Exposing Pseudoastronomy

In this first edition of Solar System Mystery Science Theater, we learn about Iapetus, a weird moon of Saturn that has features unlike any other object in the solar system. Some have explained those with exploding planets and spaceships. Others look for something that makes sense.

Andy Lloyd has a chemistry background and has had an interest in astronomy his whole life. He also likes Zecharia Sitchin's idea of Nibiru and the Annunaki. In his book, "The Dark Star," Andy tries to reconcile what he knows about astronomy with Sitchin's model to create a "neo-Sitchin" proposal that just might be plausible, so long as his changes don't introduce their own new problems.

The Ringmakers of Saturn by Norman R. Berbrun makes a premise, claimed to be consistent with all other research on Saturn's rings, that the rings are created by the exhaust of gigantic space vehicles. He determined this through analyzing blow-ups of photographs returned to Earth by the Voyager spacecraft.

A problem for particle physics and solar physics sparked a somewhat technical argument by young-Earth creationists that our Sun is a young star, only a few thousand years old. Unfortunately for them, the problem was solved in 2001, but I'm getting ahead of my story ...

My first returning guest - and my first guest ever - is the pseudononymous "Expat" who produced numerous programs for the BBC about the Apollo-era space program. He has spent his semi-retirement battling pseudoscience espoused by Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara, and in this podcast we discuss several of the more conspiratorial NASA-related claims of Richard Hoagland and his followers.

The Chelyabinsk meteor is the largest known to pass through Earth's atmosphere since the Tunguska event in 1908. Given the technology today, it's also the best studied and so we know a lot about it. However, many different conspiracies and related ideas have cropped up in just the past two weeks since the explosion, and this episode covers some of the major ones.

Many proponents of "new-age" thought reference the Schumann Resonance, claiming that it's increasing as we approach something, or that it's being drown out by electromagnetic pollution from modern society. In reality, it's a phenomenon that's well understood, is basic to how Earth and the atmosphere interact, and is very constant.

The movie "Celestial" is an hour-long fantasia of misunderstanding images and parediolia. In this episode, I talk more about the basics of image processing and delve into more detail about color compositing than I have in previous episodes.

This episode is a mostly informational one about quantum mechanics -- what are its primary concepts and some popular thought experiments. In the middle of the episode, I bring in some clips demonstrating misuse of these terms and concepts, and then the episode ends with answering the question of whether classical mechanics is dead now that we have quantum mechanics and general relativity.

It was bound to happen at some point: The clip show, characterized by several miscellaneous claims that are too small to be their own show. This clip show deals with pendulums, Earth's moon, magnetic fields, habitability, and exoplanets.

Bill Hudson is an amateur astronomer out of California (USA) who, for four years, operated the 2012hoax.org website. In this interview, we discuss his motivation for starting it, some of the stats on how the site was visited, Bill's favorite back-peddling now that we're into 2013, and his new endeavor: cosmophobia.org.

Giant asteroid strikes have been used to explain a host of weird things about the solar system. The question is, is doing so a form of special pleading, or is there a good reason to blame these impact events?

In the second of two parts, I review why the Face on Mars is best explained by pareidolia. Then I discuss Mark Carlotto's image analysis, other faces found by various people on Mars, and finally the conspiracy angle.

In the first of two parts, the history and some of the claims surrounding the famous "Face on Mars" are discussed in detail, including several follow-up images. Pareidolia and image analysis are discussed at length, as well.

The solstice of December 21, 2012, has now come and gone. Guess what? We're still here.

For the final 2012-related episode, the one major science claim not yet covered is something from the sun doing something bad to us on December 21, 2012. With protective eyewear recommended, this episode peers into the basic claim, the physics involved, the unknown - and the known - about what could happen from the sun that could cause us grief on Earth.

The third of three episodes regarding photographic claims related to the Apollo Moon Hoax conspiracy. This contains a slew of miscellaneous claims, ranging from why we can't image the landers from Earth to why there are no stars in the photos to the infamous "C" rock.

Dr. Brian Hynek (no relation to J. Allen Hynek) is a professor in the geological sciences department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Over the past decade, he has built a multi-faceted research program to explore different ways of getting at the basic question: Is there life on other planets in our solar system? In this interview, we talk about the different ways to address this question and some of the ways not to address it.

In yet another episode on the Fake Story of Planet X, this episode explores the claim that NASA's IRAS survey actually found Planet X in 1983, and it was even reported in news papers. Since then, it's all been covered up. At least, that's what they claim.

A run-down of the various models of how the moon formed. This episode doesn't have much pseudoscience to go with it, but it's a good example of the scientific process at work.