Jessica+Klaber

"Eye of God"

My name is Jessica Klaber. I teach 8th grade science at [|Garfield Middle School]in Hamilton, Ohio. I have been teaching for 10 years.

I have been married for 11 years, and I have three daughters. My daughters are ages 5 years, 3 years, and 1 year.

I spent the first week of my summer break with my husband pulling up all of the carpet in our house. We have very nice hardwood floors now. I prefer the wood over the carpet, except for the noise level now.

I am currently reading the Twilight Saga for the second time. I just started Eclipse for the second round this week. I want to finish it before I see the movie at the end of this month.

Eclipse Trailor

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Bad Science in Movies "Contact" 1997 PROBE: "Emmy's Moon and Star's (V2, p. 177)

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In the opening sequence, we pull back from the Earth, listening to radio broadcasts. As we pass the planets one by one, we realize that the get farther from the Earth, the further back in time the radio broadcasts are. OK, let's get this straight: this is, in my opinion, the best opening sequence of a movie ever shot. It is beautifully animated, gives a concise allegory of the science of the movie and is just really dramatic. That said, there are some problems with it astronomically. One of the points it is making is that the farther from a source, the farther back in time it appears to be. Light waves (of which radio is a part) travel at 300,000 kilometers per second. The Sun, being about 150 million kilometers away, is about 8 minutes away at the speed of light. So, in a sense, we see it as it was 8 minutes ago. As we pull back from the Earth in that opening sequence, the radio broadcast we hear represents that by playing older and older songs and other radio bits as we get farther away from home. The problem is, the radio goes back in time //too fast//. We are hearing radio shows from years gone by before we ever leave the solar system. However, it only takes light about 6 hours to go from the Sun to Pluto, so really at that distance we'd hear radio from 6 hours before. Having said //that//, I'll add that this doesn't bug me. I'll chalk it up to artistic license. They are trying to make a point ,and had to compromise on the timing. As far as I'm concerned, that's okay. If you want to get really picky, we shouldn't hear radio at all: we're apparently moving faster than light in the sequence, and would leave radio waves behind us. If we heard them at all, they'd sound backwards!
 * Bad:**
 * Good:**

Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy []

Bad Science in Television "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On the Moon?" 2001 PROBE: "Objects in the Sky" (V2, pg. 185)

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This is usually the first thing HBs talk about when discussing the Hoax. That amazes me, as it's the silliest assertion they make. However, it appeals to our common sense: when the sky is black here on Earth, we see stars. Therefore we should see them from the Moon as well. I'll say this here now, and return to it many times: the Moon is not the Earth. Conditions there are weird, and our common sense is likely to fail us. The Moon's surface is airless. On Earth, our thick atmosphere scatters sunlight, spreading it out over the whole sky. That's why the sky is bright during the day. Without sunlight, the air is dark at night, allowing us to see stars. On the Moon, the lack of air means that the sky is dark. Even when the Sun is high off the horizon during full day, the sky near it will be black. If you were standing on the Moon, you would indeed see stars, even during the day. So why aren't they in the Apollo pictures? Pretend for a moment you are an astronaut on the surface of the Moon. You want to take a picture of your fellow space traveler. The Sun is low off the horizon, since all the lunar landings were done at local morning. How do you set your camera? The lunar landscape is brightly lit by the Sun, of course, and your friend is wearing a white spacesuit also brilliantly lit by the Sun. To take a picture of a bright object with a bright background, you need to set the exposure time to be fast, and close down the aperture setting too; that's like the pupil in your eye constricting to let less light in when you walk outside on a sunny day. So the picture you take is set for bright objects. Stars are //faint// objects! In the fast exposure, they simply do not have time to register on the film. It has nothing to do with the sky being black or the lack of air, it's just a matter of exposure time. If you were to go outside here on Earth on the darkest night imaginable and take a picture //with the exact same camera settings the astronauts used//, you won't see any stars! It's that simple. Remember, this the usually the first and strongest argument the HBs use, and it was that easy to show wrong. Their arguments get worse from here.
 * Good:** The stars are there! They're just too faint to be seen.

Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy []