The Bad Astronomy Newsletter

Bad Astronomy Newsletter #26

Contents:

1. Pluto's Rival: Quaoar
2. "Critical Eye", a new skeptical TV show
3. Bart Sibrel raked on Comedy Central next week
4. Reminder: Bad Astro talk in Oakland, CA
5. Subscribe/Unsubscribe info

1) Pluto's Rival: Quaoar

Most people think of Pluto as the last signpost at the edge of the solar system, the most distant large body from the Sun. For decades, though, astronomers had postulated a huge reservoir of small, icy comets in a vast sphere around the Sun. This so-called Oort Cloud (named after the Dutch-American astronomer who first thought of it) was the source of long period comets.

But comets with shorter orbits were also seen, and to fit their orbits, a flatter donut shape cloud was needed. This is the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt, usually just called the Kuiper Belt. It was pure theory until 1992, when an object was discovered orbiting the Sun about 40-50 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun. Since then, many Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have been found, and some of them are pretty big.

But a new one found just last week may be the biggest. Named Quaoar (Kwah O Ar), after a Native American creation god, it is about 1300 kilometers (800 miles) across, making it the clear winner in the girth contest. What's neat about this one is that its size was directly measured using one of the new cameras on board Hubble. Since the distance to Quaoar is known by the shape of the orbit, the size in the Hubble image yields the true size of the object.

Usually, the KBOs are so small that their size can only be estimated: astronomers estimate how much light the object reflects (the technical term for this is "albedo") to guess the size of the object. But this was always a guess; they assumed the average KBO reflects about 4% of the sunlight that hits it (estimated from measurements of comets and other objects). But now that we see Quaoar directly, the albedo can be measured, and it's found to be more like 10%. If Quaoar has an average albedo, that means KBOs may be smaller than originally thought. That's because if they are all more reflective, they don't need to be as big to have their measured brightness be what it is. In other words, a shiny object can be smaller and still reflect as much light as a bigger object that has a darker surface. Of course, they may all have different albedos, but it's interesting to note that both Quaoar and Pluto -- the only two distant objects whose albedos have been directly measured-- have higher albedos than most KBOs were initially thought to have.

I guess this confusion should be expected: not many of these objects have been found, they're very faint and difficult to study, and the whole field is practically brand new! The next few years in KBO study should be pretty exciting. So, what does this mean for Pluto? In many peoples' minds, this weakens Pluto's claim to be a planet, and makes a case that Pluto is really just the king of the KBOs. What it means to me is that we need a real definition for the word "planet". Oddly, we don't have one. I wrote about this dilemma a couple of years ago (scroll down to "Is Pluto a Planet?")

For more news about Quaoar, try space.com's website. And go here for the Hubble images:

2) "Critical Eye", a new skeptical TV show

I am very pleased to report that the Discovery Channel has not completely sunk to the abysmal depths I had been thinking. The Discovery network includes The Learning Channel, which frequently airs gushing reports of UFOs, ghosts and other silliness, as well as Animal Planet, which has the unbelievable "Pet Psychic" show, where a woman communicates telepathically with pets, and tells their owners about the pets' problems ("You don't feed me enough!", and "I want more attention!" and other amazing revelations).

But in an upswing, the Discovery Science Channel will air a new program called "Critical Eye". Done with the help of CSICOP, a noted skeptic group, the show will actually give a fair showing to such fuzzy thinking as acupuncture, exorcisms, and Atlantis. Unfortunately, the Science Channel is only available to digital cable customers, but hey, it's a start. Read all about it, and visit the CSICOP skeptic site.

3) Bart Sibrel raked on Comedy Central next week

Now, the cable channel Comedy Central may not exactly be the Discovery Channel, but they know Bad Science when they see it. The Daily Show is a, well, daily show where they satirically cover the day's news. I love the show; it's skeptical, darkly satirical and is at times nothing short of brilliantly written. Every day, they have an interview with someone who is generally of the nutty bent; a guy who feeds wild bears cookies by letting them eat the cookies right out of his mouth, for example. The interviews are done straight, as if they are a real news show (and to be honest, given the current state of newscasting, they do a better job than most).

Next week, they will air an interview with none other than Moon Hoax guy and fiction-peddlar Bart Sibrel. It's possible that Mr. Sibrel thought this was a straight interview, but it's far more likely that he knew he would get skewered and does not care, as long as he gets free press to help huckster his video where he purports (very poorly) that the Apollo missions were faked. I've seen the video; he needs all the help he can get. I have a copy that was sent to me by a (real) journalist friend of mine (she was happy to send it to me, saying she wanted simply to get rid of it), and I use it as a coaster for my coffee in the morning. No, haha, I'm joking. The DVD is actually completely useless.

I don't know what day the interview will air, but if I find out I'll either send out a note or, more likely, put it up on the "Lunar Conspiracies" section of my bulletin board. In the meantime, check out the Comedy Central "Daily Show" page, my Bart Sibrel page and the Bad Astro Bulletin Board.

4)  Reminder: Bad Astro talk in Oakland, CA

A brief reminder: I will be speaking at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California, on Thursday, October 17 at 7:30 p.m. Get more info on my calendar.

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