Science and Television

Ah, Futurama! One of the few things on television that actually fact checks their science references... and takes great pleasure in ripping apart things that don't.

The recent meteor event in Russia has made me wish that newscasters and blog writers had Morbo sitting next to them whenever they made some lame joke or speculation about some scientific phenomenon.

I suppose the news stopped being objective and checking their facts a long time ago, and about more than just science, but the confidence with which newscasters and writers present their scientific "facts" really irritates me.

I don't claim to be a science expert, but it is a passion of mine. I studied astronomy and physics for a while and almost made a career out of it. You don't have to get that far into science, though, to know how to do a quick cross-referenced Google search. And if you are about to explain some scientific phenomenon to a worried public, you should consult a scientist. Otherwise, you end up saying stupid things like this:

(Please ignore the fact that this video clip is coming from a UFO playlist- it is a very much identified falling object.) First of all "I tracked those meteors..." No you didn't. You simply did a Google search to see if there were any meteor showers that happened to be taking place when the footage was captured. Also, meteors don't actually come from constellations, they just appear to. Constellations are apparent arrangements of stars many light years away, not throwers of fireballs. And while the name "Quadrands Muralis" is obsolete, constellations do not "go extinct." We just decide we don't like them anymore. Then we have "they are often hard to see because the northern sky is usually cloudy." That's right. Clouds like to gather in the north... for... strategic... science purposes. Forget that "The Northern Sky" is relative to where you are standing and... you know what, I'm not even going to dignify that statement with further commenting.

Actually, the women who were joking around were absolutely right! This was, in fact, a Russian rocket body that entered the Earth's atmosphere, broke into pieces and fell to the ground. I suspected it was something like this the first time I saw this footage. First of all, it is moving pretty slowly. Meteors streak and burn up quite a bit faster than this. Secondly, if you compare the colors and the shapes of the fragments to actual man-made objects burning in the atmosphere (sadly, the Columbia footage comes to mind), this what it looks like.

Then the facepalm moment. "I mean you know it all, Tomer. YOU'RE OUR METEOROLOGIST?!" A. Meteorology is not astronomy. B. Please see my comment about "northern clouds." An actual weather scientist should know better.

The reason the recent Russia event reminded me of this was that I am getting sick of every streak of light being attributed to a "meteor shower." I wish the above footage is what a meteor shower looked like! It would make those chilly early morning trips to the mountains so much more exciting than the 10-15 quick streaks you actually end up seeing.

Early reports of the Russian meteor were that it was a meteor shower or even... meteor rain? I'm sure everyone has seen the footage a million times at this point, but here it is again:

Okay, some quick vocabulary (from NASA):

Asteroid: A relatively small, inactive, rocky body orbiting the Sun.

Comet: A relatively small, at times active, object whose ices can vaporize in sunlight forming an atmosphere (coma) of dust and gas and, sometimes, a tail of dust and/or gas.

Meteoroid: A small particle from a comet or asteroid orbiting the Sun.

Meteor: The light phenomena which results when a meteoroid enters the Earth's atmosphere and vaporizes; a shooting star.

Meteorite: A meteoroid that survives its passage through the Earth's atmosphere and lands upon the Earth's surface.

So, an asteroid or a meteoroid enters the Earth's atmosphere where it become a meteor. It either burns up or it makes it to the surface as a meteorite. OR in the case of the Russian event, it's a bolide, or fireball or in this particular case, a "detonating fireball."

Pretty cool, right? Contrast that with a meteor shower. Meteor showers occur when the Earth passes through clouds of debris from comets. Yes, you can have all of that excitement in a meteor shower, but usually what you have is tiny streaks across the sky over several hours. Still cool, but not quite as spectacular as either of the two videos above. They are also global events (you can't have a Russian meteor shower, for example) and come like clockwork every year- not just randomly.

And meteor rain? That... doesn't exist, actually. At least, not in scientific terms.

So the next time a newscaster attributes some weird thing in the sky to a meteor shower, I want Morbo there to tell them:

Taken by Taken

My friends and I have been watching the miniseries "Taken" that was on the SciFi channel a while ago. I had already seen it, but watching it again has really made me appreciate the writing, especially for a show about aliens! I have gathered some of my favorite quotes, spoken by the character Allie Keys (played by Dakota Fanning).

