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?

[dvandorn]

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