Astroblog

Garlic extracts are in the news with somewhat breathless headlines ( see here [paywall] and here and here) as the Doherty Institute has reported that garlic extracts are able to prevent influenza and SARS-CoV-2 infection of cells in culture. Unfortunately, the full experimental details are not available, but the effects of garlic extracts on viral infection in isolated cells have been seen before and suggest garlic is unlikely to affect the course of COVID infection.References:

Rouf R, Uddin SJ, Sarker DK, Islam MT, Ali ES, Shilpi JA, Nahar L, Tiralongo E, Sarker SD. Antiviral potential of garlic (Allium sativum) and its organosulfur compounds: A systematic update of pre-clinical and clinical data. Trends Food Sci Technol. 2020 Oct;104:219-234. doi: 10.1016/j.tifs.2020.08.006. Epub 2020 Aug 19. PMID: 32836826; PMCID: PMC7434784. 

Labels: COVID-19, Science Blogging, science matters

I graphed the data from the abstract, it doesn't support the claims, basically, the inflammatory markers are not elevated. Look at the error bars, they are very wide and overlap substantially between pre- and post- vax measures, which means there is no meaningful difference between the figures, indeed for IL-16 there is a possibility that the real postvax value is actually lower than prevax). 

Labels: Science Blogging, vaccines

The CosmoQuest Hangout-a-thon is on now! just to remind you:

Faced with governmental funding cuts to science education and research, we have decided to go old school with a twist: On June 15-16, we are hosting a telethon using Google Hangout on Air – a Hangout-a-thon – to raise money to support public engagement in science.

If you want to be part of this awesome hangout here's where you find out more.
- Blog post: http://bit.ly/18U733k
- Schedule of Events: http://bit.ly/15VFNgv
- FB Event: http://on.fb.me/15VNyTD


And you can donate here http://cosmoquest.org/blog/2013/06/24-hour-hangout-a-thon/

Labels: Science Blogging, science communicators

Most people will be somewhat aware that the US budget sequester has had a wide range of impacts, amongst which are the education and outreach services of NASA. Faced with suspension or closing down, the educators are trying to do something to keep going. In the words of Pamela Gaye.

Faced with governmental funding cuts to science education and research, we have decided to go old school with a twist: On June 15-16, we are hosting a telethon using Google Hangout on Air – a Hangout-a-thon – to raise money to support public engagement in science.

If you want to be part of this awesome hangout here's where you find out more.
- Blog post: http://bit.ly/18U733k
- Schedule of Events: http://bit.ly/15VFNgv
- FB Event: http://on.fb.me/15VNyTD

It starts Saturday 15 June at  11:00am US central time (UTC -5 hours, that's Sunday, 16 June 2013 at 1:30:00 AM, in Australian Central Time, and 2:00 AM AEST). There's a great line-up, and lot's of citizen science and activities for everyone.

Labels: citizen science, Science Blogging, science communicators

The ABC has an article of mine on how to see the the close approach of asteroid 2012 DA14 using binoculars (and some handy ways to visualise the scale of the encounter).

And I've just published an article in  The Conversation about the loss of asteroid hunter Rob McNaught's funding and what it means for detecting potentially hazardous objects using 2012 DA14 as an example. 

Labels: asteroids, Science Blogging, science communicators, science matters

For denizens of South Australia, my telescope will feature in an article on the upcoming Dance of the Planets in the Monday Advertiser. The photographer took quite a number of shots of Don, the 8" scope, before rain forced us to abandon the photo-shoot, one should have turned out nice.

Labels: miscelaneous, Science Blogging, science communicators

I wanted to write about other things, but I was reading the story of Rachel North in Jon Ronson's "The Psychopath Test" when I read about the invasion of the Plasma Universe people over that Emily Lakwandallah's blog, and the paper from Michael Majerus's last experiment landed on my desk.

There were so many resonances I felt I had to write about this. If you are an amateur astronomer, at some stage you will come across people whose views are wildly divergent from what is accepted by science. Given that this is 2012, we are bound to come across them sooner rather than later. Do you ignore them or engage them?

There are dangers in engaging these people, it's a bit like entering a world of Fun House Mirrors where you can be trapped in endless, increasingly bizarre discussions. Fortunately, most of us will never have the experience of Rachel North, a survivor of the London Underground bombings.

