used string of text (such as 'Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter'), but it's been a while since I've done that.

Posted by: paxdan May 29 2008, 09:55 PM

why not recon?

Posted by: lyford May 30 2008, 12:55 AM

Try http://www.tagkeys.com/....

Or better yet, http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2007/11/15/top_10_quicksilver_plugins.html - which I swear by and is free*

*The program is open source, but does not include the required $2000 http://theappleblog.com/2006/10/31/autocompletion-in-osx/ since it's a Mac only app

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jun 2 2008, 05:28 PM

Space shuttle Discovery goes to Mars:

Posted by: Stu Jun 5 2008, 06:55 PM

Not so much inaccurate as... well, http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21498,23816063-948,00.html?from=public_rss..?

Posted by: centsworth_II Jun 5 2008, 07:13 PM

Must.... not.... make... ESA.....joke......

Posted by: alan Jun 21 2008, 08:26 PM

not astronomy but amusing nonetheless

Earthquakes Became Five Times More Energetic, Discovers Australian Scientist Dr Tom Chalko

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25222766/

CBS had also briefly carried the "Earthquakes became five times more energetic due to global warming " article before pulling it citing the AP as a source which the AP denies.
edit: found google cache of cbs article:
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:rkAygt79WGYJ:www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/18/tech/main4191556.shtml+http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/18/tech/main4%3E%20191556.shtml&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us


if you follow the link at the bottom of the article to check other material from 'Dr Chalko' you will find this

No second chance: can Earth explode as a result of Global Warming?
http://sci-e-research.com/geophysics.html

Posted by: nprev Jun 21 2008, 08:33 PM

I think I'm gonna be very, very, very sick.

Two words: "peer review".

Posted by: Juramike Jun 21 2008, 09:12 PM

Uhh, wasn't that like the plot line for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_1999?

Does this mean that global warming will allow us to encounter "a vast array of alien civilizations, dystopian societies, and strange phenomena previously unseen by man" all while wearing spiffy uniforms and 70's haircuts?

Posted by: nprev Jun 21 2008, 09:48 PM

Only if we establish a Moonbase pretty doggone quickly; don't forget to build the Eagles, too! I'm already workin' on the 70s haircut, so everybody else better get busy!

EDIT: Oh, just for the hell of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DF9nDJZrdA.

Posted by: tedstryk Jun 22 2008, 02:23 AM

Look at the bright side. At least it isn't like Russian names. The repetitive nature of explaining Mars-X(whatever number) exploring Mars is frustrating. With Venus, we simply transliterated, and called the missions Venera. Russian for moon is a derivative of Luna, so we did that instead of calling the missions Moon-1, Moon-2, etc. Still, it does baffle me that they couldn't come up with actual names for the probes.

Posted by: David Jun 22 2008, 04:54 AM

The Russian word for "Moon" is not 'a derivative of Luna', it is luna. That happens also to be the Latin (and Italian, Spanish, etc.) word for "Moon", but the Russian isn't derived from the Latin, or vice versa. The fact that the Slavic words and the Latin/Romance words resemble each other is a historical accident; they are indeed distantly related, as both come from a Proto-Indo-European word *louksnâ, but it's pure happenstance that similar sound changes in Latin and Slavic produced nearly identical forms.

Posted by: nprev Jun 22 2008, 12:46 PM

Actually, I sort of miss named series of spacecraft; would have been delighted if the Voyagers had been Mariners 11 & 12, for example. Sometimes the naming of names in UMSF seems to be a bit out of control, but of course I understand the added PR value.

OT, I happened to enter into a conversation with someone about Phoenix yesterday, and she asked me why they sent Phoenix instead of "another" manned mission; was it because of budget cuts? Oy vey is mir...

Posted by: tedstryk Jun 22 2008, 01:43 PM

This is no accident or purely a distant thing, it is a borrowed word with a Latin origin. Russian isn't a romance language, but some words migrated (such as Caesar, which became Czar). The reason I called it a derivative of Luna is because I was pointing out that, properly translated, it would by simply Moon-1, Moon-2, etc., and properly transliterated, it wood be Looni or Luny. We translated it in a selective way to avoid the Moon-# issue.

Posted by: dvandorn Jun 22 2008, 03:30 PM

Well... some American probes have had names that are more-or-less descriptive of their functions, such as Ranger, Surveyor, Voyager, etc. But others have had far more prosaic names -- Lunar Orbiter, Lunar Prospector, Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, Mars Exploration Rover, Mars Polar Lander, etc., etc.

Yes, a few were given more poetic names (a la Spirit and Opportunity). But I just wanted to point out that we Americans have suffered from a lack of imagination at times, too...

-the other Doug

Posted by: David Jun 22 2008, 04:17 PM

It's true that Russian contains many borrowed words (though Tsar' is not directly from Latin, but via Old Slavonic via Greek). However, luna -- a very old word shared with many other Slavic languages -- is not one of them. I'll find you a citation from a comparative Slavic grammar or etymological dictionary when I have time, if you're still interested; in the meantime you can look http://snipurl.com/2my31.

But if you think about it, words for things of everyday (or everynight!) experience, like the Sun and the Moon, are rarely borrowed, while words for new technologies and institutions, or previously unknown plants and animals are commonly borrowed.

You might also consider that historically, the points of contact between the Slavic-speaking world and the Latin-speaking Roman Empire were tenuous to the point of non-existence. During the Imperial period, the Slavs were separated from the Romans by Germanic, Celtic, and even Iranian peoples (descendants of the Scythians) -- very unfavorable conditions for the transmission of such a fundamental vocabulary word as the word for "moon". By the time one group of Slavs came into contact with the Empire (southern Slavs, 7th century) its working language was already Greek (in which "moon" is selênê). When we first find a southern Slavic dialect written down (Church Slavonic, the dialect of Ohrid in Macedonia) its word for "moon" is not *louna but mêse~tsi (pardon the lack of appropriate diacriticals) -- showing that CS was not a medium for the transmission of that particular word to the northern Slavs, unlike the example of tsêsari > tsar'.

Where there are large numbers of languages with a common ancestor sharing related vocabulary, you will simply get parallel developments from time to time. For instance, beside Latin sôl we have Old Norse sól. But the evidence of the related Gothic sauil shows that the Norse is not a borrowing from Latin, but an independent development; sauil and sól from *sâwel-, Latin sôl from related *suwel-.

Posted by: dvandorn Jun 22 2008, 04:30 PM

Yep -- there are many examples of parallel development of very similar words, the foremost of which is the word for "water" which, in almost all human languages, contains a "wa" sound considered onomotapeic with the natural sound of water running or being poured.

It's fascinating to me how the human mind, in parallel and not influenced by other, similar development, seemed to find a variety of "onomotapeic" stimuli for basic things like the Sun and the Moon. There must be some basic construction in the brain that sees a blindingly bright object in the sky and thinks the sound "so" in one form or another. More specifically, a vowel following an S sound. (Maybe that's because sunlight causes things to dry out and melt, and phase changes of water tend to make sibilant noises?)

