The Bad Astronomy Newsletter

Issue #18
July 11, 2002
http://www.badastronomy.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/badastronomy

Bad Astronomy Newsletter #18

Contents:

1. Bad Astronomy Movie Review: Men in Black
2. Upcoming talks and appearances
3. Possible meteor over Ukraine confused with terrorist attack
4. So, you think *your* telescope is big?
5. Bad news makes my blood boil
6. Subscribe/Unsubscribe info

1) Bad Astronomy Movie Review: Men in Black 2

Fast on the heels of the "Men in Black" review comes The Review: The Sequel. I didn't like MIB2 nearly as much as the first one, although I suppose it's an okay flick. Anyway, read all about it here.

2) Upcoming talks and appearances I'll be at Mt. Tamalpais, just north of San Francisco on Saturday, July 13th, talking about the Moon Hoax. I'll be selling and autographing copies of my book, too. The next week, starting on the 20th, marks a book signing, two radio and two TV interviews! The grand book tour. For all the details, check the Bad Calendar.

3) Possible meteor over Ukraine confused with terrorist attack Here's something to keep you up at night: for years, scientists have wondered if a small asteroid exploding high in the atmosphere (like one did over Siberia in 1908) could trigger a nuclear war. Well, a few days ago a small explosion over the Ukraine near an El Al airplane flight raised a *lot* of alarms in Israel, which understandably is a bit edgy these days, especially since they lost a plane over the Ukraine last year. Turns out it was almost certainly a meteor, but what if this thing had been bigger? We need better detection systems. Read all about this incident here. A grim account of the 1908 event can be found here.

4) So, you think *your* telescope is big? On the lighter side... last week a friend invited me up to a somewhat rural lake to a star party with several amateur astronomers. One guy had an 18 inch telescope, which I coveted quite openly and shamelessly. It was a pretty big 'scope, and the view through it was spectacular. Then I read this webpage, and realized I have a long way to go. It describes a project called the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope. The goal is to make a telescope with a mirror 100 meters across. That is not a typo. That's ten times the diameter of the largest optical telescope in the world.

5) Bad news makes my blood boil An alert Bad reader sent this article to me which describes the effect of high altitude on the human body. A balloonist is quoted as saying "Above 80,000 feet the pressure is so low that your blood boils... we would die horribly in seconds." Certainly, exposure to a vacuum would kill you pretty quickly, but as it turns out, your blood won't boil. It's sealed pretty well in your veins, which are pressure resistant. This is a very common misconception. It isn't really astronomy, but it can pertain to how people are portrayed dying in the vacuum of space, like in the (awful) movie "Mission to Mars". I wrote about this for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. You can get to that article from this page. Look for the link titled "Lost in Space". You can read my "Mission to Mars" review here.

6) Subscribe/Unsubscribe Information

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Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
badastro@badastronomy.com
http://www.badastronomy.com