Conspiracy groups insisted that she did not exist, but was a fabrication of an MI6 disinformation group. Leonid Elenin had a related experience, where various fringe groups (godlikeproductions, I'm looking at you) proclaimed he did not exist, and that his name was a code word for Extinction Level Event, but the rejection not of only your existence but of the traumatic experiences you survived is a fundamental blow to who you are as a person.

When you encounter these people, what can you do? You could ignore them. This is what most of us would do. Life is short, and arguing with people who have severely divergent views of reality, and very little willingness to give them up, is a long hard grind that can seem to sap your life away. Rachel North engaged them, she blogged on her experiences, and commented in the conspiracists threads. This bought more disbelief in her existence and death threats (why you would threaten someone who you thought didn't exist beggars belief). Eventually she turned up at a meeting of the conspiracy theorists, to show them she really existed.

Mike Majerus's story was a bit different, no one claimed he didn't exist. He wrote about the evolution of the Peppered Moth. Creationists seized on his work and claimed that it showed that the moths were not subject to natural selection, others muttered darkly the classic work had been faked. Mikes response was to create the most detailed outdoor experiment on natural selection in moths ever.

For six years he climbed trees, patiently observed moths in the early dawn as well as doing his normal work. His massive compliation of data unequivically shows the action of natural selection. Sadly, he died before he could publish he findings, but his colleagues banded together to ensure their publication.

Few of us have the courage of Rachel North, or the dedication of Mike Majerus, let alone the energy of the Bad Astronomer or the quiet patience of Leonid Elenin, what should we do when faced with contrarians? Is it worth our limited time and more meager reserves of courage and patience to face off with these people? After all, despite the best efforts of Rachel, Mike, BA and Leonid the contrarians have not given up their views.

The hard core contrarians will never give up their views, but around them are people who can be persuaded, and when contrarians show up we should keep them in mind. To me, that's why we should not be dismissive, but patiently explain why the current scientific view exists. I like to come at things a bit sideways, to try and get people to think about what the world would be like if the contrarian view was true. Be prepared to repeat yourself over and over again (it helps to have a preprepared list of links you can quickly cut and paste to good sources of information, like when someone claims there is no evidence of water in comets).

You may still think it's too much effort, and it can be hard work when all you want to do is take pictures of the sky, but I'd like to think that in solidarity with Rachel North we can stand up for rationality from time to time.

Labels: Pseudoscience, Science Blogging, science communicators

Explanations later in the week.

Labels: Pseudoscience, Science Blogging, science matters

Got a passion for science? Got something to say? Want to do it using Blogging or the New Social Media but don't have a clue how to start? Then this ASCA event is for you.

In this workshop presented by Mike Seyfang, participants will go through the process of setting up an account and will have made at least one blog post by the end of the session. The workshop will also will investigate blog conversations through comments and track backs and the use of RSS reader feeds for blogs. Mike is a “seasoned veteran of information technology and related industries with an extensive network of connections who can help you with pretty much any challenge involving computing, the internet or emerging trends such as online social media”. For
further information go to www.mikeseyfang.com

For this workshop participants will need to bring their own wireless internet (wi-fi) capable machine and have an email account that can be accessed from a web browser (for example gmail).

Monday 11 April 2011, 6pm – 8:30pm
At the RiAus, The Science Exchange, 55 Exchange Place, Adelaide

Cost: ASCSA members free, Non-members $20 (payment at the door) A light supper will be provided. Limited to 20 people - Bookings essential: http://ascsablogging101.eventbrite.com

Labels: Science Blogging, science communicators

I was wondering why Comet 2010 X1 Elenin was attracting all the attention from the apocalypse and Nibiru crowd rather than Comet 2009 P1 Garrad. It turns out it’s Leonid Elenin’s fault.

According to a video* going around the web at the moment, Leonid Elenin isn’t a real person (Leonid, a long time comet observer who contributes to the comet-obs discussion group and has his own blog, may be surprised at his non–person status, but bear with me for a moment). Leonids' name is a secret code, ELE for Extinction Level Event and NIN for some tatty old goddess. I mean, you just can’t make a decent code from Garrad or McNaught.

