BAN #421: Zero Gravity Day hoax, Dark Skies, Animated Star Trek

25 April 2022 Issue #421

April 25, 2022

Subscribers know the value of a dark sky.

Upcoming Appearances/Shameless Self-Promotion

Where I’ll be doing things you can watch and listen to or read about

[Mysteries of Science logo. Credit: Mysteries of Science]

I did a really fun interview on “Mysteries of Science”, a terrific science and nature podcast for young folks. They had an episode on hoaxes, and I talked to them about the silliness that is Zero-G Day, a day when — as the claim goes — Jupiter and Pluto’s gravity aligns and if you jump in the air you’ll float!

Can this be true? Well I did use the word hoax above. But you can hear all about it on the podcast which you can get on the Mysteries of Science site or on Apple Podcasts. Other places to grab it and/or subscribe are on the MoS site. My part starts around 17:15, but the whole show is great.

I’ve also written about the Zero-G Day hoax a couple of times, if you want to dive a little deeper into it. Just don’t forget to wear your magboots.

About this newsletter

Ooo, meta

Reminder: I’ll be picking 20 subscribers — 10 paid and 10 free — to win meteorites TODAY (April 25, 2022) at noon Mountain Time. If you’re reading before that time, tell your friends to sign up! If you’re reading it shortly after, stay close to your email inbox to see if you won! If you’re reading this 7 billion years from now, my apologies, but the Sun expanded into a red giant and melted all the meteorites.

Astro Tidbit

A brief synopsis of some interesting astronomy/science news

This makes me so happy: The world’s largest dark sky reserve, called the Greater Big Bend International Dark Sky Reserve, has been created in Texas. And it’s huge: about 40,000 square kilometers! That’s a little under twice the size of New Jersey.

Dark sky reserves are where entities agree to try to keep the area as unlit at night as possible. This helps preserve the dark skies for people who want to view the stars, but it’s also important for nature; many animals have their cycles disrupted by humans lighting everything up at night.

The reserve surrounds the iconic McDonald Observatory in southern Texas, and in fact — and this is my favorite part — it extends into Mexico.

There are hateful, ignorant people in my country who want to build a wall across our southern border because of an imagined wave of hostile foreigners bent on… well, something, some unspecified act that is wholly imagined but used to stoke even more fear and hate.

As you might guess, I stand opposed to this. And here we have a shining example of exactly the opposite: Cooperation between two governments to do something wonderful, something important, and doing it because it makes the world a better place.

[Buy this book. Credit:  Bryan Caplan / Zach Weinersmith / FirstSecond Books]

And if you want to argue in favor of closing that border, then don’t you dare open your mouth before you’ve read my friend Zach Wienersmith’s delightful and important book, Open Borders, which argues convincingly that not only should we not close the border but we should open it wide and let in all the people we can. The “common wisdom” (i.e. mis/disinfo) that foreigners will come and take our jobs and lower the standard of living and impose their own culture on our own — it really is really wrong. Open immigration benefits both sides, bolsters the economy, and adds even more diversity to an America that has countless benefits from the diversity it already has.

The sky belongs to all and to none of us. That’s why we must make it as accessible as possible. And the same is true for our country.

Blog Jam

[From the Perseverance rover’s location on Mars, the moon Phobos can pass directly in front of the Sun. Watch the AMAZING video in Thursday’s article! Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI]

Music of the Spheres

An occasional glimpse into genre scifi music I like

It’s not like I’m gonna go out of my way to listen to this terribly often, but I’ll admit as a Trek dork of a certain age I smiled a lot while this played in the background as I did some writing.

OMG. I rewatched the entire Animated Series a few years ago — we were finishing up the writing on Bill Nye Saves The World (I was the head science writer for the first season) and getting ready to start recording the show, and by the time I got back to my apartment at the end of a 14-hour day watching some fun nostalgia on a streamer was exactly what I needed to unwind — and the Trek animated series is a weird mix of fluff and some actually really good stuff. The story telling was limited due to the extremely short length of each episode, but even so there were some solid stories.

ST:TAS is streaming on Paramount+, if that’s your thing. It’s definitely mine.

And OMG there’s a making-of video and it’s pretty fun.

Make it so.

Et alia

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