-the other Doug

Posted by: dvandorn Jun 22 2008, 04:44 PM

Speaking of how the uneducated human mind responds to nature, and completely off-topic here, I am strongly reminded of one of the finest speeches in the history of the American theatre:

Their Moon was cardboard,
Very apt to fray.
And what seems scenic in the Moonlight
Might seem cynic in the day.
The play's not done -- oh, no, not quite,
For nothing ever ends in the Moonlit night.
And despite what pretty poets say,
The night is only half the day.
So let us truly finish
What we've so foolishly begun,
For the story's never ended
And the play is never done
Until all of us have been burned a bit --
And burnished by
The Sun!

Introduction to Act II, "The Fantasticks", music by Harvey Schmidt, book and lyrics by Tom Jones.



-the other Doug

Posted by: centsworth_II Jun 22 2008, 04:48 PM

And don't forget http://www2.hivolda.no/jpv/mother.htm

Posted by: nprev Jun 22 2008, 06:04 PM

Interesting. Way OT, of course, but the Korean words for father and mother respectively (IIRC) are abogi (diminutive: apa) and omani (diminutive: oma). Korean appears to be related to the Finno-Ugaric group of languages, although of course has substantial Chinese influence.

Posted by: tedstryk Jun 22 2008, 07:54 PM

What nprev is saying about the term for water is true, but the word, but this is a case of parallel evolution. Luna is taken from Latin, or more specifically, Roman mythology (As well as the names for the other planets, which the Russians also use). However, there is also a Prussian word, louksna [pronounced "luxna" in Prussian but becomes "luna" when slavic pronunciation rules are thrown at it], which translates "the bright/white object," and was often used to describe heat lightning and meteors, not just the moon. This is an indo-European word that came to the Romans through the Etruscans, who did use it to refer to the moon. Still, the fact that it fit the nomenclature accepted for the rest of the solar system helped establish it as a specific reference to the moon (although other meanings do exist). Czar/Tsar is definitely connected to Caesar. Caesar, which was a title derived from Julius Caesar but taken by the roman Emperors, continued to be used by the Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire, which was of course largely a Greek entity. As the Byzantines weakened and fell, Russia dreamed of conquering Constantinople and becoming the "third Rome," which is why they adopted the title.

With regard to naming, I am not suggesting that American names are particularly creative. What I am saying is that when the name of the spacecraft and target are exactly the same, it can make for some really confusing reading and writing (not to mention the fact that searching databases and Google for information on "Mars-3" tends to pick up any chance sequencing of "Mars" and "3").

Posted by: David Jun 22 2008, 08:52 PM

Ted, I'm sorry, but it's just not the case -- with reference to Slavic languages. In English and other western European languages, yes, when Luna appears, it's directly or indirectly from Latin. But in Slavic the origin is different. As the reference I directed you to says, "Eto slovo nye zaimstvovaniye iz Latinskovo..." -- "This word is not a borrowing from Latin".



The Etruscans weren't Indo-European; the Romans were. The word luna in Latin fits in quite nicely with other Latin light-words, like lux and is clearly of native Italic origin.

Posted by: tedstryk Jun 22 2008, 10:59 PM

David, the Etruscan connection is via Losna, their moon goddess. Many speculate that their is a Luna connection.
I know what the link says, but it also lists the relationship with the Latin word. Even Louksna itself is, via the IE connection, related to Luna, and there is a parallel relationship. I can see this is going nowhere, so I am only responding to on-topic comments from this point on. The only reason I brought this whole thing up is to point out that it wasn't a direct transliteration, nor was it a direct translation, in that translating a word for moon into English as "Luna" would not be standard.

Posted by: jasedm Jun 26 2008, 10:09 AM

An article in the The Times today boldly asserts that an asteroid impact early in Mars' history left a 6,600 x 5,300 MILE crater (the Borealis basin).
This is amazing news, as the crater would have been vastly bigger than the planet itself
Even if the diameter quoted were in kilometres, the crater would still be only 100km or so smaller than Mars' diameter.
It's depressing that this comes from The Times, a generally well-respected publication. I'd be interested in what the correct figures for the basin actually were....
The article goes on to say: "A bigger impact occurred when Earth was struck soon after its formation producing clouds of debris that formed the Moon, but it was so catastrophic that there is no evidence left"
'Clouds of debris'????
For all the fun http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4214623.ece

Edit: Ok I've read the source article now from Nature, and it seems that there was a huge impact, but I don't think it can be characterised as a 'crater' that would remain after isostatic relevelling and the almost complete re-melting of the planet afterwards.

Posted by: jmjawors Jun 26 2008, 02:02 PM

Sometimes even the researchers can contribute to the inaccuracies. JPL's release is entitled 'Spacecraft Reveal Largest Crater in Solar System' (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-119) though just a few paragraphs into the article they admit that "We haven't proved the giant-impact hypothesis." If the hypothesis isn't proven then the spacecraft haven't revealed anything yet.

Not knocking the theory, it's just that the headline is misleading.

Posted by: imipak Jun 26 2008, 06:36 PM

The phenomena of "interesting paper in Nature" --> non-scientifc PR people at the researcher's institution --> press release --> non-science journalist writing the article --> sub-ed writes a sensationalist and wildly inaccurate headline is widespread throughout science (well, areas of science that sometimes generate MSM stories, anyway) and has been extensively covered at another site I frequent, RealClimate.org . Their subject matter has very little to do with UMSF, but it's interesting that the same woes afflict them. Coincidentally I just popped over there to hunt for the piece I remember going into this in some detail, only to find that http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/more-pr-related-confusion/. (See also http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/natures-press-advisories/ and especially http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/how-not-to-write-a-press-release/ , the latter being the article I was hunting for.)

I emphatically do NOT want to drift off-topic onto matters climatological (that's what RC is for) but it's interesting that they labour under the same curse as engineers and scientists engaged in astronomical and planetary research, and space in general -- that of public interest in their activities. Be careful what you wish for...

Posted by: jasedm Jun 26 2008, 09:07 PM

This thread overlaps what's being said on the 'Mars North Polar Basin' thread (apologies) but I'd like to concur with Imipak's view:

"The phenomena of "interesting paper in Nature" --> non-scientifc PR people at the researcher's institution --> press release --> non-science journalist writing the article --> sub-ed writes a sensationalist and wildly inaccurate headline is widespread throughout science"

Chinese whispers...

Posted by: Stu Jul 8 2008, 08:33 PM

Not so much "inaccurate" as ridiculous...

Look at the advert banner splayed across the top of Phil Plait's "Bad Astronomer" blog today... I know it's not his fault, he doesn't pick the adverts, but BA Blog is now part of "Discover" science magazine's website, so they really, really shouldn't allow this to happen... should they..?