The same video claims that it is comet Elenin, rather than “supermoons” that caused the Chilean and Japanese earthquakes.

Now, I see this as another “teachable moment” as in the case of the so-called “supermoons”. There are two issues here; first the statistical issues and then the ideas of scale.

First off, let’s try thinking statistically. In the video much is made of the claim that within 5 days of the alleged closest approach of Elenin and the Earth there was a large earthquake. Now, in any given year there are 1319 quakes between magnitudes 5-5.9, 134 earthquakes of magnitude 6-6.9 (this includes the earthquake that demolished Christchurch) and 15 earthquakes of magnitude 7-7.9. So, choose any random date and within 5 days of that you will almost certainly, on average have a quake of magnitude 6-6.9 in that date range and a roughly 20% chance of having a larger magnitude quake in that time slice. Thus a simple “earthquake somewhere near a comet close approach” is not by itself convincing. You need some sort of physical plausibility.

As we saw in the “supermoon” article, gravitational tidal effects could plausibly trigger earthquakes. The Moon is large and close, but even with the Moon the effect is quite small, it only occurs for certain types of shallow earthquake, and even then less than one percent of these types of earthquake are triggered by lunar tides. Now, The Moon is 7x10²² Kg in mass and 384401Km away. At the March closest approach mentioned in the video, comet Elenin was 273137000 Km away. We don’t know the mass of Elenin, but it is likely to be much smaller than comet Halley, which has a mass of 2.2×10¹⁴ Kg. We can use the mass of Halley as a proxy of Elenin for the calculations below.

You can already see that the tidal force due to Elenin is much, much less than that due to the Moon, and we know that the tidal force falls off as the cube of the distance. Now we know the formula for tidal force and we can calculate the tidal force of Elenin relative to the Moon (using Halley's mass for Elenin, an overestimate). It’s a staggering 10³⁴ times less than that of the Moon. So the plausibility of Elenin causing an earthquake is similarly low.

Finally, the video claims that the “alignments” of Elenin and Earth and Sun were on February 27 2010 and March 11-15 2011. The “alignments” were apparently determined by eye from the JPL orbit widget (which explicitly says not to use the orbit widget for this purpose). Fortunately, there are programs that can analytically determine when the closest approach of the comet too Eath is (when the comet, Earth and Sun are aligned). I use SkyMap with the latest orbital elements. It turns out that the comet was aligned with Earth on 27 March 2010 (nowhere near the Chile Earthquake) and will only next be aligned in May 5 2011 (before closest approach on 16 October 2011, again, nowhere near the Japanese Earthquake). No alignment, no earthquake to explain.

The take home message is to keep a sense of proportion (proportion, get it) and don’t try to estimate astronomical alignments by eye on tiny JAVA animations (oh, and check to see that the guy you are claiming is imaginary really does exist).

*I’m not going to link to the video, if you want to destroy your brain cells, go to this comment and copy and paste the URL. On your own head be it.

Labels: comets, Pseudoscience, Science Blogging

Jupiter near the Moon, as seen from my suburb at 11:30 pm daylight saving time.

...and it was terrific! The kids were amazing and I had so much fun!

MiddleOnes class has been doing space and the solar system, and as geeky astronomy dad I was invited to talk to them about space. I revised my talk about using the Moon to guide you to the planets that I gave to the Bellevue Heights Junior Field Naturalists Club.

For one thing, the kids were older (11-12), and as I said they had been doing space in class, so I had to give a more advanced perspective. I updated and upgraded my powerpoint and I completely revised my Celestia and Stellarium scripts (I have to add a time command to the Celestia script so that dactyl doesn't drift out of the field of view). I printed out a handout with a star map and the times when the Moon would be near bright planets. This time round I was able to use Stellarium to illustrate how to use the star maps (these things are not intuitive).

But as I said, the kids were fantastic. Enthusiastic, perceptive and asking really good questions. The questions ranged from what caused the tides, to what the Moon looked like 3.5 billion years ago, to what caused Enceladus geysers, to what is inside a black hole. I got to use my tour of exoplanet skies script. One student even had heard of the newly discovered baby black hole! Now that is switched on, I only wish my University students were as enthusiastic. I could have talked until my voice gave out.

