Top all-time · #5010
Phil Plait
Personal blog · badastronomy.com/bablogscience
Phil Plait's personal blog at badastronomy.com covers science. Since 2008, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times, most often “No Alien Signal”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog is linked for debunking space and astronomy misconceptions, such as Apollo moon-landing claims, moon rotation and false alien-signal alarms. Commenters call it a good expert source.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /bad/tv/foxapollo.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-07-30
- No Alien Signal2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-01-16
What Hacker News says?
>Another argument I heard against 3D movies is that apparently our brains use all sorts of cues (about 20, I think) other than differences between what the eyes see, in order to make us see things as 3D... 3D movies provide only one of those cues, and so naturally causes a strange feeling because the other 19 cues are missing. A big one is atmospheric haze, which is easy to reproduce to be fair. It is also the reaso…
Comment linking /bad/tv/foxapollo.html
on “Why 3D doesn't work and never will.”Submitted The Long Climb from the Sun's Core (1997) as a story · 32 points
HN discussionHonestly I'm not sure, but based my comment off this page I read years ago: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/badstarlight.html It doesn't seem so unreasonable. I have also read the human eye can detect a single photon and 450 photons per cm³ is about 3e10 photons per second.
Comment linking /bad/misc/badstarlight.html
on “NASA finds a large amount of water in an exoplanet's atmosphere”Submitted Are we aliens? as a story · 7 points
HN discussion> This article brings about the exact same glee and nostalgia. Phil Plait is one of my favourite science writers, and has been consistently putting out great "bad astronomy" blog posts for years (decades?). If you want more of his writing you can check out the website: http://www.badastronomy.com/index.html
Comment linking /index.html
on “Hayabusa2 is leaving the asteroid Ryugu and heading back to Earth”Submitted Ten things you don’t know about the Milky Way Galaxy as a story · 7 points
HN discussionIf you genuinely want an expert's take on these matters, this is a good place to go: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html Specifically w.r.t. photos: http://www.iangoddard.com/moon01.htm There's also a book: http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Astronomy-Misconceptions-Revealed-...
Comment linking /bad/tv/foxapollo.html
on “July 20, 1969: One Giant Leap For Mankind (2013)”Submitted No Alien Signal as a story · 5 points
HN discussion"meteoric growth" sounds about right for most startups, since they fail. http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/meteoric.html
Comment linking /bad/misc/meteoric.html
on “Richard Stallman on the Painful Birth of GNU”Submitted Gamma ray burst visible to the naked eye as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis might help you - http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
Comment linking /bad/tv/foxapollo.html
on “Apollo Moon flags still standing, images show”Submitted Mars Lander Phoenix descending (picture taken during flight) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIt seems that the moon does rotate: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=142 At least to an observer sitting in a fixed point in outer space. Edit: better explanation: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/moon_spin.html
Comment linking /bad/misc/moon_spin.html
on “Why is the moon’s gravity so uneven?”Those of you interested in astronomical things may enjoy http://www.badastronomy.com/
Comment linking /
on “Star halfway across the universe was visible to naked eye for 30 secs on Wednesday”false alarm. http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/16/no-alien-signa...
Comment linking /bablog/2008/01/16/no-alien-signal/
on “Has E.T. Made A Call? (Possible Contact from Intelligent Civilization)”The author is Phil Plait, Bad Astronomer. He is writing for an audience that is not as technically well-informed as most of HN, so it’s no surprise to see his writing called out as “pedantic” by… a bunch of pedants! He’s helping people understand the world a bit better and that’s a great thing to do. I recognized the style before I noticed his name. Phil was writing online as The Bad Astronomer at least as far back…
Comment linking /info/whois.html
on “The Equinox Is Not What You Think It Is”