Posted by: nprev Jul 8 2008, 08:45 PM

I concur completely. However, I doubt that Discover even knows the contents of the banner ads (other then that they are presumably G-rated) since they probably come from a third-party promoter who's paying them for the page space.

Still, saying that it's in bad taste is an understatement, and certainly underscores a huge problem. So many just don't know the difference between astronomy and astrology; I've probably explained that a hundred times to various people over the years. Not sure if it's because the two words are very similar in English, or if the superstition that gave birth to astronomy is just so deeply embedded in popular culture that defining boundaries is somehow difficult to do decisively. Do those of you who are native speakers of other languages (esp. non-Western European ones) see this phenomenon as well?

Posted by: centsworth_II Jul 8 2008, 09:10 PM

They are both "astro-" words, and who the heck knows the difference between -nomy and -ology (without looking it up)? This is basically a vocabulary memorization problem.

Another pair of confused terms is paleontology and archeology. Both bring to mind the image of a researcher hunched down in a pit dusting off some artifact, natural or man made.

Posted by: Stu Jul 16 2008, 09:34 PM

WONDERFUL piece just now on the UK's "NEWS AT TEN"... not bad enough that the piece started off with a video clip of Phoenix's EDL, but in the piece, reporting on the wonderful Mars Express images of Echus Chasma just released, the "science correspondent" said the images showed that "Mars perhaps isn't the boiling cauldron we imagine it to be..."

I'll see if the report is online...

Posted by: Stu Jul 17 2008, 05:34 AM

... it wasn't, sadly. Oh well, hope some people saw it.

In other news, could http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article4347157.ece headline BE more wrong..?? Expected better of The Times...

Posted by: volcanopele Jul 17 2008, 06:36 AM

Where can I buy that lamp NASA is using to shine a light on the galaxy?

Posted by: centsworth_II Jul 17 2008, 06:37 AM

Just looks like clumsy grammar to me. Wouldn't "Shines new light on the galaxy" be just fine?

Posted by: centsworth_II Jul 17 2008, 06:42 AM

Come on guys, it's just an expression.

Posted by: djellison Jul 17 2008, 07:18 AM

I agree - it's just a turn of phrase - but ' Sees the Universe in a new light' would perhaps be better.

ESA have pulled a blinder - as Phil Stooke pointed out...
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMVGAWIPIF_0.html
"As it flies by at a distance of 97 km, Mars Express will image areas of Phobos that have never been glimpsed before"

WRONG. It's been glimpsed in full by the Viking orbiters. No excuses for that sort of misinformation.

Posted by: Sunspot Jul 17 2008, 09:56 AM

Isn't she normally their showbusiness/entertainment news correspondent?

Posted by: Sunspot Jul 17 2008, 10:00 AM

A year or two ago BBC News had a report that mentioned how Hubble had "fired a beam of light across the universe" hmmm

Few employ dedicated science journalists, and certainly not those with specialised knowledge on specific subjects. How can you be knowledgeable in everything from stem cell research to cosmology.

I just think the media can't really be bothered with science stories, in all honesty their aren't a great number of people that are going to know much more about the story than the journalist reporting it, so factual inaccuracies, at least to them, don't matter as few will notice if they get it totally wrong.

I wonder if it's just as sloppy when dealing with other subjects.

Posted by: Stu Jul 17 2008, 02:26 PM

No, because telescope = light IN, not OUT. That's er... oh, what is it, hang on... oh yes, a torch...

BTW, the ITN Mars Express piece is now online at http://www.itv.com/News/Articles/Was-there-life-on-Mars-930980581.html

I particularly enjoyed the Mars = boiling cauldron reference...

Posted by: centsworth_II Jul 17 2008, 02:58 PM

You must be familiar with the expression "to shine a light on" as in "to bring new understanding to", no?

Do you also have a problem with these headlines:

http://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040805discoveries.html

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061011_saturn_moons.html
Imagine that! A shadow shining a light!

Posted by: Stu Jul 17 2008, 03:04 PM

Yes, I am familiar with that expression thanks; I think I've used it in at least one of my books.

As for those other headlines, they're totally different, because....

Oh, never mind, no big deal. I just thought this was supposed to be a light-hearted thread where we could draw attention to things we found funny or inaccurate. My mistake.

Posted by: ugordan Jul 17 2008, 03:10 PM

I agree with centsworth_II on this one, "on the galaxy" would be a better choice of words. Come on, are we really becoming this sensitive that we're starting to proclaim mistakes such as this one as woeful inaccuracies?

I agree about the comment on Hubble-fires-beam-of-light of an older release as that was simply idiotic, but this is really not in the same league. IMHO it's stretching this thread a bit too far. This is becoming nitpicking; we need to lighten up a bit!

Posted by: remcook Jul 17 2008, 03:24 PM

"...lighten up a bit!"
shining a torch would work in this case!

Posted by: djellison Jul 17 2008, 04:05 PM

I agree. Using that phrase isn't inaccurate - it's just a turn of phrase.

ESA's recent gaff, however, is inaccurate, and in quite a bad way.

Posted by: imipak Jul 17 2008, 05:31 PM

One for the grammar nazis...

I'm including a 200K screenshot rather than just the text* because it was only after I'd finished reading the main story that my eye alighted on... well, I'm not going to spoil it, you'll just have to click through. Enjoy...

(*hope that's OK! )

[EDIT: I should explain the grammar nazi reference - I am known as one at work, as I have a deeply irritating bad habit of returning system requirement documents sent for a security review with the missing/surplus punctuation and so on corrected. This is a Bad Idea for many, many reasons, not least my own grammatical inadequacy. So that's a dig at myself ]

Posted by: centsworth_II Jul 17 2008, 06:28 PM

Shouldn't that be "...I'm not going to mar it..."?

Posted by: Tesheiner Aug 1 2008, 07:49 AM

Not necessarily "bad astronomy" but all newspapers I read this morning had a headline like "There's water on mars" or "NASA discovers water on mars".
<sigh>

Posted by: dvandorn Aug 1 2008, 03:29 PM

Um, yeah. But to an extent, that's exactly what the Phoenix team announced, final "proof" that water exists on Mars.

Unfortunately, the American media sort of treated it as a joke. I saw one of the cable news networks greet this news with your basic "And this is what, the 20th time we've heard this from NASA? How is this time different from the last 19?" A planetary astronomer then explained how it's different, how this time we're not inferring water's presence at some time in the past, this time we actually *tasted* the water, to which the anchor's inevitable reply was "Really? How does it taste?"

The 24-hour news cycle isn't very friendly to complex scientific issues... *sigh*...

-the other Doug

Posted by: ilbasso Aug 1 2008, 03:44 PM

I think the 'inferring vs. proving' argument has some interesting nuances. For example, not that I doubt at all the presence of extrasolar planets, we have actually only inferred their presence at the present time. The situation is analogous to the "discovery" of Neptune. Bouvard, Adams, and Le Verrier all inferred the existence of another planet after detecting perturbations in Uranus's orbit. It was twenty years from the initial detection of perturbations until the visual "discovery" of Neptune in 1843. So, when did the actual discovery of Neptune's existence occur? When it was first deduced mathematically, or when someone saw it for the first time as what it was?