My mom told me once that when you're afraid of something, what you want more than anything else is to make it go away. You want your life back to the way it was before you found out that there was something to be afraid of. You want to build a high wall and live your old life behind it. But nothing ever stays the same. That's not your old life at all. That's your new life with a wall around it. Your choice is not about going back to the way things were. Your choice is about hiding, or about going right to the heart of the thing that scares you.

You know in cartoons, the way someone can run off a cliff and they're fine, they don't fall until they look down? My mom always said that was the secret of life. Never look down. But it's more than that. It's not just about not looking. It's about not ever realizing that you're in the middle of the air and you don't know how to fly.

Some people have given up all hope of anything in their lives ever changing. They just go on with it day by day, and if something were to come along and make things different they probably wouldn't even notice it right off, except for that kind of nervous feeling you get in your stomach. My mom and I used to call that "the car trip feeling," because it was how I'd feel whenever I knew we were going to go somewhere far away or somewhere new.

People like to examine the things that frighten them, to look at them and give them names, so saints look for God, and scientists look for evidence. They're both just trying to take away the mystery, to take away the fear.

We all like to think that we have some control over the events in our lives, and a lot of the time we can fool ourselves into thinking that we really are in charge. But then something happens to remind us that the world runs by its own rules and not ours and that we're just along for the ride.

The world is made up of the big things that happen and the small ones. And the part that's so unfair is that we call them "big" and "small", because when something happens to you, when you lose something or someone that you really care about, that's all there is. The world may be blowing up around you, but you don't care about that. You don't care about that at all.

I have this idea about why people do the terrible things they do. Same reason little kids push each other on the schoolyard. If you're the one doing the pushing, then you're not going to be the one who gets pushed. If you're the monster, then nothing will be waiting in the shadows to jump out at you. It's pretty simple, really. People do the terrible things they do because they're scared.

We're all standing on the edge of a cliff, all the time, every day, a cliff we're all going over. Our choice isn't about that. Our choice is about whether we want to go kicking and screaming or whether we might want to open our eyes and our hearts to what happens once we start to fall.

Some people put a lot of work into their lawn, as if a patch of green grass was the most important thing in the world. As if they thought that as long as the lawn out front was green and mowed and beautiful, it wouldn't matter at all what was going on inside of the house.

People move through their lives sometimes without really thinking about where they're going. Days pile up, and they get sadder and lonelier without really knowing why they're so sad or how they got so lonely. Then something happens. They meet someone who looks a certain way or has something in their smile. Maybe that's all that falling in love is; finding someone who makes you feel a little less alone.

People talk a lot as if the most important thing in life is to always see things for what they really are. But everything we do, every plan we make, is kind of a lie. We're closing our eyes and pretending that the day won't ever come when we won't need to make any more plans. Hope is the biggest lie there is, and it is the best. We have to keep going as if it all mattered, or else we wouldn't keep going at all.

People say that when we grow up, we kick at everything we've been told, we rebel against the world our parents worked so hard to bring us into, that part of growing of is kicking at the ties that bind. But I don't think that's why we kick at all. I think we kick when we find out that our parents don't know much more about the world than we do. They don't have all the answers. We rebel when we find out that they've been lying to us all along, that there isn't any Santa Claus at all.

Is every moment of our lives built into us before we're born? If it is, does that make us less responsible for the things we do? Or is the responsibility built in too? After you hit the ball, do you stand and wait to see if it goes out, or do you start running and let nature take its course?

What makes a man who he is? Is it the worst things he's ever done, or the best things he wants to be? When you find yourself in the middle of your life and you're nowhere near of where you were going, how do you find the way from the person you've become to the one you know you could have been?

My mother always talked to me a lot about the sky. She liked to watch the clouds in the day, and the stars at night... especially the stars. We would play a game sometimes, a game called, what's beyond the sky. We would imagine darkness, or a blinding light, or something else that we didn't know how to name. But of course, that was just a game. There's nothing beyond the sky. The sky just is, and it goes on and on, and we'll play all of our games beneath it.