Maybe in a few years time these kids will be solving mysteries of the Solar System, or discovering comets. But tonight, at least, some of them will be looking at the skies with fresh eyes.

I've put up the updated scripts for you to download and play with (waves to MiddleOnes class mates if any are reading this); download Moons.cel and put it in your Celestia folder, then use File | Open Script to run it. Download The Moon Guide and put it in scripts folder (unfortunately, it's version 0.9 script, I'll translate it to 1.05 later). If you don't have the free programs Celestia and Stellarium you can download them from the links (Kids, ask you parents/guardians first before downloading stuff).

Labels: Science Blogging, science communicators

Einstein rings, a spectacular prediction of relativity, taken from Hubble (Image credit Hubble/NASA)

You may remember a little while back I wrote about a conference of modern Geocentrism (Galileo was Wrong). Geocentrism is the belief that Earth is the centre of the Solar system, nay the entire Universe and everything revolves around it.

Todd Wood attended the conference, and you can read the about his growing sense of incredulity in his posts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5).

It turns out that these folks are relativity deniers.

Image of the crescent Earth and Moon on October 3, 2007, taken by the HiRISE instrument of the NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Which is pretty strange, the usual tack is to argue for Geocentrism based of relativistic frame equivalence. Arguing against relativity is pretty hard, as it is one of the best confirmed theories of physics we have. From gravitational lensing (see images above) to frame dragging, relativity has passed increasingly stringent tests with flying colours.

These geocentricists apparently need relativity disconfirmed so the the Michelson-Morely experiment proves the Earth at rest.

Now there is a lot of problems with this (not the least because they need a non-moving ether to explain the M-M experiment, then a moving ether to explain Foucault's Pendulum) and other geocentrist positions. Some of the problems can be demonstrated with intensive mathematics, some with not so much maths (like the claim that GPS doesn't use relativistic corrections, which is untrue.)

Earth as seen from Mars taken by the Spirit rovers' panoramic camera in 2004.

However, in the spirit of my first post on this conference, where I tried to get people to do observations themselves that disproved first the Ptolemaic then the Tychonian systems, I want to get people to do something much simpler, related to observational astronomy.

Also in the spirit of Einstein, who tried to imagine what the word would look like if you were travelling on a photon, I want you to imagine your are standing on Mars.


The evening sky on Mars on April 29, 2005 as simulated by Stellarium (the location isn't at the same latitude and longitude as opportunity, so the view is slightly different from the rover).

What would you see from the surface of Mars that would be different in a Tychonian system (the system favoured by our modern geocentricists) versus a heliocentric system system?

As the Tychonican system is an inverted Copernican system, things like the phases of the Earth would be identical (see this JAVAscript model, advance the time to October 3, 2007 to match the image of crescent Earth and Moon above, and flip between the Tychonian and Heliocentric models to see what I mean).

Earth imaged by the panoramic camera of Opportunity an hour after Sunset on April 29, 2005 (Image Credit NASA/JPL).

There is a big difference that would be immediately apparent. Whether in the Tychonian or Heliocentric systems, from the point of view from Mars, Earth would appear to be a morning or evening star that appeared to revolve around the Sun.

However, the geocentricists are using a geostationary model, where the 24 hour day is produced by the Sun rotating about the Earth. So in a period of 24 hours, an observer on Mars (armed with an occultation disk) would see Earth rise from the sun, then fall back, then reappear on the other side of the sun and repeat the process again.

During the period that the Mars rovers took images of the Earth, at maximum elongation Earth was 42-47 degrees from the Sun as seen from Mars. For the Earth to move from maximum elongation to inferior or superior conjunction (at least, as it would appear from Mars, because in the Tychonian system Earth can't have conjunctions) takes 6 hours (in a 24 hour day there will be four 6 hour segments as the Earth goes out, comes back, goes out and comes back again from the solar disk).

So the Earth will appear to move 42 degrees (taking the lowest figure) in 6 hours, or 7 degrees per hour against the background stars (approximately, it's slightly more complicated than this, but rough figures are all we need). That's 14 Lunar diameters per hour! Earth is fairly hooting along compared to the background stars. In one minute Earth would move 1/4 of a Lunar diameter which is quite noticeable.