Posted by: centsworth_II Aug 1 2008, 04:00 PM

The NASA press release uses the words "confirms" and "identified" (water in a soil sample). It is the press' use of the word "Discover" in it's headlines over and over that causes the problem. Water can be identified (or not) in every Mars sample from now to eternity. It doesn't mean that each time water is found it is a "discovery". It's sad to see the press, of all organizations, misuse language.

Posted by: MahFL Aug 1 2008, 04:25 PM

The boiling cauldron does not relate to what conditions are now, but what might have been in the past when and if Mars was warmer, and deep down underground, like next to a hot volcano.......

Posted by: nprev Aug 1 2008, 04:40 PM

I don't know...I'm torn between being happy that the mainstream press pays any attention at all to UMSF discoveries, and the fact that it's always distilled to the lowest common denominator, which is often wrong.

IMHO, all but truly egregious errors are forgiveable; at least people know that things are happening, and hopefully enough curiosity is stimulated thereby for them to learn more (which of course is easier then ever now with the Net.)

Posted by: Hungry4info Aug 1 2008, 05:19 PM

A few planets have actually been confirmed as planets, with their true masses known. The Transit method results in most of these. A planet passes between us and it's star, and thus we know the inclination. The true mass of a planet detected by radial velocity is equal to

true mass = minimum mass / sin( i),

Where i is the inclination of the planet in degrees. A planet with an edge-on orbit is 90 degrees, and face-on orbit is 0 degrees. Planets with near face-on orbits transit their stars, and thus we can detect this and determine the inclination, and thus their true mass. Hence, we know if it's really a planet or not. This is no longer inference, this is proving. Most of the 307 planets are just candidates, but a few are known to be planets.

Gravitational microlensing provides yet another way to determine the true mass of a planet. In this method, a solar system passes between us and a background star, and through gravitational lensing, the background star's light is bent. If there's a planet in the lensing system, it will show up in the pattern of the light distortion. As this is a function of true mass, planets detected with this method are, without doubt, planets.

WASP-1 b (Transit method)
WASP-2 b (Transit method)
WASP-3 b (Transit method)
WASP-4 b (Transit method)
WASP-5 b (Transit method)
WASP-6 b (Transit method)
WASP-7 b (Transit method)
WASP-8 b (Transit method)
WASP-9 b (Transit method)
WASP-10 b (Transit method)
WASP-11 b (Transit method)
WASP-12 b (Transit method)
WASP-13 b (Transit method)
WASP-14 b (Transit method)
HD 149026 b (Transit method)
HD 189733 b (Transit method)
HD 209458 b (Transit method -- First planet known to transit)
2M1207 b (Direct detection via infrared imaging)
Upsilon Andromedae b (Spitzer direct detection provided constraints on inclination)
HD 17156 b (Transit Method)
Epsilon Eridani b (HST astrometry)
Gliese 436 b (Transit method)
XO-1 b (Transit method)
XO-2 b (Transit method)
XO-3 b (Transit method)
XO-4 b (Transit method)
CoRoT-Exo-1 b (Transit method)
CoRoT-Exo-2 b (Transit method)
CoRoT-Exo-3 b (Transit method)
CoRoT-Exo-4 b (Transit method)
CoRoT-Exo-5 b (Transit method)
HAT-P-1 b (Transit method)
HAT-P-2 b (Transit method)
HAT-P-3 b (Transit method)
HAT-P-4 b (Transit method)
HAT-P-5 b (Transit method)
HAT-P-6 b (Transit method)
HAT-P-7 b (Transit method)
HAT-P-9 b (Transit method)
TrES-1 b (Transit method)
TrES-2 b (Transit method)
TrES-3 b (Transit method)
TrES-4 b (Transit method)
Lupis-TR-3 b (Transit method)
SWEEPS-4 b (Transit method via HST)
SWEEPS-11 b (Transit method vi HST)
OGLE-TR-56 b (Gravitational microlensing)
OGLE-TR-211 b (Gravitational microlensing)
OGLE-TR-132 b (Gravitational microlensing)
OGLE-TR-113 b (Gravitational microlensing)
OGLE-TR-111 b (Gravitational microlensing)
OGLE-TR-182 b (Gravitational microlensing)
OGLE-2003-BLG-235L b (Gravitational microlensing)
OGLE-2005-BLG-071L b (Gravitational microlensing)
OGLE-2006-BLG-109L b (Gravitational microlensing)
OGLE-2006-BLG-109L c (Gravitational microlensing)
MOA-2007-BLG-192-L b (Gravitational microlensing)
TW Hydrae b (Planet inclination determined via interaction with protoplanetary disk).
PSR B1257+12 A (Pulsar timing, detection planet-planet interactions)
PSR B1257+12 B (Pulsar timing, detection planet-planet interactions)
PSR B1257+12 C (Pulsar timing, detection planet-planet interactions)


The others are candidates, whose true masses are unknown.

Posted by: ilbasso Aug 1 2008, 07:25 PM

My point is that we have been inferring the presence of water on Mars for a long time, with increasing confidence, using tests that explain its presence (e.g., hydrogen in the soil detected from orbit, etc.). I guess what I'm trying to say is that when do we absolutely, unambiguously state that something is "proven"? I would argue that some people might claim that microlensing or transit methods are still only indirect indicators that an extrasolar planet is present...they won't believe it until they see it with their own eyes. Heck, we knew that there was water vapor (in the form of clouds) in Mars's atmosphere, we even saw the chunk of ice under Phoenix after it landed - but we were unwilling to state with confidence that there was indeed water on Mars until we had separated out its elemental hydrogen and oxygen. For all I know, there may be people who would claim even after the TEGA results that there could be some other explanation for what was produced in the experiment. They won't believe it until they can melt the water themselves and run it over their hands.

All I'm saying is that we humans, especially non-scientists, have a hard time believing something until we actually experience it first hand. Witness the number of people who still don't believe Apollo happened - and that is something that is provable. I won't even get into evolution - or for that matter, the pathogenic ("germ") theory of disease. Although they explain almost everything we see, they are still only theories.

Many people are much more willing to interpret their senses or perceptions than to trust in theories. I saw it, therefore it must be what I think it was. I think that's the basis for the other 99% of the internet!!

Posted by: TheChemist Aug 1 2008, 10:08 PM

There are lots of compounds containing H, and several that can form clouds or sublimate under martian atmospheric conditions.
However, there is only one molecule that melts at 0 oC and has a molecular weight of 18.
Case closed

Posted by: Hungry4info Aug 2 2008, 12:42 AM

Something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPi588QohEg

Posted by: nprev Aug 2 2008, 01:12 AM

That does it. I'm gonna send Chuck Norris over to kick her ass.

