A Doctor of Astronomy hints on the website he opened and in the book that he is going to write various conspiracy theories, such as the claim that Poverka landed on the moon
The myth of eggs standing on the vernal equinox started the matter, deliberate misinformation about meteors upset him, but when he heard that some people believed that the color of the Apollo moon landings never happened, Philip Plait realized it was time to crusade against the anti- Science and in particular anti-astronomy.
What started as a small internet project of a frustrated astronomy student turned into a column in a newspaper, a contract to write a book and a website that receives 15 thousand hits a week (http://www.badastronomy.com. ) Plate spared no one. Plait, now a Doctor of Astronomy from the University of Virginia and who works on the Hubble Space Telescope project shoots his arrows in streams, on television and news broadcasts, as well as on Internet sites, when they share proven facts in the field of space science. Like the example that humans have never walked on the moon, despite the countless evidence that there is.
"People believe the strangest things, but they are unwilling to believe the most solid facts placed before their eyes." Plate said in an interview during the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego. He blames the movie Kaparikorn 1 as the cause of most of these comments. This is a science fiction film that depicted a fabricated mission to Mars during which the astronauts stayed on Earth at all. This is a hard blow. The film legitimized many people who believe that we never reached the moon." says Plate. "There weren't many believers, but with the internet, you can spread disinformation quickly. People are ready to accept this material.”
where are the stars
The most common argument in the mouths of the Apollo deniers is that in the pictures of the astronauts on the moon the stars are not visible even though the sky is dark, and therefore this is proof that the pictures were taken somewhere on Earth. Plait chokes up when he mentions this argument, and responds that you don't see stars because the moon itself reflects sunlight and is extremely bright, so bright that on Earth people can call it the light of the full moon. "When they take the illuminated astronaut, on the illuminated ground of the moon, it's like shooting during the day on Earth." He says. "No star can penetrate through this light."
Instead of revealing the truth of the idea on his website, Plate opened a "Truth Revealing and Conspiracy Theory" section, but he plans to devote a chapter to the subject in his planned book "Bad Astronomy". There will also be a chapter on those who calculate the age of the universe using the Bible, and estimate the age of the universe in thousands of years instead of the billions of years that astronomers have known about for many years.
The resulting science?
Astronomy is one of the most accessible sciences. He says. Everyone wonders about her and she touches on the most basic questions of humanity: why are we here, what is our place in the universe, will the universe have an end, how did it begin? These are not small questions. Entire religions and industries that generate billions of dollars a year make a living from these questions. "This means there is an open door to people's minds. If you can use that path to reach people, it's a good path for people—for better or for worse.” says Plate.
As part of the site that began during his studies in 1993 and 1994, Plate expresses irritation at common beliefs such as the one that eggs can stand on their edge only at the moment of the vernal equinox. This is just an example of stupidity for its own sake. He posts a photo of hens eggs standing in military formation taken on October 25th, which he says is as far from the vernal equinox as possible.
He didn't think to expand his site to bad astronomy as well until 1998, several months before the Leonid meteor shower. It was good timing: he had a lot of grain to grind on this occasion, due to the many superstitions associated with meteors. Plate continues today to develop the subject and is working in the public education system for the gamma ray telescope. He also writes a column for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