People are lonely in this world for lots of different reasons. Some people have something in their disposition. Maybe they were just born too mean, or maybe they were born too tender. But most people are brought to where they are by circumstance, by calamity or a broken heart or something else happening in their lives that wasn't anything they planned on. People are lonely in this world for lots of different reasons. The one thing that I do know is, it doesn't matter what any one of them might tell you--nobody wants to be alone.

The hardest thing you'll ever learn is how to say goodbye.

Flee? Not Me!

Exciting stuff today! Turns out last night was the perfect night to look at the stars! Check out this atmospheric weirdness:

And:

What is all this stuff? It's NOT a meteor shower, I can tell you that. The quadrantids? I wish they were that cool! Not only that, but the first two burnt up like something unnatural- something man-made. I'm guessing it's a satellite or a rocket or something. I just can't figure out why there are so many of them all over the place. Some people are freaking out and skipping town. I'm going to investigate. Apparently there are some on the ground.

Planetary Stargazing

I have to say, it is always a pleasure to look at the planets when stargazing. They are sometimes shockingly bright. Venus is so striking that it is often called in as a UFO when it is at its brightest. Even if you don't have a telescope, the planets "stand out" in their way in the heavens- they don't twinkle as much as their neighboring stars, they are always in a different place in the sky, and their colors tend to stand out (particularly Mars, which is a bright red/orange). However, if you DO have a telescope, they can be a real treat. The first time I looked at Saturn through a telescope, I remember seeing the shadow cast by the rings on its globe. I suddenly felt very dizzy and became keenly aware of the fact that I was standing on a similar globe- a "planet" called Earth. I realized that the solid ground upon which I was standing was in fact a sphere hurtling faster than I could imagine through the vastness of space (a sphere many times smaller than the one I was looking at through the telescope).

Many people never experience this sense of smallness and wonderment. I might add that many of these people also tend to be the "skeptical" voices when it comes to life outside of this planet. Once you start reflecting upon the vastness of space and the variety within our own solar system, extraterrestrial life doesn't seem to be so far-fetched. In fact, we seem to be making new discoveries of extra-solar planets, and possibly even Earth-like planets, every day. Just one more variable becoming more of a certainty in the famous Drake equation supporting the likelihood of extraterrestrial life!

If you have clear skies and even a good pair of binoculars, I suggest trying to find Jupiter (and its four largest moons, which are easy to see with a small telescope), Saturn (and its rings), and of course, the red home of many a terrestrial science experiment: Mars (and its ice caps). I plan on doing so tonight, as we are having unseasonably warm weather and crystal-clear skies! In fact, it's odd how still it is right now...

Chicken Little and the Notion of God

Well, Colorado is in for another storm. Earlier this week, I awoke to winds so strong my ears were hurting from the change in pressure. Today, the temperature has plummeted 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) since this morning and is going to keep dropping as an Arctic front moves through the region this weekend. Don't get me wrong. I love weather phenomena. I used to chase tornadoes when I was a teenager. In fact, one of my favorite cable channels was The Weather Channel. I am a weather geek, but boy, I'm getting sick of being indoors! I guess I prefer my storms to be a little faster...

(From my film "Petrichor." Click image or link to play Quicktime.)

There have been some interesting things falling from (or through or beyond) the sky lately, and I wanted to comment on some of them.

First of all, the weather has put me in a pensive mood. I recently recalled going through bouts of insomnia as a kid. I was absolutely terrified of aliens (if you read my posts below about my early fears, you will understand this). One year my brother and I both got cable television in our bedrooms as a Christmas gift (woo hoo- a kid's dream come true). I found that watching the Weather Channel was the only thing that helped me sleep. While I will acknowledge that the lack of action-packed story lines at 2:00AM might have contributed to this, I must also add that I felt an odd sense of security knowing that I wasn't the only one awake in the world. I think it also comforted me somehow to know that satellites were monitoring the Earth's atmosphere. I thought that if there were UFOs, surely the National Weather Service would see them and alert us all (or at least the person standing in front of the weather map, appearing to hover above us all from his Star Trek Enterprise-like view in the television studio). In a sense, it was almost like verifying God's existence on a physical level: I was being watched from above by wiser forces...