Posted by: Shaka Aug 2 2008, 02:15 AM

He no longer makes house calls. She'll have to make an appointment at his clinic.

Posted by: nprev Aug 2 2008, 03:54 AM

<aghast> Of course. How could I forget??!</aghast> Chuck Norris does not kick one's ass on demand; it must be presented for appropriate treatment at a time & place of his own choosing!

EDIT: just got off the phone with Pat Sajak. We have her last known address, which of course I have transmitted to Chuck Norris. It's only a matter of time now. (Chuck Norris employs a very persuasive global staff that will convince her to make an appointment at a convienient time....for Chuck Norris.)

Posted by: MahFL Dec 12 2008, 06:38 PM

From a BBC caption of a Full Moon...

"The moon will appear high in the night sky"


Don't full moons appear on the horizon, just after sunset ?............

BTW tonight the full moon will appear bigger as it is closer to the Earth.

Posted by: centsworth_II Dec 12 2008, 08:09 PM

Wouldn't the moon, after having appeared on the horizon, continue to rise until it was 'high in the night sky'?

Edit: Oh, I get it. You mean "appear" as in "spring into sight". I guess "appear" in the BBC caption should be taken to mean "be present (at some point)".

Posted by: djellison Dec 12 2008, 09:07 PM

Yeah - that one's a bit more semantics. Although being the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation, and this being a transient astronomical event - it's cloudy. So the correct headline would be "Unusually bright moon to be obscured by cloud"

Doug

Posted by: centsworth_II Dec 12 2008, 09:22 PM

So then the full moon might 'spring into sight' high in the night sky, through a gap in the clouds.

Posted by: alan Dec 13 2008, 03:02 AM

The full moon, being opposite the sun, has the reverse of the sun's seasons. In the summer the sun at noon is significantly higher above the horizon than it is at noon during the winter. The reverse is true of the moon, at midnight during the winter the full moon is much higher above the horizon than it was during the summer.

Posted by: dvandorn Dec 13 2008, 05:24 AM

Just to get it all somewhat straight...

The "full Moon" occurs when the Moon is 180 degrees around from the Sun in Earth's skies. That doesn't happen at sunset/moonrise at every point on Earth. In fact, the Moon is only exactly 180 degrees around from the Sun for a split-second. Of course, the *apparent* amount of the visible lunar surface that is sunlit is such that the Moon *appears* full for most everyone around the globe for 15 or so hours on either side of its exact moment of "fullness."

Which brings us to "appear." The verb doesn't just mean to become visible after not having been visible. It also is used to specify in what particular place you can see an object. For example, you often see picture captions with language like "Dione appears in the lower left portion of the image, with Saturn's cloudtops in the background." Or "The rock in question appears in the right-center portion of this image, taken on Sol 743."

When I walk outside well after sunset and see the Moon high in the sky, I can say that "the Moon appears very high, large and bright tonight" without the Moon having been invisible to everyone, everywhere up until the moment I stepped out the door...

-the other Doug

Posted by: Juramike Dec 13 2008, 01:33 PM

Due to the geometry of the furniture orientation and the bedroom skylight, during a few of the winter months and at fuller phases, the moon will shine through the skylight and hit me square on the face in the early morning hours. Although it's not an official http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonnames.htm, I usually refer to this as the "Annoying Moon".

For all practical purposes, this moon "suddenly appeared high in the sky" from my observation point on the pillow.

Score one for the BBC....

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Dec 13 2008, 05:00 PM

Sounds like the ancient Aztecs constructed your home.

Posted by: Hungry4info Dec 13 2008, 05:52 PM

!

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 28 2008, 07:34 AM

I just saw Benjamin Button... a pretty good movie, I thought, but when they showed the Moon over the water, it was a mirror image!

Phil

Posted by: Phil Stooke Dec 28 2008, 08:15 AM

EDIT: this post was entered by my impudent daughter Annie

Posted by: OWW Jan 3 2009, 07:56 PM

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/01/03/20090103mars0103.html

"Not all of it has been triumphs. A spacecraft carrying an earlier version of the rovers blew up when it was three days from landing on Mars. Successes still amaze Christensen, though, particularly the landing of these rovers."

Huh? What on earth are they babbling about? The TES-instrument on Mars Observer maybe?

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 3 2009, 11:28 PM

At least it wasn't that damn Apollo image they always use with Mare Crisium in the center.

Posted by: nprev Jan 4 2009, 02:59 AM

Not to be outdone, UPI published a story today with http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/01/03/Mars_rovers_roll_on_after_five_years/UPI-75781231015015/ for the stock MER-on-the-surface painting that was not only clearly written before the MERs landed but also gives Spirit's touchdown date as Jan 3, 2003.

Well, they only had 5 years to correct this...or is it six?

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jan 4 2009, 06:07 PM

I think one of the reasons for a lot of this dumb reporting is the attitude by the media that with just a little background or by reading one or two articles they can understand anything complex. Listen to http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=5737&view=findpost&p=133581 and there are two really dumb questions at the end. What's really telling is that in both cases the reporters don't even realize how absurd their questions are. One reporter is interested in the possibility of Meridiani water indicating that perhaps Schiaparelli and Lowell really did see water in their so-called canal observations (a mere hundred or so years ago). The other wants to know if there is going to be definitive proof of life on Mars within the subsequent three weeks.

I don't fault these two guys as members of the public for considering scenarios based on limited discussions of Mars they have learned through popular culture. But for pete's sake, the editor should know enough to send someone who has a superficial inkling of the current understanding of the science involved. While it would be nice for each of them to have a science correspondent, I understand the budget realities of staffing. But with a thing this big on the horizon all they really needed to do was sit someone down with a recent book in the weeks preceding the event. Having worked with the press for so long, I really think there is an arrogance that they know or can know about any topic in a detailed way very easily. Sometimes I think I'd like to hang around a journalism school to try to understand this phenomenon.

Posted by: ilbasso Jan 16 2009, 09:16 PM

Overheard on CBS Radio this afternoon:

"It was so cold in northeastern Ohio last night that residents saw the Northern Lights, which are normally visible only at much colder polar latitudes."

Posted by: ngunn Jan 16 2009, 09:53 PM

I hear and read this everywhere. In a recent BBC TV programme about (Joanna Lumley) going to northern Norway in search of the northern lights a so-called local expert said that they wouldn't be expected for a few days as the weather was 'too warm'. There is a reference in the lyrics of Harry Partch's composition "US Highball" to the northern lights being indicative of cold weather. Apart from cold correlating with clear skies there can't be anything in it (can there?) How did this very prevalent myth get going?

Posted by: aggieastronaut Jan 17 2009, 12:50 AM

I don't quite know if this counts, but did anyone catch Griffin calling Phoenix a rover today during his goodbye speech? :\

Posted by: nprev Jan 17 2009, 01:44 AM

I can't see any causative link, Nigel; the 'air' @ auroral altitudes is barely thick enough to even transmit the effects of temperature as we're used to thinking of it. I'd say the myth was borne of the fact that the latitudes at which aurorae are commonly visible (maybe 60 deg north or better) are usually pretty chilly at night anyhow. Plus, cold air is usually also quite still air, which enhances visibility unless there's an inversion.

