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Trying to keep up with the blogs at ScienceBlogs is like trying to dig a hole in water, they have so many. But still I was surprised that I didn’t know about Science Woman. They just posted a very cool link of their blogroll which contains a zillion links to science/tech/engineering/math (STEM) blogs written by women.
It’s pretty good, but I noticed they are missing a few, so I sent them a comment about it (awaiting moderation as I write this). Here are the ones I read (or listen to):
- Pamela Gay’s Star Stryder and AstronomyCast
- Amanda Bauer’s AstroPixie
- Damaris B Sarria’s How I Am Becoming An Astronaut (actually I forgot to add Ms. Sarria’s blog, but it’s here now!)
- Carolyn Porco’s CICLOPS site (not strictly a blog, but c’mon).
- My old friend Carolyn Collins Peterson’s The Spacewriter
- Skepchick
- Teen Skepchick
- There’s also the new vodcast from Australia, The Skeptic Zone, which features Karen Stollznow, Kylie Sturgess, Amanda Rose, and Rachael Dunlap.
I bet I’ve missed some. If you know of more, send them to Science Woman! And let me know, too, because I have sooo much spare time to read more stuff added to my feed reader. 
Tip o’ the lab coat to ScienceGeekGirl.
Trans-cosmic flow broadens our horizon
In one of the weirder astronomy press releases I’ve seen in a while, it appears that material literally outside the visible Universe is tugging on material that we can see.
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| Hubble image of the Bullet Cluster, which appears to be getting yanked by material from The Other Side. Click to embiggen. |
What does this mean? First off, let’s take a sec and talk about the visible Universe. If you go outside and look around, you don’t see the whole Earth. You only see a small fraction of its surface, because the Earth is a curved ball. The solid planet itself blocks your view. The farthest you can see is out to the horizon, where the curving Earth dips everything else below your view (well, except for tall objects like buildings and ships at sea, but we can ignore them for this analogy).
The Universe is the same way. The fabric of space is expanding, with the cosmos getting bigger every day. This has an odd effect: objects farther away appear to be moving more rapidly away from us. Eventually, an object can be so far away that the space between us is effectively expanding faster than the speed of light! This does’t violate any physical laws, because nothing material is actually moving at transluminal speeds; it’s just that there is more space itself between us and that object all the time.
This effect naturally provides us with a cosmic horizon. Any object "moving away" from us faster than light can’t be seen by us; the photons it emits can’t keep up with the expansion of space. They lose energy and fall away from view (like a slow walker on a fast treadmill… or better yet, an ant walking along a rubber band that is being stretched). So, to us, an object far enough away is invisible, beyond the Universal horizon.
Weird, huh? Yeah, as usual, things get even weirder.
Now imagine a third object, say a cluster of galaxies, that lies between us and the one that is beyond our horizon. To the cluster, the object may still be visible, because it’s closer, and therefore not receding as rapidly. It’s like an island just over the horizon to you as you look seaward from the beach; to you the island is invisible, but to someone a few kilometers out to sea in a yacht the island is still visible.
That cluster can still be affected by the more distant object, pulled by its gravity, for example. To us, farther away, we don’t see that distant object, but to the cluster it’s sitting right there and still, literally, a force with which to be reckoned.
If you want to go away for a moment and take some Tylenol, I understand। I feel a bit headachy myself just writing this. http://louis-j-sheehan.com
The thing is, astronomers now think they’ve detected this force! Clusters of galaxies are filled with extremely hot gas, or plasma, heated by things like the galaxies’ motion in the cluster. As light from objects farther away passes through this gas, it gets affected by it, and we can measure that change. This is called the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect, and it’s too weak to measure well in individual clusters, but by looking at literally hundreds of clusters, the effect adds up and can be seen. [Edited to add: the photons that are being affected are not from the matter beyond the horizon, but from the cosmic microwave background, the relic radiation from a very early time in the Universe, but still in our visible Universe. Sorry I wasn’t clear about that in the original post.]
The total force is fairly big, in fact. Clusters seen in the direction of the constellations Centaurus and Vela appear to have an additional 3 million kilometers per hour added to their usual velocity! That means that some very large clump of matter — probably a cluster of galaxy clusters, called a supercluster — lies in that direction, over the horizon to us but very much visible to clusters we can see.