Now look at the image above. It is a composite of 3 x 15 second images taken with the panoramic camera, you can see the image of Earth is slightly elongated. However, remember that Mars rotates, and any 15 second exposure will cause slight star trailing due to its rotation. The trail we see of Earth is nothing like what we would expect if it was moving to a 24 hour rhythm, as it hares along the sky (roughly 1/5th of a Lunar diameter). Still, for confirmation we have to check Earth's movement against that of the background stars.

Fortunately, in the original image there is a background star just above Earth (it's best seen in the TIF file). It has the same degree of elongation that the Earth does. This falsifies the Tychonian system, thus the solar system is heliocentric.

So "Eppur si muove" because it um, doesn't move (with respect to the background stars as seen from Mars).

Labels: Galileo, science, Science Blogging, science matters

This is an image of Mercury's tail obtained from combining a full day of data from a camera aboard the STEREO-A spacecraft. The reflected sunlight off the planet's surface results in a type of over-exposure that causes Mercury to appear much larger than its actual size. The tail-like structure extending anti-sunward from the planet is visible over several days and spans an angular size exceeding that of a full Moon in the night sky.(Credit: Image courtesy of Boston University’s Center for Space Physics)

Back in 2008 Comet Al and I were trying to confirm a comet position in images from STEREO A. I pointed out the nice bright comet moving across the STEREO image field and Comet Al said, "That's not a comet, that's Mercury!". We exchanged the internet equivalent of startled looks.

The feeling on the Stereohunter list was that it was an artefact, but I remembered an article on sodium emission from Mercury, and went to track down the group and ask them what they though our tail might be.

So began a saga that cumulated in the paper "Observations of Mercury’s Escaping Sodium Atmosphere by the STEREO Spacecraft" by Carl Schmidt, Jeffrey Baumgardner, Michael Mendillo, Christopher Davis and Ian Musgrave being read at the European Planetary Science Congress today. This paper was the subject of a press release, and has spread wide into the internet (Science Daily, Space.com, and SpaceInfo are just a few examples).

I must say I'm mildly chuffed to be mentioned in press releases, I'm more chuffed that I was included in the paper. I've got 40 peer-reviewed papers of my own in the field of biomedical science (ask me about Maitotoxin!), some of which I am very proud of, so I'm no stranger to being published.

But this is the first time my amateur efforts have made a contribution to advancing astronomical research, my beloved hobby. Of course, the others did all the really hard work of ground observations and calibrating the Stereo images, so my contribution needs to be put into perspective, but still.... ther's that warm inner glow that in a small way I made a difference.

My blog posts on the tails (with nice images and animations and a bit more background), can be found here.

Labels: Mercury, Science Blogging, science matters, Stereo Satellite

If you are frustrated by the cloudy sky, why not join the SA Australia Science Communicators for a evenings tour of the Zoo? "There's more to the Zoo than Pandas: the Zoo's role in Conservation" is on tonight, Monday, 20th September, 2010 from 6pm – 8pm at the Adelaide Zoo. If you want to come, meet at the Frome Rd gate at 5:40pm

Cost: Non ASCA members: $10, Non ASCA member students: $5

This is an excellent opportunity to see "behind the scenes" at the Zoo, and learn how the Zoo plays a critical role in conservation and get a tour of the Envirodome. To register for this event go to
http://ascsadelaidezoo.eventbrite.com/

A map of the Zoo is here http://www.zoossa.com.au/adelaide-zoo/zoo-information/zoo-map
Parking may be available on Plane Tree Drive in Botanic Park at that time of the evening.

Labels: Science Blogging, science communicators

There’s been a lot of blank disbelief on the blogosphere of late, due to the announcement of a conference on Geocentrism (Galileo was Wrong). Geocentrism is the belief that Earth is the centre of the Universe and everything revolves around it. You would think that, 400+ years after Galileo, people would have cottoned on the the idea that the Earth orbits the sun, the sun orbits the galactic centre and the Milky Way galaxy does … well …complicated stuff with other galaxies, but basically we worked out long ago that the Earth is not the centre of the solar system, let alone the Universe.