Wow, AA, did he really say that?? I'll have to listen to the sppech.

Posted by: nprev Jan 22 2009, 02:29 PM

From http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE50L2TS20090122 today, boldface is mine:

"One of the "errors" that Galileo made, which Galluzzi suspects may have been attributed to his bad eyesight, is that he believed Saturn was not perfectly round but may have had an irregular, inflated side.

With his 20-power telescope and with his eyes in bad shape he might have mistaken Saturn's gaseous ring to surmise that it was formed of one planet with two moons as satellites."

I'd possibly have given the author a pass if he was referring to the F-ring alone, but he wasn't, of course.

Posted by: centsworth_II Jan 22 2009, 09:22 PM

Why is it not mentioned in the article that Saturn really is flattened at the poles and bulging at the equator? There's no way to know from the article if the fault lies with the reporter, or that Galluzzi guy.

Posted by: centsworth_II Jan 24 2009, 09:46 PM

It's enough to make a far side/dark side purist's head explode.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090123-sun-far-side.html
"After all these years," (mission scientist) Guhathakurta quipped, "we're finally getting to see the dark side of the sun."

A guy can have some fun, can't he? But at the risk of confusing the mainstream press.

Posted by: Stu Feb 12 2009, 07:27 PM

Never expected to be able to post a PERSONAL example here, but it happened today..!

I had a call from a BBC reporter yesterday. She didn't start well. "I understand you're a big UFO expert?" she said. Sigh. "No, I'm the exact opposite... I'm an anti-UFO expert... I'm an astronomer. I think you want someone else, sorry." "Oh," she said, momentarily lost, then came back with "So, can you comment on a UFO story for me?" Always happy to help out a reporter, especially when it's a chance to set them straight on something going on "up there", so when she told me about recent reports of "UFO activity" in Cumbria, specifically about "orange lights seen over Sellafield on January 24th" I told her that many people mistake Venus (now clearly visible to the naked eye) and the Space Station for UFOs. (Indeed, ISS made a very bright pass over Cumbria on Jan 24th, so there you go...) I also said that people often mistake Iridium flares for UFOs, and explained that these are bright flares in the sky caused by sunlight briefly reflecting off the solar panels of satellites high above the Earth.

Just look what she wrote.

(link to article - I've asked the reporter to correct it, but no sign of that yet http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cumbria/7884144.stm )

Posted by: stevesliva Feb 12 2009, 07:31 PM

Ahh, those visible mobile phone signals always make ME think I'm seeing things, too.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Feb 12 2009, 07:47 PM

Sometimes when I get up at night and it's too dark to see my way around, I reach for the amazing cell phone that Stu gave me while he was here. I then hit the speed dial button for the nearest Iridium satellite and presto! the room is lit up by orange flashes as they make their way out of the phone, around the corner, down the hall and up the chimney.

Posted by: Stu Feb 12 2009, 07:54 PM

Ah, I see it's been corrected now... glad I grabbed a screen-shot!

And I need that phone back Dan; best torch I ever bought!

Posted by: stewjack Feb 12 2009, 08:32 PM

Looks like some sort of correction has been made to the article on the web. What I was actually looking for was the ability to comment on the the web article. We could have had some fun, but maybe they only allow commentary on articles written by semi-competent reporters.

Maybe it's just that they only allow commentary from British ISP's? The Guardian allows commentary.

Posted by: nprev Feb 12 2009, 08:43 PM

...sorry, Stu, but I'm dyin'! Dan, I gotta borrow that phone; I'm in San Antonio now & my reception sucks for my conventional cel, I need the LaserLink!

On a serious note, I guess...what the hell??? This was written and presumably proofread by someone else before it was published; do other people (not us) actually see cel-phone transmissions? I am completely confounded by this error, probably more so than by the usual misconceptions that plague descriptions of UMSF activities.

Posted by: Stu Feb 12 2009, 09:09 PM

No, no, no need... she was really nice when I emailed and pointed out the error, and I like to think she just mis-heard me over the phone, so no harm done, I just thought it was funny, that's all.

( Besides, if I was to be responsible for a BBC reporter being given a hard time it would jeapordise my own radio Outreach work, so we'll leave it at I think. )

Posted by: centsworth_II Mar 5 2009, 03:55 PM

http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/article981309.ece
"NASA can land a spacecraft on a peanut-shaped asteroid 150 million miles away, but it doesn't come close to hitting the budget target for building its spacecraft, congressional auditors say." (my bold)

My first reaction was:
Imagine. You work for JAXA, you toil long and hard on the almost miraculous mission that is Hayabusa only to have it turned into an example of NASA can-do-ism which is spread around the world on the AP press wires.

Then I remembered the http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/nearlanding_preview_010212.html.

Still, a lot of people are going to make the connection with the more recent Hayabusa mission

Posted by: djellison May 1 2009, 11:11 PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5255394/Alien-skull-spotted-on-Mars.html

The amount of fail in this article hurts. I'll leave you to enjoy them yourself, but meanwhile...

We have images taken of the back of this thing - Sol 1367

Dan's calib Pancam
http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/pds/257/2P247720587RADAWCCP2415L257C1.JPG

a raw frame
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/p/1367/2P247720537EFFAWCCP2415L7M1.JPG

Normally I don't mind kooky articles like this one - but it doesn't even describe the rover, its mission, its achievements. It just copies and pastes from a paradolia infested forum and makes a 'story' out of a rock.

If this was The Express or The Mail or The Sun....I'd have expected it. But THE TELEGRAPH?

Posted by: ustrax May 1 2009, 11:20 PM

"a panoramic NASA camera known as Spirit."
It hurts...

Posted by: imipak May 2 2009, 07:23 PM

Looks like a generic "and finally" inch-high snippet from below the fold on p12, just before the Court Circular. It doesn't seem to be saying "OMG alienz?!", anyway, it's saying "Hey, look, the Internet is full of kooks!" (Not exactly news, I grant you, but it's the Snoreygraph after all...) For full-on, fist-in-teeth cringe factor, the BBC radio "Today" programme contains more epic failure than that article, six days a week...

Posted by: nprev May 2 2009, 08:42 PM

Well, there's a LITTLE bit of tongue-in-cheek in the article...but not nearly enough, and the errata are another issue. I take it that our UK members have submitted appropriate critiques to the editor?

Posted by: Sunspot May 3 2009, 07:42 AM

Didn't one of the presenters ask if the recent downturn in solar activity and deep solar minimum was caused by human activity?

Posted by: nprev May 3 2009, 09:43 AM

Yeesh...really???

For once I'm glad that the US mass media generally ignores space science; if they can't add signal, then at least have the decency not to introduce noise!