I'm not so sure how safe I feel anymore knowing that there is a bunch of bus-sized space junk floating around over our heads. This sense of unease was confirmed early this week as a "Russian rocket body" fell through the Colorado skies at 6:15 in the morning. I'm sorry I don't have a photo. Most of the images were taken by local news traffic helicopters, so they have a monopoly on the images. I HIGHLY encourage you to click on the link and watch this clip, though- it is incredible.

It is also an incredible example of media stupidity. Thankfully, the video above is silent. When the clip was first released, the news media were calling it a "meteor shower," saying that it was the Quadrantid meteor shower. They then went on to say that the shower is named after an "extinct" constellation. Well, I wrote my first angry "letter to the editor" (I think this is a sign of aging- the older we get the more letters we end up writing).

First of all, I wish meteor showers looked like this! This is clearly something bizarre. From my first viewing of it, I knew it was not a natural object- it was too scattered. It would be highly unlikely that a solid, dense meteor that large would break up in that way. Additionally, it looks a lot like the footage of space shuttle Columbia when it exploded in the atmosphere.

Secondly, there is no such thing as an "extinct" constellation. Yes, the Quadrans Muralis constellation is obsolete, but it didn't go extinct! With the exception of a handful of supernovae, the stars have remained pretty much fixed throughout recorded history! I digress...

Well, I got a response and the web site, at least, was updated. Turns out a Russian rocket body fell from the sky, Chicken Little. Strange how it took NORAD five hours to identify the object, yet they were quick to say that they knew it was coming all along and that we really shouldn't find such a thing remarkable. Huh...

In related...news...I was tickled to hear this NPR report on a UFO sighting at Chicago's O'Hare airport (here is the interviewee's report, as well). Their story pretty much sums it up. Strange!

Tonight I will be missing one of the brightest comets in 30 years: comet McNaught. I encourage anyone in the Northern Hemisphere with a clear view of the Western horizon to take a look right at sunset. I've heard it's spectacular! I've tried to see it several times now, but each attempt has been thwarted by either mountains, bad timing, or dense cloud cover. Damn! I even dreamt about it last night. I don't have a camera in my dreams (well, at least not one that will let me share images in this reality...yet), so I will close this lengthy post with another video clip from my storm chasing video "Petrichor."

Sci-Fi Dream

My first dream post: I "wake up" and find myself on a spacecraft surrounded by aliens. I get up and look around the ship. The room is somewhat circular and has two levels. I am on the lower level. I see other humans around me (on both levels). Two of the aliens approach me. I ask them why they keep taking me and what they want from me. They "tell" me (they don't really talk) that they just want to get to know us and they can only take certain people. As I begin to ask them why, there is some commotion on board. Everyone seems panicked. One of the beings tells me that I am about to find out why they take me.

They guide me over to a sort of window and I see a giant, reddish, electric-looking ribbon moving toward us. I glean bits of conversation around me and begin to understand that this is some sort of time disturbance. The ribbon gets closer and closer. Suddenly, it envelops us. I look at the other humans. Some of them, like me, just seem kind of stunned. However, many of them fall on the floor in pain- almost as if they are having a heart attack. We spend a few moments in this strange reality and then it is over. Everyone tries to help the people who were in pain. Someone explains to me (though I don't really see them) that most humans can't handle a shift in time like that and that's what makes me and some of the other people on board unique. They tell me to think of it this way: fish cannot survive out of the water. They need to pass water through their gills to keep their bodies functioning. Humans cannot survive out of their time reality. Our bodies require a sort of "rhythm" to keep functioning (heart beat, breath, etc.) Apparently, I (like some of the other people on board)am kind of like an amphibian- able to survive in both "environments!"

I don't remember too much after that. It's had me thinking, though- Were our fishy ancestors aware of life beyond the water? Probably not. There was no way for them to even probe beyond the ocean. Did any of them have dreams about being snatched out of the water? What kinds of existence aren't we aware of?