Astronomy & Cosmology – Scripturient

Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

News that asteroid “2018 VP1“, will pass within about 480 kms of Earth on November 2, 2020, has raised social media hopes that it might be drawn in by the planet’s gravity and crash on the White House, thus ending any speculation about the reviled Donald “Putin’s Puppet” Trump’s re-election. However, if you are among the alleged millions who wish for this scenario, I suggest you are being overly optimistic. Not only is the targetting rather too specific, but the chances of it even reaching … click below for more ↓

Oumuamua: just a piece of rock

2017-12-14 2017-12-16 Astronomy & Cosmology / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery4 Comments

If you can watch the whole bit of this piece of New Age woo hoo without flinching or giving up, you will likely shake your head at the utter, mindless gullibility of humankind. And it’s not even political. But by now you know the Net is crammed full of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, food fads, creationism, homeopathy and other claptrap. And you already have seen how the wingnuts can easily bend and twist everything, taking stuff out of context or simply making it up to suit … click below for more ↓

The Mouse on Mars

2015-11-25 2015-11-25 Astronomy & Cosmology / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

No, that’s not the title of a 1960s’ sitcom or a 1950s’ movie. It’s what some conspiracy theorist thinks he found in a NASA photograph taken by the Curiosity Rover on Mars, in late 2014. The story was posted on the IFL Science website this week. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Why pay these poor, deluded wingnuts any attention when it’s such an obvious case of pareidolia?” The answer is because they must be mocked in order to keep their silly gullibility from spreading to … click below for more ↓

What KIC 8462852 Says About Us

2015-10-15 2015-10-15 Astronomy & Cosmology / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Science & Technology5 Comments

KIC 8462852. Hardly a household name. But it may be, one day soon, or at least when it garners a more prosaic name. It’s a star and it sits rather forlornly in space in the rightmost edge of the constellation Cygnus, almost 1,500 light years away. And although it’s too dim to be seen by the naked eye, it has caught the attention of astronomers and conspiracy theorists alike, worldwide. KIC 8462852 is a mature F3-class sun, more massive than the Sun and both brighter, hotter. It’s the kind of sun … click below for more ↓

Comets, Aliens and Conspiracy Wingnuts

2014-11-13 2014-11-13 Astronomy & Cosmology / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Science & Technology / Technology & GadgetsOne Comment

The European Space Agency has accomplished one of the greatest engineering and scientific achievements in human history this past week. Not only did it get a space vehicle into orbit around a comet travelling at more than 55,000 km/hr (34,000 mph), it landed a probe on the very rough surface of that comet. Outstanding, brilliant, superb… the superlatives fail me when trying to describe this event. The Rosetta spacecraft chased Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for ten years (since March, 2004) travelling almost four billion miles (6.4 b km) … click below for more ↓

Chasing storms on Saturn

2014-08-11 2021-05-15 Astronomy & Cosmology / Science & Technology / Technology & GadgetsLeave a comment

There’s a beautiful video about the Cassini mission and its images of the storms on Saturn at the New York Times website. It’s amazing to see what images and information science has given us about a planet 886 billion miles (1.4 billion kms) away and its odd collection of rings and 60 moons. Saturn’s storms Saturn takes 30 years to orbit the Sun and in January, 2014, began its first spring in 15 years. Until then, the northern hemisphere was shrouded in darkness and the rings tilted away … click below for more ↓