Posted by: lyford May 3 2009, 04:34 PM

This quote would have been extremely helpful in some work meetings I have been attending!

Posted by: PFK May 23 2009, 02:17 PM

Yesterday's Times - it has been corrected now but the comments from readers at the bottom of the page give the game away!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6337727.ece

Posted by: centsworth_II May 25 2009, 05:19 PM

I was surprised to see this irritating Mars myth reappear in my morning funnies. But there may be more to the story....

Some of the comments http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2009/05/25/ are funny:
“'Every year. Every fracking year.' (Phil Plait, astronomer).... Someone, please! In the name of astronomers’ blood pressure all over the world. Make it stop already."

"Brings to mind what Ernie Kovacs once said.'Even though the moon is only one seventh the size of the earth, it’s further away.'"

But this comment seems to be from the comic writer himself:
"Relax, folks. It’s just using this internet myth as a storyline. Let it play out."

If so, it may be interesting to follow along.

Posted by: Stu May 29 2009, 07:33 PM

... and the prize for most stoopid criticism of NASA in ages goes to the guy I write about in this post...

http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/how-to-completely-miss-the-point-idiot/

Posted by: Pavel May 30 2009, 07:24 PM

Somebody is wrong on the internet!
http://xkcd.com/386/

Posted by: stevesliva May 30 2009, 08:51 PM

You know, the willingness of people to deride NASA-taking-the-advice-of-people-on-internet is ironically one of the main reasons that they are extremely reluctant to do so. (well, amongst other reasons) Just imagine, "$300m Rover Stuck because of Dude in England" No one's blamed it on you yet, so they must be doing a good job.

Posted by: Sunspot Jun 22 2009, 12:55 PM

Hmmmm....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5566137/Nasa-prepares-to-bomb-the-moon.html

Posted by: ugordan Jun 22 2009, 02:15 PM

What's wrong with that article? I've seen far, far more inaccurate articles than this one. In layman's terms NASA really is going to bomb the moon. What else do you call dropping a high energy object on a target? And what is a "missile" other than a guided projectile? Seing how the Centaur stage is both a rocket stage and will be guided into a crater of interest fits that definition.

The only thing possibly incorrect is the claimed detection of oxygen at the poles. I may be wrong, but I thought only hydrogen was detected and only by inferrence that it's in water ice form do you get oxygen.

Posted by: MahFL Jun 22 2009, 04:03 PM

"missile that will fire a hole deep in the surface of the moon"

What kind of English is that ? Surely, even if it were a missile, it will impact the moon after being fired.
Also should it not be "into" rather than "in".

Posted by: Sunspot Jun 22 2009, 10:21 PM

Guff

Posted by: nprev Jun 22 2009, 10:32 PM

Well, it could've used some proofreading, anyhow:

"The vessel swill be the first American spacecrafts to make a lunar trip since 1999."


Oy...

Posted by: stevesliva Jun 22 2009, 11:42 PM

Yarrrrrrrrr. Avast, moon.

Posted by: aggieastronaut Jun 23 2009, 01:04 AM

*awaits a photoshop of an eyepatch on the man in the moon*

Posted by: ilbasso Jun 23 2009, 02:22 AM

You reminded me of "Scott McCloud, Space Angel" for the first time in 44 years!! Check out the new avatar...

Posted by: dvandorn Jun 23 2009, 02:25 AM

"Aye," says Taurus.....

-the other Doug

Posted by: monty python Jun 23 2009, 06:21 AM

The next time nasa has a vehicle naming contest, let' all vote STARDUSTER!

Brian

Posted by: tedstryk Jul 26 2009, 04:03 PM

This pales in comparison to some of the things posted here, but the press keeps repeating that the Jupiter impact observations were Hubble's first post-repair science. A brief search reveals that quite a few scientific programs have already been carried out. This is the first solar system project - http://archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=12004

Looks quite interesting. The reason this bothers me is that this type of reporting creates legends like that of Mars-3. In popular literature, it is almost always said that Mars-2 and 3 were pre-programed and thus couldn't wait out the dust storm (while Mariner-9 could), thus running out of film. The reality is that Mars 2 had transmitter problems and sent back no images, and Mars-3 had to use 250 line mode (plus was in an awful orbit due to lack of fuel), thus limiting the usefulness of its imagery. My point is that the pre-programmed bit has been repeated so many times that many new works simply reference older works that contain the legend, despite it being totally baseless. I can see the story of Hubble's "first" post-repair science going the same way.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 17 2009, 09:01 PM

Here's an entertaining story by Dr. Neil Tyson on the stars as they appeared in the film the Titanic.

http://www.worstpreviews.com/headline.php?id=15089&count=0

Posted by: Stu Dec 10 2009, 06:31 AM

And here was me thinking Phoenix was a lander...

http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/boosters_bits/2009/12/theres_hope_that_lockheeds_mars_rover_phoenix_might_spring_back_to_life.html

Posted by: nprev Dec 10 2009, 06:40 AM

...and it's not just the headline, the error permeates the entire damn article!

Quite a find, Stu. The guy that wrote this is gonna get a few nastygrams for sure; the very epitome of the phrase "egregious error"!!!

Posted by: centsworth_II Dec 10 2009, 07:36 AM

My favorite:
"After landing May 25, 2008, the rover tooled around a portion of the Martian arctic for five months..."

Tooled around?!

Posted by: volcanopele Dec 10 2009, 08:51 AM

Still not as bad as the Mars Renaissance Orbiter landing on Mars. Yeah you read that right.

Posted by: Stu Dec 10 2009, 09:20 PM

I emailed the reporter and politely pointed out his mistake. The story has now been corrected.

(Still got the screengrab tho! )

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Dec 11 2009, 01:10 AM

He was rather testy by the time he got back to me. Said it was an innocent mistake. Yeah sure, like calling a garden shed a pickup truck.

Posted by: Sunspot Dec 11 2009, 08:47 AM

That is absolutely appalling journalism of the lowest standard. Shocking really.

Posted by: nprev Dec 11 2009, 08:58 AM

That's an excellent & most polite way of putting it, Sunspot.

What I find most astonishing is that this was essentially a local piece touting an internationally recognized gigantic technical achievement by a local manufacturer in a business journal.

No doubt at all in my mind that the reporter drew TREMENDOUS heat from a lot of big wheels pretty near & dear to his publisher...which is poetic justice, really.

Posted by: djellison Dec 11 2009, 11:20 AM

Well - the Daily Mail, not my favorite newspaper - picked up on the Norway Spiral - they emailed to ask questions, get more info about it - and I don't think they did too bad a job of it really.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1234773/The-answer-mystery-Norways-spiral-light-display-Was-failed-Russian-Bulava-missile-test.html

Posted by: Stu Dec 11 2009, 11:28 AM

The Daily Mail actually does a pretty good job of science reporting, usually. They've covered Mars stories very well in the past.