Imagine! It’s a sobering reminder that the Universe itself is literally bigger than we can see, with the majority of it forever beyond our ken.
And if your quota of weird isn’t yet sated, then ponder this: the expansion is accelerating. That means that objects we can see today, so distant they linger on our current horizon, will eventually fall away from view as the accelerating expansion beats out the velocity of the light they emit. They will literally move beyond the horizon and become invisible. In a sense, it’s as if the visible Universe is shrinking, the horizon getting closer to us every day. The physical Universe is getting bigger, but almost paradoxically what we see of it gets smaller. Someday, billions of years from now, only the closest of objects will remain visible.
Everything else will have sailed below the horizon. So we better take a look around while we still can.
[Incidentally, I cover this topic in more detail in my book Death from the Skies!, coming out in October, but already available for pre-order.]
People unclear on the concept
I get email. Because my site has been around a while it rises pretty high in Google searches, and that means all kinds of spam gets sent to me. Invalid offers to buy the site, requests for links, and such.
I just got this email, with the subject line "Link Exchange Request with Free Psychic Readings site":
Hi,
I saw your website’s page and felt that you have a wonderful resource which can be of interest to users on my website who are looking for free psychic readings. We will reciprocate you from one of our good theme based site.
My desired link is
[link redacted] Free Psychic Readings: 5Free Minutes @ [website name redacted] Get Live phone love relationship advice with Free Psychic Readings, Free Tarot Card Readings, Astrology Predictions, Numerology Readings and more on [website name redacted]!
I hope you will find my website another good resource to be added into your website.
Kindly revert back with your preferred linking code, hoping for a positive response from you.
Hmmm, a positive response? Well, I can positively say no.
Maybe these folks ought to actually, y’know, read my site first.
Shorter creationism
… Imagine how foolish you would feel if a thousand car mechanics tell you that you need to change the carburetor in your car and you keep insisting that they don’t know what they are talking about, elitist auto-experts that they are, because carburetors obviously don’t exist!
I am elitist. That is all.
News: Hubble Shuttle launch delayed to October 14
I just received word that the launch of Atlantis to service Hubble has been delayed from October 10 to October 14। The nominal launch time will be 10:19 p.m. Eastern (US) time. The launch was delayed so that NASA could check out all the facilities after Hurricane Ike. http://louis-j-sheehan.com
This also means that the launch of Endeavour has been delayed to November 16.
For more info, check out NASA’s Shuttle pages.
The Mentalist: review
Last night was the premier of the TV "The Mentalist", what promised to be a skeptical look at psychics and police work.
Quick summary: it rocked.
More thorough summary:
Well, it did rock. It’s a crime/detective drama, but also has lots of humor. Simon Baker, dreamy Aussie, plays Patrick Jane, a man who used to be a relatively famous stage psychic, and is now a police detective. He has an incredible gift of observation, able to watch people’s behaviors, notice small background items, note things that are said, and put them together rapidly to form a picture of what’s happening around him.
"The Mentalist" is a different kind of crime drama. Baker is very engaging (especially, evidently, for my wife), and he does have a quality about him that makes him fun to watch. His character invokes sympathy right away, even if he is a bit of a pain in the butt. He’s confident, even a little arrogant, but funny and endearing. It’s hard not to compare him to the titular character from "House", though he’s not as grumpy.
I love love love his character. He hates so-called "psychics" — hates them. In one scene, he comes right out and says there are no such things as psychics! When he did that, Mrs BA, The Little Astronomer, and I all threw our arms over our heads, fists pumping the air! W00t!
But to the meat of this: I think a real skeptic is behind this show, someone who knows about the frauds, fakes, and evil people who claim to speak to the dead. Here’s why:
S P O I L E R S B E L O W
In a series of flashbacks, we see Patrick Jane as he was five years before, a stage psychic who uses all the fraudulent tricks to make people think he can speak to the dead. On a TV show, he also brags that he’s helping the police find a serial killer nicknamed Red John (most psychics make claims like these, but you will never, ever find a case that was solved by a psychic, or even aided by one). Jane brags about his abilities, and insults the serial killer, calling him ugly and small.