Other people, especially Ethan at Starts with a Bang and the Bad Astronomer, have dealt with the technical details (and I have an earlier discussion here and here). My goal is to get you, the ordinary person on the Clapham omnibus (or in my case, the Outer Harbour train, where I am writing this), to try and demonstrate the Earth is heliocentric for yourself and to do so with common household materials. After all, science is at heart a practical endeavour, and non-professionals should be able to find the evidence for themselves.

So for this journey into the starry spheres, we will need a pair of binoculars, a camera tripod, some cardboard and alfoil, and lots of gaffer tape. We also have some luck, as the sky is currently cooperating in the Geocentrism debunking stakes.

First we have to ask ourselves, which “geocentric” theory are we disproving. The classic geocentric theory is that of Ptolemy, in which the planets, Moon and the Sun all orbit the Earth. The most famous variant of this is Tycho Brahe’s helio-geocentric system, where the Sun and Moon orbits the earth and everything else orbits the Sun. There are important differences in the systems which we will explore later.

First off, let’s look at the phases of Venus. For this you will need binoculars and the camera tripod. You will also need a way of attaching the binoculars to the tripod. These days I use a special attachment (but this requires modern binoculars that have a screw thread on the body), but in the past I have used gaffer tape to good effect. Why attach the binoculars to the tripod? Because otherwise there will be too much shaking for you to see the image properly.

The image to the left is the setup I use for observing Sunspots (we come to that later), showing the binoculars gaffer taped to the tripod.

At the moment, Venus is prominent above the western horizon. Point your binocular lash-up at Venus, in my 10x50 binoculars Venus is very small but is a disk which has a distinct “half –Moon” shape. If your binoculars don’t have decent anti-glare coatings, you may have to observe in the early twilight in order to see Venus’s shape without internal reflections from the binocular lenses getting in the way.

As you watch over the coming weeks, you will see Venus expand in size and become more crescent- shaped. Sketch the shape so you can follow its progress. This is so fast you should see a visible change in just one week. By mid-October Venus will be a thin crescent almost 2/3rds bigger than when you started observing. By late October Venus has nearly doubled in size and is a thin, glistening wire. Then Venus vanishes into the Suns glare and reappears in the morning. Over the next few months you can watch Venus shrink and become a tiny disk.

And now you have demolished the Ptolemaic geocentric system. Venus does have phases in this system, but quite unlike what you see here (I leave it too the reader to work out what a Ptolemaic systems Venus phases would look like, you can see a model of Ptolemaic Mercury here, which will give you a good idea). And you have only taken almost 6 months to do it (what, you thought it would be easy). As a reward, here's an animation of the Phases of Venus.

But wait! You say What if it is just an illusion, a trick of the optics? Well, you have a control. Having observed Venus, swing your binocular lash-up to the east, to the brightest object there (and second brightest non-lunar object in the night sky after Venus), Jupiter. Jupiter is a distinct oval in my binoculars, and the four bright Medicean Stars glitter around it. Over the nights you watch Venus swell and thin, keep an eye on Jupiter as it does…well…nothing.

Jupiter and three of its moons imaged with a mobile phone.

But Ah! The Medicean Stars, now known as the Galilean Moons, they will shuttle backwards and forwards during the nights as you watch. The realisation that these “stars” were Moons of Jupiter were not a blow to any form of geocentrism per se, although they were the second of a series of powerful blows against the Aristotelian physics that underpinned Ptolemy’s system, which aided its demise. Determining that these specks actually orbited Jupiter, and were not just accidentally there, took a lot of effort.

Try keeping track of these sparks, and without reference to an almanac, try and determine their orbits (heck, try and keep track of which near identical points of light are which). It may take a while, you will need to keep careful sketches, and track the Moons and Jupiter with respect to the stars as Jupiter moves through the heavens, but a) You are sketching Venus anyway and b) it will be well worth it (hey, you proving things for yourself!).

The next bit is more demanding. The Phases of Venus demolished the Ptolemaic Geocentric system, but the Tychonian- Geo-heliocentric system had Venus phases just like a pure heliocentric system (which is not surprising, as Tycho’s system is an inverted Copernican system). To eliminate the Tychonian system, we need to observe sunspots.