Posted by: imipak Dec 11 2009, 08:01 PM

Gonna have to take your word for it on that one, Stu

Posted by: Stu Dec 12 2009, 09:22 AM

Seriously, the Mail's science writer, (Michael Hanlon, I think his name is) is always very accurate and reliable when he writres up astronomy stories, I've never had any issues with anything he's written. And his book "The Real Mars" is a great read, one of my fave Mars books actually.

Okay... so... the Phoenix Mars "rover" was bad... I will just present this for you all without any comment, apart from "Cracking headline, Gromit..."

http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_indian-scientists-detect-signs-of-life-on-moon_1322785

Posted by: stevesliva Dec 12 2009, 04:33 PM

Organic chemistry means life. Irrefutable.

Posted by: Juramike Dec 12 2009, 04:47 PM

And having an amino acid fall together or PAH's glom up after some simple precursors bump into each other is barely even organic chemistry (in my opinion).

Posted by: centsworth_II Dec 12 2009, 04:56 PM

That a "senior space scientist" would declare "the presence of large sheets of ice" on the Moon and then go on to emphasize (in addition!) the "discovery of water molecules there" is amusing.

Posted by: PhilCo126 Dec 20 2009, 05:27 PM

Well these are O.K. ...
The top 10 space & astronomy related discoveries of the past decade:
http://news.discovery.com/space/top-10-space-stories-decade.html

Then why the hell would you post this in a thread on inaccuracy in reporting?

Posted by: lyford Dec 20 2009, 05:36 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/12/18/saturn.titan.reflection/index.html?eref=rss_tech&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_tech+%28RSS%3A+Technology%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Do they mean first in the same way we discover keep discovering evidence for the presence of water on Mars in the past?

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jan 5 2010, 02:30 AM

I was just searching through You Tube videos for the Rover lansings and I couldn't help but notice quite a few references to the "Mars Rover Phoenix." So I went back to Google and did a broad search for http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22mars+rover+phoenix%22&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_en___US343&ie=UTF-8 in quotes. Over 27,000 mentions came up.

Posted by: nprev Jan 5 2010, 02:47 AM

Sigh. I think I understand why this is happening, though it's no excuse. The longevity of Spirit & Oppy as well as their status as cultural icons makes the general public assume that anything we put on Mars is a rover.

That explanation definitely does not let would-be science journalists off the hook, though, esp. in the era of Google.

Posted by: Bart Feb 12 2010, 01:51 AM

I watched the launch of SDO on a cable news channel this morning. The anchors seemed completely unclear on what it was they were witnessing. Here are some of the gems that I remember:

"Do you know where this rocket is going? - It's going to the Sun!"

"So, it's basically a giant rocket-camera."

"The Atlas 5 is going to take pictures of the Sun."

Posted by: JohnVV Feb 12 2010, 08:08 AM

in response to bart

yes it is very sad .
just as sad as the "new" users over on LinuxQuestions forum
why can not even do a Google search
or try to install 10 year old software on a NEW laptop

unfortunately i do not think there is a fix for ether the journalists or MS win "clickers"

Posted by: MahFL Feb 12 2010, 11:22 AM

A friend of mine who should know better said it was a military payload on a Saturn V.....I think he might have been on the "red juice" the night before......He saw it launch as he lives only 12 miles away.

Posted by: machi Feb 12 2010, 12:11 PM

Take a look at the title of this page - http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/Admin/resources/cd_voyager.html#vgrISSEDR-J
Quite interesting

Posted by: nprev Feb 12 2010, 12:43 PM

Oy.

This one I can at least understand a tiny bit. The original concept mission that became Viking was called "Voyager". Of course, it's more likely a silly mistake by a tired or disinterested web developer.

Posted by: stevesliva Feb 12 2010, 04:57 PM

It's funny that the "lander" error is being pointed out, because I think a fair amount of the SDO press called it a "probe." Reading that term might have led the talking heads mentioned earlier to think it was actually going to the Sun.

Posted by: hendric Feb 12 2010, 05:28 PM

Machi,
I contacted the PDS node feedback link, and the page has been corrected. Another win for UMSF!

Posted by: Explorer1 Mar 3 2010, 07:42 AM

I wish I had a better place to post this, since it's not really 'inaccuracy' at all, but the moment I saw this I thought "what will UMSF think?", and I doubt it's worth starting a new topic just for this, so here goes, a Rube Goldberg machine made for a music video, with a sneaky MER appearance at 2:09!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

Rather nice to see the rovers get a cameo in pop culture, eh?

Posted by: centsworth_II Mar 3 2010, 08:06 AM

I had just watched that video before I read your post and not noticed!

Here's the rover at 1:58 awaiting it's cameo.

Posted by: djellison Mar 3 2010, 04:46 PM

Awesome :
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2875287/Gorilla-seen-in-Nasa-snap-from-Mars.html

(brought to my attention by a former colleague - I sure as hell wouldn't read The Sun's website)

Looks to me like MERA - just after Bonneville. Going to start looking with MMB

(a few short moments later )
RIGHT - It was Sol Sol 87 12:17:49

(I have been tweeting my analysis...how very 21st century)

Analysis of the Sun-Gorilla. Sol 87 was a 36m drive. Gorilla is 24m from end-location thus 11-ish- metres from Sol 76-87 site

AHh - Sol 87A drive was 36 metres, but distance covered as crow flies... only 20.5 metres (plus a 1 metre drop from rim of Bonneville)

And the Sun's Gorilla looks to me... to be this rock - http://bit.ly/dcUknh - now to check size with AlgorimancerPG tool from both sites

Posted by: Tesheiner Mar 3 2010, 05:16 PM

Geez!
Not only there is a "big foot" (and all the other animals e.g. the "speed turtle") near Home Plate but a Gorilla around Bonneville.

Posted by: djellison Mar 3 2010, 07:49 PM

My appalling typography skills come together with a couple of debunking images

Posted by: stevesliva Mar 3 2010, 08:02 PM

It's totally drinking from that aslant puddle.

Posted by: AndyG Mar 3 2010, 10:12 PM

Would it be remiss of me to suggest to those non-English readers that it's only about one hundred miles (as the gorilla runs) from Hartlepool, home of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_hanger to Grimsby?

Andy

Posted by: centsworth_II Mar 3 2010, 10:18 PM

I was thinking of coining a phrase, "drinking slanted water" to refer to those who believe such nonsense as the Sun writes. Then I Googled it and sure enough....
http://www.albertburger.com/slanted%20water.htm

Posted by: Explorer1 Mar 3 2010, 10:50 PM

I wonder if 'Nigel Cooper' is even real! Someone should tell him that UMSF exists.
Or maybe he already has a pseudonym here....

Posted by: AndyG Mar 3 2010, 11:22 PM

Heather Couper (a woman who has asteroid 3922 named after her) lives with a Nigel. Is it, perhaps, just a very slow news day at Murdoch's Sun?

Andy