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The "Exposing PseudoAstronomy" Podcast

Started by astroguy, January 04, 2013, 12:51:45 AM

onan

Quote from: astroguy on June 23, 2015, 02:53:00 PM
Yes.  They restored from the weekly backup, so I've uploaded the remaining files now.

So, how's that premium account?

astroguy

Surprisingly, he didn't try to sell it to me at the end.

Paradox

Quote from: astroguy on June 23, 2015, 02:02:25 PM
The help person's first statement after confirming who I was was a 2¶ attempt to sell me on a premium account.
*sigh*  So typical. 
Okey dokey.  Everything is back and I can start listening.  Thanks.   :)

All done.  Down loaded ep1 (gotta start at the beginning) and subbed to podcast through iTunes.  *sigh of relief*

Robert

Quote from: astroguy on January 04, 2013, 12:51:45 AMHi Guys, Gals, and Others!

It was recommended that I post a thread for my podcast, "Exposing PseudoAstronomy," a podcast about various pseudoscientific topics that deal with the general topic of astronomy (and some geology and some physics).  Most of the topics have been discussed on Coast to Coast AM in the past (and will likely be in the future), and I get a lot of my source material and ideas for topics from C2C.  Hence why I'm putting it up here, on this forum.

Probably the easiest way to browse previous topics is through the episode tree.

I will post to this thread whenever a new episode is out.  With all that in mind, let me know what you think of the podcast, specific episodes, and any questions or requests!
Interesting, thanks.  For years I was a friendly observer of some Velikovskian & what one might call neo-Velikovskian solar system catastrophists, arising from a chance encounter with one.  The circles, small as they were, tended to be very cliquish & not so interested in critical examination of each other's findings as they were (still are) in "politics" among them.  The one I was closest to, Charles Raspil, never seemed to get enough respect for the motifs he discerned in art & the anomalous Chinese planet-tracking data he brought out, & his widow keeps regretting not gathering his material for publication.  Meanwhile the Saturnians, with their thoroughly implausible hypothesis of a previous planetary arrangement, seemed to get the most respect in their mutual admiration society.  The electric universe guys have some material that's plausible, except the math is off by some orders of magnitude, & smacks of perpetual motion.  The follower of Clube & Napier took it on himself to be a gadfly among them, & therefore gets swatted.  The time line reformers include one who would cut out so many centuries from history that it becomes a running joke.  And Velikovsky himself ripped off Ignatius Donnelly pretty badly.

Do you have any material on the fire-from-the-sky explanation of the Peshtigo, Chicago, & Michigan fires?

Meanwhile I frequently get the feeling mainstream astronomy is teetering on the brink of being pseudoastronomy.  Its data stand like an inverted pyramid, such that it wouldn't take much knocking out to bring down the whole body.  That's the problem when you can't manipulate the conditions to do experiments.

astroguy

Quote from: Robert on June 29, 2015, 10:41:54 PMDo you have any material on the fire-from-the-sky explanation of the Peshtigo, Chicago, & Michigan fires?
Sorry, no.  I've not heard of them.  If this is UFO kind of stuff, I tend to avoid that topic because it is almost exclusively in the realm of eyewitness testimony, which I don't trust.

Quote from: Robert on June 29, 2015, 10:41:54 PMMeanwhile I frequently get the feeling mainstream astronomy is teetering on the brink of being pseudoastronomy.  Its data stand like an inverted pyramid, such that it wouldn't take much knocking out to bring down the whole body.  That's the problem when you can't manipulate the conditions to do experiments.
What specific examples can you give?

Robert

Quote from: astroguy on June 30, 2015, 11:55:20 PMSorry, no.  I've not heard of them.  If this is UFO kind of stuff, I tend to avoid that topic because it is almost exclusively in the realm of eyewitness testimony, which I don't trust.
It's one of 2 major causal hypotheses about how all those fires broke out at approximately the same time.  It hypothesizes that remnants of Comet Biela set them.  The other is that it was an entirely tropospheric fire storm.  Otherwise there are those who say their synchronicity was neither as close nor as surprising as they might seem -- that conditions were just good for fires, and that there'd been a lot that summer, and chance takes care of their coincidence.

The Biela hypothesis is then taken as mutually reinforcing w the low-mass, high-energy hypothesis of the nature of some or all comets by devotees of electric universe thinking, because mass impacts don't usually favor starting fires.  Accounts of the nature of the fire breakouts are taken as evidence of the fires' having been started by electric discharges.
QuoteWhat specific examples can you give?
From when I was teaching a general science course to undergrads (+ other general knowledge I had), there is just a relatively small amount of overlap between the data scaling astronomic distances at different scales by different means.  Therefore there's a lot of bootstrapping going on that would give a great deal of leverage to a relatively small amount of new data, should it be produced, that would upset the scaling.  The changes would propagate to produce a manifold difference in the estimates at the greatest distances.  There's a lot of circularity in the determination that red shifts increase w distance, & that distances increase w red shifts.  Using A as a proxy measure for B, using B as a proxy measure for A.  There have been changes of orders of magnitude in the estimates of some astronomic distances, & I'm not confident that they're nailed down yet just because the past changes weren't recent.

I'm used to experimental methods of data gathering & hypothesis testing, so I tend to be skeptical of findings in non-experimental sciences.


astroguy

Quote from: Robert on July 01, 2015, 01:10:42 AM
From when I was teaching a general science course to undergrads (+ other general knowledge I had), there is just a relatively small amount of overlap between the data scaling astronomic distances at different scales by different means.  Therefore there's a lot of bootstrapping going on that would give a great deal of leverage to a relatively small amount of new data, should it be produced, that would upset the scaling.  The changes would propagate to produce a manifold difference in the estimates at the greatest distances.  There's a lot of circularity in the determination that red shifts increase w distance, & that distances increase w red shifts.  Using A as a proxy measure for B, using B as a proxy measure for A.  There have been changes of orders of magnitude in the estimates of some astronomic distances, & I'm not confident that they're nailed down yet just because the past changes weren't recent.