Luckily the Sun is coming out of its quiet phase, so you will have some to record. For this you will need to set up a safe binocular projection system (as shown above), where the image of the Sun is projected onto a surface so you can record the Sunspots. NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN WITH BINOCULARS AS SEVERE EYE DAMAGE WILL RESULT.

Anyway, while you are recording the Phases of Venus and the orbits of Jupiters’ Moons, record the passage of Sunspots over the Suns face, over the 5-6 months you are recording the susposts, you will notice the path taken by the sunspots moves up and down. This is due to the Earths orbit not being exactly in the plane of the Suns rotation. In a geocentric system, with the Sun orbiting the earth once a day, this variation would show up on a daily basis, but what you observe can only be seen in a heliocentric system.

So, congratulations, you have just demonstrated that geocentric models don’t describe the solar system we see using very simple tools. It took a while, and was hard work, but you have demonstrated it yourself, and all the blovation of geocentricists won’t take that away (yes, Stellar parallax gets all the glory, but annual Sunspot variation was a powerful blow to Tychonian geocentric models). If you want to, you can take this further by making your own Foucault's Pendulum.

Labels: Copernicus, Galileo, Science Blogging, science matters

Here I am live blogging a talk by the founder of the Naked Scientists, and I didn't bring my camera!

Chris Smith starts with a humorous slide show. Fundamental rule, the internet will take what you put up and spit it out in ways you don't want. Discusses the role of humour in gaining attention and getting people engaged.

Podcasts and radio broadcasts, verbal, not visual, sometimes need visuals so do Kitchen science: experiment done alongside broadcasts and people phone up with results; reinforce messages. Made a chocolate teapot, need 1 inch thick chocolate to withstand boiling water, did brew a decent cuppa with chocolate teapot.

How fat do you have to be to stop a bullet. 76 cm of fat gut will stop a bullet. (video of ball bearing shout out via helium powered gun, going through tube of gelatin).

Sneezes travel at 108 Km/hr. Made use of estimation to get people engaged and thinking.

Quote: "People say scientists are humorless, but anyone who has looked at a chemistry encyclopedia will know that this is not true" Used arsoles as example, and moronic acid (actually pistacio resin, used to date pottery). Lots of other funny names (too rude to write here). B13 (orotic acid, is also known as erotic acid because so many people misspell it).

Chris now asks for questions: Asked to comment on intelligent Design, uses Ca2SbMg4FeBe2Si4O2O as his reply, then explains difference between UK (state wide curriculum) vs US (local board control) should biology be taught in RE? Why should RE teachers teach biology. "Can argue intelligently with creationists, but it takes 10 years" (paraphrase).

Chris is an accomodationist :-)

Lots of creationism questions (talks about Lenski), now on to charter schools.

I get at ask a question, I ask how he chooses stories. Chris says he takes home 30 papers that have just been published, and looks at them to see if they are a) interesting, b) of general interest, c) can be explained simply d) can be done on radio. Usually choose 5 stories, then write up a couple of paragraphs on each. Send to Radio National, they choose enough stories for 7-8 minutes (not even UK does this, Yay Australia!). Then on the day of the Naked Scientists broadcast, meet with collaborators, choose from all stories written. Also get an interview from one of the authors of chosen papers.

Are scientists bad communicators? Chris feels scientists get a bad rap about communication, more a reflection of what editors are interested in. How can scientists communicate their love of science better? Youtube type videos?(use humor, educate by subversion)

Can measure speed of light using microwave and buttered bread! mass action type experiments.

Naked Scientists scrapbooks. Videos with drawings to get kids intrigued. Most work done with auido, but use live sketches to capture imagination. Cover lots of concepts in a short time. (eg, why don't birds is sitting on pwerlines get electrocuted, covers circuits, heart structure, brain oxygen requirements, electrical theory. not live yet). Designed for Youtube propagation.