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| Red John’s signature |
When Jane comes home that night, there is a note on his bedroom door… from Red John. The killer wasn’t happy about being insulted in the media by Jane, and so has exacted his revenge. The note says that when Jane opens the door to the bedroom, he’ll find his wife and daughter, dead. In an unusual demonstration of restraint by a TV show, the scene ends showing him opening the door, and we don’t see the bodies. Just a lurid smiley face on the wall, drawn in blood, Red John’s signature.
Obviously, this is when Jane dropped the psychic act and became a vigilante against psychics. It’s also where he joins the police force.
During the show, Jane talks to a psychiatrist because he can’t sleep well at night. When asked why not, he makes up a story about a childhood tragedy. We, the viewers, know the real reason: guilt over the death of his family. His own hubris killed them.
Now let me make an aside. The real tragedy of these blood-sucking "psychics" who "talk to the dead" is that they interrupt the grieving process. If you lose someone you love, it’s awful, terrible, and the pain is tremendous. But, over time, you heal. It takes a long time, and of course you never totally get over it, but eventually you can heal, you can move on. "Psychics" stop this process cold.
By making people believe that their loved ones are still around, still issuing pablum-like things ("I’m happy", "I forgive you"), they don’t let the grieving people heal. They are picking at the wound, keeping it open. Sure, people may feel better in the short term, but the healing process is short-circuited, and that’s very unhealthy. And it’s another in a long list of reasons why people who claim to talk to the dead are so truly evil.
And that brings us to the last scene in "The Mentalist". At the end, after solving the case using his amazing observational skills, Jane goes home. We see it’s the same house he lived in when his wife and daughter were killed five years earlier… but it’s totally empty. All the furniture, all the furnishings are gone.
Jane slowly goes up the stairs and into the bedroom. Like the rest of the house, it’s stripped clean. The only thing in it is a bare mattress on the floor. Jane lies down on it, and the camera pans around, showing the bloody smiley face still on the wall.
I was astonished by this. The character of Patrick Jane feels tremendous guilt — as well he should — over the death of his family. Because of this, he punishes himself by staying in the same house, removing all the trappings of a happy life, and by leaving Red John’s mark on the wall.
But remember, he couldn’t tell the doctor why he wasn’t sleeping. He couldn’t admit to being partly responsible for his family’s death. He was a psychic, and he interrupted his own grieving process.
Beautiful. The writing here was intelligent, thoughtful, and because of this irony based on skeptical knowledge of "psychics", right on the mark.
And, in my opinion — as you might guess — nailed how truly loathsome "psychics" are.
This was one of the most skeptical shows I have ever seen on mainstream TV, and I hope they can keep this up. It showed so many tricks, so many insights into how to defraud people that I would LOVE it if more people watched and absorbed this knowledge. My only fear is that, under pressure from TV suits, they somehow let Jane get over his guilt and forgive the "psychics" — after all, his skepticism is in some ways due to his major character flaw, so it’s not a big jump for the writers to do that. So many shows cop out that way; make the skeptics look like jerks, and make the antiscience followers look sympathetic, when in fact that is far, far from the truth. So many "psychics" are the ones who use people, defraud people, and use their emotional vampirism to get rich, rich, rich.
So I can’t say enough good things about "The Mentalist". It was well acted, well written, and the staging and direction were very good. Overall it was engaging, funny, and drew me right in.
But I think the most important part is that it spoke from a true skeptical standpoint. Jane gave many of the arguments I hear from other skeptics about many antiscience topics, and they come from the star of a mainstream show. And to see a skeptic who is portrayed as sympathetic, attractive, and even likable was a breath of fresh air from a medium — heh, medium — that falls all over itself to give the phonies, the frauds, and the fakes far more than their fair share.
I hope "The Mentalist" has a long, skeptical, and critically acclaimed run.
Space X to try again this week
The private company Space X will try once again to get a Falcon 1 rocket into orbit. This fourth launch attempt could be as early as September 28!
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| The static firing engine test for the Falcon 1. |
They just had a "static firing" a test of the engines with the rocket strapped down। Everything looked pretty good, but they detected a minor fault in the second stage liquid oxygen supply. They’ll be replacing a component in that system just to be safe. http://louis-j-sheehan.com
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