I'm used to experimental methods of data gathering & hypothesis testing, so I tend to be skeptical of findings in non-experimental sciences.
I think your information is out of date on this.  The Distance Ladder undergoes constant calibration and constant extension of each rung to calibrate other rungs.  When I was in undergrad (2001-2005) it was more wobbly than it is now, and that was a significant improvement over the previous decade which really helped nail down Cepheid variables, the planetary nebulae luminosity function, and parallax calibration with Hipparchus.  Even a few months ago when I did an episode on the distance ladder, I was learning new things over the previous decade, which saw a great improvement in the Hubble constant and understanding of supernovae 1a.


Astronomy is almost never going to be as "certain" as stuff that we can test in a lab on the ground.  But I think you overestimate the uncertainty associated with (at least) this example.  Each rung overlaps many others, and each calibrates the others.

Robert

Quote from: astroguy on July 01, 2015, 08:14:52 PMI think your information is out of date on this.  The Distance Ladder undergoes constant calibration and constant extension of each rung to calibrate other rungs.  When I was in undergrad (2001-2005) it was more wobbly than it is now, and that was a significant improvement over the previous decade which really helped nail down Cepheid variables, the planetary nebulae luminosity function, and parallax calibration with Hipparchus.  Even a few months ago when I did an episode on the distance ladder, I was learning new things over the previous decade, which saw a great improvement in the Hubble constant and understanding of supernovae 1a.
Then I'm glad they returned to the subject for more observ'ns to get a wider overlap.





Lilith

AstroGuy!  What a wonderful podcast!  Thank You so much....I have a lot of catching up to do!

astroguy

Quote from: brig on August 30, 2015, 04:55:49 PM
AstroGuy!  What a wonderful podcast!  Thank You so much....I have a lot of catching up to do!
Thanks!

astroguy

Doomsmonth: September.
What could it bring that hasn't
Yet been wrought on Earth?

Episode 140, "Doomsmonth: September 2015," has been posted.


Quote from: astroguy on September 17, 2015, 10:14:43 PM
Four-four-zero Hertz:
The sound of angst and control?
Or a false ideal?

Episode 141, "The Physics of the A=440 Hz Conspiracy," has been posted.

i need to catch up on the podcasts. marathon time eh?

hey! since Neptune is now the furthest planet from the sun, how bout sumthin concerning it? seems to me the astro CTers have missed it completely. wouldn't some past/present advanced civ have been scooping the goodies on Triton?

if the subject is virgin ground, i could make up some stuff about it and publish. followed by tours and lectures. debunking. even more tours and lectures. then comes Neptune version 2.0 where i tie in cattle mutilations as an alien means of developing an organic methane producing machine (it would seem they are very interested in bovine digestive systems). more debunking followed by a couple of low budget films based on what i've published. ending as a regular on C2C. i'll make millions!

btw, your shows are always interesting.  8)

astroguy

Thanks.

I haven't really seen much of any pseudoscience related to Neptune other than its dark spot, which Hoagland claims is at 19.5°.

Quote from: astroguy on September 18, 2015, 12:34:24 AM
Thanks.

I haven't really seen much of any pseudoscience related to Neptune other than its dark spot, which Hoagland claims is at 19.5°.

which one? isn't it a feature that has faded and then appeared elsewhere... like in a completely different hemisphere? whenever i listen to RH i get the sense of what it would be like attending a mad hatter tea.

astroguy

Yes, the dark spot when seen by Voyager 2 was in one place, it was in a different when viewed by Hubble years later, and I think it disappeared for awhile, and then reappeared elsewhere later.  Facts never stopped Richard, though.



Congratz on your co-authored New Horizons paper in Science, astroguy.  I also the image you made of Pluto is proudly headlining the Nasa.gov page.

astroguy

Thanks!  I didn't know about the image on nasa.gov, so thanks for pointing it out.

Quote from: astroguy on October 15, 2015, 04:39:49 PM
Thanks!  I didn't know about the image on nasa.gov, so thanks for pointing it out.

I thought it was yours from a little while back, but it sounds like it might be a new image?

astroguy

No it is mine.  I did that view in B&W, and then when we had a color map, I re-created it and sent it to Alan Stern and the media folks if they wanted to use it.  I hadn't heard back in over a month about it so I'd forgotten ... so thanks for pointing it out!  I did a comparison of the corners and lighting to verify that it was the one I made.

Quote from: astroguy on October 15, 2015, 05:29:38 PM
No it is mine.  I did that view in B&W, and then when we had a color map, I re-created it and sent it to Alan Stern and the media folks if they wanted to use it.  I hadn't heard back in over a month about it so I'd forgotten ... so thanks for pointing it out!  I did a comparison of the corners and lighting to verify that it was the one I made.

Very cool :)

K_Dubb

Hey forgot about this.  Finished your one on tuning.  Have never heard that particular conspiracy; how silly.  I listen to a lot of baroque music which is usually played anywhere between 392 and 415, so no wonder I'm messed up.

Btw I could tell the difference in your tones easily.

astroguy

I actually just heard the 440 conspiracy again from one of Noory's guests from that heath quack site that now sponsors C2C.  It was amazing to hear him claim it, and he went right into the Nazis, just as I mentioned in the podcast episode.

And yeah, everyone could tell the difference between the tones.  Listen to the episode I'm about to post and see if you can tell.

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