Look Out! Mars Is (Not) Coming!

August 27, 2009

Q: What do you get when you combine astronomy, the internet and a ton of misleading gibberish?
A: A cyber-legend that refuses to budge...

Penn & Teller &... Me

July 17, 2009

It's been confirmed... I was on the award winning Penn & Teller: Bullshit! episode last night! I say this after the fact because I wasn't totally sure if I was going to be featured, but with the help of a dedicated Twitter friend, @cbrannon, I was sent the word that my face really did appear on the Showtime channel. He even took a picture (thank you Chad!).

I think we did the shoot for "Apocalypse" back in September 2008 at a local community college, and it was a fun day. (In fact, last week's Bullshit! episode about "Astrology" was being filmed at the same location.) However, a week later, after chatting to WPRT talk show host Captain Jack, I found out that the 2012 doomsday theorists had a far more exotic time... they were jetted off to see the Mayan temples in Mexico.

Let's recap: I write a series of "No Doomsday in 2012" articles on the Universe Today, debunking the ridiculous claims of a few individuals who are a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. My filming was done in an LA college broom cupboard office. The aforementioned doomsayers went on holiday to Mexico.

Oh well, no one said the life of a scientist was a glamorous one...

As I don't have Showtime, I'll watch the episode's recording eventually (I hope), so I hope the episode was a good one. But if you do have Showtime and want to take a look, they are repeating the episode for quite some time...

Scientist Accelerates Radio Waves Faster than Light...

July 01, 2009

...using this "gadget." What's that all about? Actually, I don't know.

What would happen if I walked into a physics conference and shouted, "I've discovered a phenomenon that travels faster than light!"?

1. I get laughed at.
2. I get thrown out.
3. I get ignored.
4. I get thrown in science jail for breaking the laws of physics.*

There might have been the chance that I'd made a huge discovery (perhaps I'd discovered the tachyon?), but I think I would have proven my statement before I made such a huge proclamation.

So yesterday, there was a buzz about a scientist, from Los Alamos National Laboratory, who managed to force the "phenomenon" of radio waves faster than the speed of light. Instantly, the physicist inside me nearly exploded with excitement. Sure, I've read papers that study quantum entanglement, where two particles will instantaneously change quantum states, thereby 'communicating' faster then light. I've also been neck deep in warp drives and wormholes recently, two other possible loopholes around Einstein's general relativity. But the "phenomenon" of radio waves? Wow...

*Thank you Lori for that little insight.

WARNING: Betelgeuse is Shrinking. Supernova or Supernothing?

June 10, 2009

If there's one thing I've realized when writing articles about space, is that it is very easy to link a mysterious astronomical phenomena with doom. If not doom for Earth, certainly doom resulting in a huge explosion of some kind, destroying something, somewhere...

Are You A Believer?

November 20, 2008

I just hopped off an online interview with a director from MUFON -- the Mutual UFO Network -- and felt the need to say something about it.

Our interview, by the way, regards a mini-site I'm building for a Discovery Channel show called "UFOs Over Earth". As of right now the schedule is:

- The Bucks County Flap - Nov. 24 (Mon.) at 9:00 pm ET.
Re-runs: Dec. 13 (Sat.) at 10:00 pm ET and 2:00am ET

- Mass Sightings in Mexico - Nov. 24 (Mon.) at 10:00 pm ET

- The Fayetteville Incident - Re-runs: Dec. 13 (Sat.) at 9:00 pm ET and 1:00am ET)

TV schedules are fickle, however, so for the most up-to-date one click this here link.

At any rate, back to the chat...