What gave Chris the inspiration to jump from science to science communication: Chris says "i'm a pathological learner" did medicine, fascinated by neuroscience, added in PhD looked at designing viruses to deliver genes to the central nervous system (very cool work!). Loved learning about sciecne, got involved in Cambridge Science festival, over a week doors opened to public and all free (lectures, hands on demonstrations etc,). Used large firecracker in bin, destroyed bin and made everyone jump, fire alarms went off, but demonstrated nerve conduction velocity. "Edutainment" making science fun as well as enlightening. Then radio interviewer got them on show, and it snowballed from there. Asked for grant to get funding to buy air time for a weekly science show, GOT funding, radio show signed them up. Then radio show asked them to carry on. Did this in middle of PhD. Though of funny name Bought domain name of Naked Scientist, one of worlds first science podcasts, and BBC heard it and took them on (website 3 million hits per year, podcast in top 10 in itunes downloads!) So popular had trouble find sponsor for downloading 15 TERABYTES of data!!!). Did manage to break this server!

Did PhD, did medical rounds, working doctor, has done clinical virology training .... while still doing Naked Scientists!! (joke, Chis created multimedia empire in less time then it took to pass his virology exams, proving the exams are hard).

Question: do you run out of ideas! No, still have new ideas. Naked Engineering coming soon!

What was the best experiment you've ever done? Chocolate teapot, How fat do you have to be to be to stop a bullet, Volcano Bombs (wallpaper past dissolved in fizzy drinks, mess is devastating),

Question has there been anything that you wanted to talk about but was too complicated: Quantum mechanics (proton is 4% smaller than we though, explaining this difficult. Made Muonic hydrogen, muons instad of electrons, Muons orbit closer to the protons, by recording energy given off muons being excited, specific energy means that protons must be smaller.)

What was surprising about human genome project? How few genes we have. Epigenetics.

What would you say to Australian leaders to bolster science in the community. Politicians like dollar signs. Science makes technology, technology makes money.

Labels: Science Blogging, science communicators, science week

You may remember how the British Chiropractic Association sued Simon Singh because he had the audacity to sepak the truth about Chiropractic. Now a medical testing firm, Doctors data, is suing Dr. Steve Barrett of Quackwatch, for criticising it. Well warranted and scientifically supported criticism. You can read more detail at Respectful Insolence. As with the Simon Singh case, pass the news on so we can raise awarness of this latest round of anti-science bullying, and you can contribute to Dr. Barrett's legal defense fund by donating to Quackwatch here.

Labels: miscelaneous, scepticism, Science Blogging, science matters

Simon Singh, scientist and science writer, who was being sued by the British Chiropractic Association for the temerity of writing the truth, has had the libel case against him dropped. While this is a win and cause for celebration, there's a long way still to go. As Simon writes:

“It still staggers me that the British Chiropractic Association and half the chiropractors in the UK were making unsubstantiated claims. It still baffles me that the BCA then dared to sue me for libel and put me through two years of hell before I was vindicated. And it still makes me angry that our libel laws not only tolerate but also encourage such ludicrous libel suits. English libel law is so intimidating, so expensive, so hostile to serious journalists that it has a chilling effect on all areas of debate, silencing scientists, journalists, bloggers, human rights activists and everyone else who dares to tackle serious matters of public interest. In the area of medicine alone, fear of libel means that good research is not always published because those with vested interests might sue, and bad research that should be withdrawn is not pulled because the authors might sue the journal, and in both cases it is the public that loses out because the truth is never exposed. My victory does not mean that our libel laws are okay, because I won despite the libel laws - we still have the most notoriously anti-free speech libel laws in the free world.”

Read more here, and see the commentaries by Bad Science, Respectful Insolence and Pharyngula.

If you want to help in the campaign against the flagrant misuse of libel laws to silence critics go to Keep Libel Laws Out of Science.

Labels: Science Blogging, science matters

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate women in science, technology, and engineering. Details over at The Panda's Thumb and read the 2D goggles webcomic on the topic (read the whole 2D goggles thing anyway, it' s fantastic).

Labels: science, Science Blogging

G'Day to everyone who has turned up after reading the Advertiser article on Science Blogging by Claire Peddie in EducationNow. If you are interested in Stellarium and its scripts, see this series of Stellarium posts, if you are interested in Celestia and its scripts, see this series of Celestia posts. Otherwise, just look around and see what you can learn about the night sky, science and all sorts of stuff.

And G'Day to everyone who has turned up from Pharyngula, come on in and enjoy the astronomy, pharmacology and climate change posts. My evolutionary biology gets posted at the Pandas Thumb.

Labels: miscelaneous, Science Blogging, science communicators