Inaccuracy in reporting astronomy and science Options

[As old as Voyage...]

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?

[Stu]

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.