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This story about a purported meteor impact in Peru is intriguing. I used this wickedly fun tool in my astronomy classes and decided to reverse engineer how big the meteor probably was.

About 1 m in diameter. I assumed nickel/iron from some other reading about the incident and otherwise used the most probable characteristics. The utility indicates that this type of impact occurs about every month or so.

Just be glad it didn't hit your car. Looks like you'd be covered if it hit your house.
posted by Eric at 10:09 AM

 
As I try to teach my students about the process of science and the means by which information is added to the body of accepted scientific knowledge, I do so with the complete awareness that the public is largely scientifically illiterate and that agencies around the world are seeking to exploit that lack of savvy.

There have been two recent articles that purport to call into question the scientific "consensus" on global warming: one claiming that the publication record shows that scientists don't explicitly support the "consensus" in their publications, and another claiming that "Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming Fears" We would do well, as scientifically literate people, to ignore both and the brief flurry of excitement both have and will generate in the anti-GW community.

The first paper has been well criticized. Part of a celebratable takedown appears here, in which the poor scholarship of the article is exposed. The second needs no criticism, as it is little more than a press release to generate sales for a book based on the study. But in the spirit of good science literacy, let's look at it:

"scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares."

Wow. Really? What does this even mean? 500 scientists have published criticism of which scares? Who is responsible for the scares? The scientists themselves? It's no surprise to see people publishing papers that challenge each others' hypotheses. This is the normal progress of science. Stating that there are papers that attempt to refute claims made by other scientists is like stating that football teams try to beat each other on Sundays.

And what scares does the article mention? The very next sentence lists two claims, that GW is "linked strongly to" solar irradiance variations and that there are "natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle[s]" that are actually responsible for GW. The piece continues to say "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850..."

Show me the data. He says 300 scientists (not 300 papers, mind you. Since most papers have several authors, this reduces the total number of actual literature pieces) have found evidence supporting those two claims. I don't doubt that. But the piece makes no attempt to evaluate the significance of that evidence compared to the evidence for a consensus. Just because you can find evidence doesn't mean that you have to report it or believe that it's important. And don't think I'm making an argument for arbitrary selection of evidence, here. What I am saying is that just because something is possible, or supportable, doesn't mean it's likely or important. The author, Dennis Avery, doesn't get this point either: see this takedown of his book's hypotheses by real climate scientists.

To my students: look at Park's seven signs! Avery takes his claim to the people directly, he cites the "little attention" these articles receive in mainstream science, as if science were oppressing these opinions (despite their publication--note that when published scientific articles get little attention, it's usually because they deserve it).
posted by Eric at 7:01 AM

 
In science we talk about there being honesty checked by public access to data. This often prevents selecting only those data that support your conclusions, which is why such openness is valued. When data is actively censored in order to provide support for a particular predetermined message, whether scientific or political, science is corrupted and we should say that this is not science, but politics. Some say today that the politicization of science has become rampant under our current administration, but others say that this is not strictly a Bush administration problem. When a Bush administration official tells a NASA web designer to add the word "theory" to a lecture on the Big Bang because he believes that the Big Bang is unproven or at worst, a lie, he is most definitely violating these principles. Especially when he has no experience in astronomy or cosmology.

And now it seems that George Deutsch, this official, a newly minted public affairs officer at NASA, lied about graduating from college. Luckily, public openness, via the blogosphere, has sussed this out, leading to Deutsch's resignation.

What goes around, comes around, kids. Don't lie in the public sphere.
posted by Eric at 10:24 AM

 
There appears to be scientific evidence for bigfoot. He's genetically part water buffalo and part ape. Cool.
posted by Eric at 1:09 PM

 
Astronomy students--think about going to see Brian Greene next Monday night on the NCSU campus.

http://www.ncsu.edu/news/press_releases/06_01/008.htm

He's the string theory guy we'll be spending some time hearing from later this spring.
posted by Eric at 4:02 PM

 
SPACE.com -- Full Moon Names for 2006 Read this. There will be a quiz later.
posted by Eric at 12:58 PM

 
The Onion. (and it's clean--don't worry about it it).
posted by Eric at 2:44 PM

 
Apparently the entire Bush family is out in left field about the SCIENCE of evolution. This from the Miami Herald : When Gov. Jeb Bush was asked if he believed in Darwin's theory of evolution, he replied "``Yeah, but I don't think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.''

This was during a Q&A session after decrying Florida's state high school science curriculum standards for not being rigorous enough. Directly after saying that he thought that working Intelligent Design into the Sunshine State Standards was less important than making sure standards are raised, he said ``The more important point is science itself and how important it is, and we right now have adequate standards that may need to be raised. But worse: Students are not given the course work necessary to do well with those standards.''

Apparently, higher standards don't include evolution, the single most important concept in biology in the last 200 years. Good luck, Floridians.
posted by Eric at 4:52 PM