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An astronomer's personal view on life, the Universe, and everything. Informative, funny, skeptical, and topical, it's mostly cool astronomy stuff and science in general, with a definite slant against antiscience and uncritical thinking.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'cool stuff'
Ask a Nobel laureate!
I received an unusual email from, of all people, the Nobel Prize website editor! He was notifying me that the Nobel Prize folks have started a new series of videos where people get a chance to ask questions of Nobel laureates, who will then answer th...
A sun pillar gooses the sky
Regular readers know I’m fascinated with sky phenomena. On December 26, 2009, around 4:30 p.m. local time, I happened to look out my office window and saw a gorgeous beam of orange light shooting straight up into the sky out of the sunset. I ru...
Last minute holiday gift advice, Part 2: books!
OK, this is it. Last day to buy stuff in a panic before Christmas. What to do? I suggest the bookstore. Who doesn’t like books? And it just so happens I have a few to recommend. Death from the Skies!You may not know this, but I wrote a book. ...
Call to astronomers to report Unidentified Aerial Phenomona
I have been saying for years that a) most UFOs are simply misidentified mundane phenomena (satellites, meteors, balloons, Venus, weird clouds, even the Moon) and that 2) if they were real, astronomers — who spend a lot more time looking at the ...
Obama sets a good example
I love a President who gets it. In general, science, and in particular, vaccinations: Yeah, he got his novel H1N1 vaccination, just like my daughter did a few hours ago, and just like I will as soon as they are available for adults in my area....
From Tibet to Infinity and back again
A bunch of folks have let me know about a new video that starts in the Himalayas and accelerates you out to the edge of the Universe, and then back again. It’s done by the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, and was directed by data visu...
A Titanic wink confirms otherwordly lakes
A peculiar flash of light glinting from Saturn’s largest moon confirms what’s been suspected for years: liquid lakes exist on the surface of Titan! [Click to entitanate.] The image above was taken on July 8, 2009 by the Cassini spacecraf...
Another Russian rocket spiral lights up the sky
Hey, does this look vaguely familiar? That is not a different view of the Norway spiral light; it was taken in Russia over a day later. It looks like the Russians are testing more rockets, and creating more lights in the sky. Despite the lunacy inv...
Aiiiieeee! Slow down!
Sometimes, news comes pouring in to Bad Astronomy HQ, and I am but a man, so I can’t keep up (writing about Saturn’s moons and giant galactic panoramas and big weird Scandinavian spinny thingies keep me pretty busy, y’know). So her...
Half-baked math
What do mathematicians nosh on when they get hungry? A Möbius bagel, of course: At least, George Hart does, because he figured out how to do a two-twist Möbius cut into a bagel. Not bad. But I don’t think it would satisfy my hunger....
Two podcasts, no waiting
For those of you who simply cannot get enough of my dulcet voice, I have recently appeared on two podcasts: 1) Monster Talk, with Blake Stacey, Karen Stollznow, and Ben Radford. We talk Martian bacteria, Godzilla, and Five Million Years to Earth, one...
Is it cold here, or is it just me?
If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you may have noted that I’ve been remarking on how it’s gotten a bit chilly here in Boulder. It was about -20 Celsius last night, for example, and it will only warm up a tad in the next day or...
A hex on Saturn (again)!
Either Saturn likes playing role-playing games, or it has really weird weather patterns… and we know it has weird weather patterns. Behold, Saturn’s northern hexagon! This odd six-sided pattern — which is over 20,000 kilometers ac...
Awesomely bizarre light show freaks out Norway
[UPDATE 2: I just heard that space guy James Oberg will be on the last segment of Rachel Madddow's show on MSNBC tonight to talk about this!] [UPDATE 1: See bottom of post; I knew it!] Earlier in the morning today (around 8:00 a.m. local time) this w...
Spot the balloons, get toys for kids
DARPA is running an interesting contest: they are placing ten red balloons somewhere in the continental United States. Social media groups can register with DARPA, and the first one to submit the correct latitude and longitude of all 10 will get $40,...
Deepak Chopra followup
I found out today that radio’s Dr. Dean Edell not only gave me a shout out on his program, he read from my blog post excoriating Deepak Chopra! Woohoo! You can listen to it on KGO here or download the MP3; the Chopra stuff starts at about 14:30...
New Zealand rocket gets to space!
A small private company in New Zealand, Rocket Lab, is the first in the southern hemisphere to send a rocket to the edge of space. Atea-1 reached the 100-kilometer (62 mile) altitude demarcation line just a few days ago (there’s a video of the ...
Australian skeptics cheer David and Toni McCaffery
Continuing with Australian Skeptics awards, they are giving out a new award in honor of Fred Thornett, a skeptic who died earlier this year. The first recipients of The Fred, given to outstanding promoters of reason, are David and Toni McCaffery. Th...
Incredible Shuttle launch video
Looking for something to watch on Thanksgiving you’re sick of football? Check out this fantastically well-made video of the STS-129 Atlantis Shuttle launch [Update: that video has been removed from YouTube, but is now on Facebook]. Do yourself ...
Duck! I mean, owl!
This super slo-mo video of an owl has nothing to do with astronomy. It’s just really cool. Watching the end made me suddenly want to cross my legs and cringe. Yikes. ...
Mr. Hubble goes to Washington
Hey, if you’re in the Washington DC area until mid-December, make a special effort to go to the National Air and Space Museum. It’s a rockin’ cool place in its own right, but for the next couple of weeks it’ll be extra-special...
Scale the solar system
Speaking of web pages showing scale (OK, it was almost two weeks ago, but still cool), BABloggee Mike Sperry reminded me of this site which shows the solar system to scale… all on one web page! The Sun is displayed when you go to the page, and ...
Midwest megameteor makes media madness
By now you’ve probably heard of the extremely bright fireball over Utah last Wednesday, proving once again that really cool stuff happens when I’m on travel and can’t write about it. Worse, it was seen from Denver, which means I mig...
LHC: Beams back in business!
Yesterday, the Large Hadron Collider once again had a beam of protons whizzing around its 27 km-long circumference! After a series of setbacks — some devastating, holding up the world’s largest scientific experiment for many months —...
TAM London followup
TAM London was last month, but has created a lasting impression: Skepchick Rebecca Watson and Neil Denny (from Little Atoms) interviewed a bunch of people at TAML, including speakers and audience members. It’s a fun listen. Not only that, but t...
The Big Blog Theory
A little while back, I made a sojourn to Los Angeles to get a few things done. You know, the usual for a science blogger: get a tattoo, hang out with a man crush, watch a live taping of a smash hit comedy show, meet and greet with TV execs. Ho hum. ...
NASA finds reservoir of water ice on the Moon!
NASA has found a significant amount of water ice on the Moon! Holy Haleakala! On October 9, the LCROSS spacecraft watched as a Centaur rocket booster slammed into the south pole of the Moon, hoping to determine if any water ice exists under the lunar...
Nerds run this planet
Jim Kakalios was the science advisor for the Watchmen movie, and wrote a book called The Physics of Superheroes. I met him briefly when we both spoke at the National Academy of Sciences about new ways to engage the public about science. He’s a ...
Rosetta takes some home pictures
The ESA spacecraft Rosetta swings past the Earth in a few hours, but look at what it did when it was still 630,000 km (400,000 miles) from home: Sigh. So lovely. Rosetta took an image every hour for 24 hours; they’re making a movie which will...
Congrats to Carl Zimmer!
My fellow Hive Overmind blogger Carl Zimmer just won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Kavli Science Journalism Award for writing in large newspaper, specifically the New York Times. Yay! Carl Zimmer won in the large ne...
