Exposing Pseudoastronomy

Did the Soviet Phobos 2 mission encounter an alien mothership just before it was lost, or was this something created two years after the fact by UFO enthusiasts who played fast and loose with the facts to create a fanciful tale based on image artifacts and conspiracy?

Up through mid-2003, Nancy Lieder claimed Planet X would come close to Earth and cause major catastrophes. It didn't happen. She's still active, claimes Planet X is still there, and while many don't take her seriously, we can learn a lot about the 2012 phenomenon from what happened with her in 2003 and the subsequent years.

It would seem that if lunar tides cause or trigger earthquakes that everyone would know about it and beware of doom during the supermoon, but according to a few people, a vast conspiracy by Some has kept this free and easy-to-use earthquake predictor out of the general knowledge. Find out what the statistics actually show.

A look into the timeline of the alleged prediction by Billy Meier that a "red meteor," later linked to asteroid Apophis, will strike Earth in 2036. The conclusion is that the evidence is most consistent with a retrodiction.

So many pseudoscientific claims rely on photographic evidence, and astronomy is no exception. In this Part 2 episode, I build on the basics from Part 1 and talk about dynamic range, noise, rotation, resizing, and adjusting the range of colors displayed. In almost every case, the computer is estimating the final result based on the original image, and anomalies can easily form.

So many pseudoscientific claims rely on photographic evidence, and astronomy is no exception. In this Part 1 episode, I go through the basics of how an image gets from photons to pixels, the corrections we make to the image to try to get it to best represent the original, and some anomalies that can result.

Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" laid forth the idea that Venus was a comet ejected from Jupiter just a few thousand years ago, and much crises happened as a result. Many today still use his ideas. What they were and whether they stand up to scrutiny is the subject of this episode.

A young-Earth creationist claim is that the Earth-Moon system can be no more than 1.4 billion years old because, at that time, the Moon would have been touching Earth. Find out if this dooms "evolutionary theory," or if the YECs are wrong.

Here I talk about and explain four of the most convincing arguments that the Apollo moon landings were real: Ultraviolet photos, lunar rocks, lunar laser ranging, and actual spacecraft photos of the sites from orbit.

In this edition of the ongoing Planet X (fake story) saga, I address the conspiracy theory that Planet X is approaching from the South Pole, which is why we can't see it, but governments have secretly built a telescope at the south pole so they can observe it.

In 2003, scientists released a detailed map of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy that's being ripped to shreds by the Milky Way Galaxy. In 2007, a few news outlets took this and used it to say that our solar system is not native to the Milky Way. Find out what the evidence shows in a, "Who's yo' mamma?" episode of intrigue.

A detailed look at a few different methods that young-Earth creationists use to try to show that craters really do indicate that the Earth-Moon system (and universe as a whole) is only 6000 years old.

An overview discussion of craters and how they are used to date surfaces in the solar system as well as some of the caveats, complications, and limitations that go with the method.

After going over the basics of radiometric dating in Episode 38, here I discuss some of the main young-Earth creationist complaints about the technique, and their arguments to try to invalidate it.

Overview episode of radiometric dating via an interview with geologist Rachael Acks. We discuss the history, the how, and the why of radiometric dating as well as some of the caveats of issues with the method and cases where it can not work.

I interview Lord and Lady Saint Whitehall, two lawyers with pseudonyms, as a follow-up to Episode 27 (Stellar Scams). We discuss the Outer Space Treaty, legal precedents in the relevant areas, and extrapolate to what may need to happen legal-framework-wise in the future as private companies start to exploit extraterrestrial resources.

Stuart gave a live, half-hour talk about geology, astronomy, and physics that young-Earth creationists have to believe or ignore in order to be young-Earth creationists. This was given at the Denver, Colorado Skepticamp in May 2012. This is a live recording.

In this Part 2 of a two+ -part series, I go over four alleged anomalies related to crosshairs and shadows made by Apollo Moon Hoax proponents. I also introduce a new segment, "New News" related to previous episodes.

Robert Bauval originated "The Orion Correlation Theory" in the late 1980s that claims the three main stars in the belt of the Orion constellation align with the three main Giza necropolis pyramids. This has been criticized by some, praised by others -- what's the real story?

It might be a parody these days, but there are websites out there that claim Earth is flat. Learn some "do-it-yourself" ways to figure out that it's round.