Exposing PseudoAstronomy
Listen to learn the real state of science behind astronomy-, physics-, and geology-related creationist claims, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, misconceptions, and bad or incomplete media reporting.
Episodes
October 2, 2023 • 12 mins
I briefly spoke with two of the science journalists who are embedded within NASA's New Horizons team for the spacecraft's flyby of the Pluto-Charon system. I asked them how they work to convert the complicated and technical science into something the public can digest and get excited about.
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October 2, 2023 • 29 mins
Most often when discussing the age of the Earth or the solar system, scientists refer to radiometric dating. In kind, young-Earth creationists will try almost exclusively to poke holes in radiometric dating. But, before radioactive decay was discovered over one century ago, scientists in many different fields had already concluded that Earth was at least millions, if not hundreds of millions of years old. This episode discusses the...
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October 2, 2023 • 42 mins
I bring you an interview with Dr. John Spencer, head of the hazards search for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto, and co-deputy of the Geology and Geophysics Investigation team for New Horizons. We discuss how spacecraft images are processed, unique challenges for New Horizons, and some of the things we're doing to try to avoid creation of anomalies that some people might try to claim are evidence for a conspiracy.
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October 2, 2023 • 5 mins
Richard C. Hoagland is at it again; this time, I take you on a short journey exploring Hoagland's claim that there is a ziggurat on the Moon. In this video exposé, I graphically show why this is a hoax, how this is a hoax, and conclude that Hoagland is an incompetent investigator (or lying that he did any investigation).
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October 2, 2023 • 28 mins
Bob Lazar is often credited - at least in part - with re-energizing the UFO field in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Unfortunately for the field, most who have looked into his claims have found them lacking in veracity. In this episode, I look specifically into his claims about ununpentium, also known as Element 115, which is supposed to be the source of propulsion for UFOs and work in their energy production.
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October 2, 2023 • 32 mins
The Big Bang is the model that is used to explain what happened just after the origin of the universe. No more, and no less. But there are different kinds of arguments that people make to argue that the Big Bang never happened. In this episode, we go through some of these arguments and the arguments made by scientists to support Big Bang cosmology.
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July 14, 2018 • 41 mins
After being gone for a bit of time, I return to discuss where I have been, what to expect for the future (when more episodes will air), and if you need your fix of Dr. Stu, there is a new podcast that I have released with two of the co-hosts of The Reality Check podcast, entitled: 5 Minutes with an Astronomer. In this episode, I play four of the twenty-eight shows we have released so far.
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December 22, 2017 • 49 mins
In the final regular episode in the three-part Solar Eclipse of August 2017 series, several of the claims made by Richard Hoagland are addressed. Three types of claims are examined: Whether shadow bands indicate there are glass structures on the Moon, whether the Accutron watch readings indicate there is a hyperdimensional physics, and alleged disinformation.
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November 27, 2017 • 21 mins
An exploration into four groups of fine-tuning arguments used by some to say that we are special: Solar outbursts, habitable zone, lunar origin and effects, and giant planets and impacts on Earth.
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November 14, 2017 • 30 mins
The August 2017 total solar eclipse was seen by hundreds of millions of people, and yet some of them have tried to use it to promulgate pseudoscience. In this Part 2 episode, I discuss ideas about the eclipse promoted by proponents of the idea that Earth is flat.
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October 18, 2017 • 24 mins
The half-truth and misconception addressed in this episode is whether the age of a star with error bars that overlap with the age of the universe means all of science is wrong and the universe was created 6000 years ago.
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October 1, 2017 • 30 mins
Three separate topics all tied together by a commonality: A little bit of something that you tend to only experience in space. First up is microgravity, then near-vacuum, and then what it means to have a temperature in space.
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September 24, 2017 • 11 mins
The world did not end, again, on September 23, 2017. However, the story behind this latest doomsday prognostication may surprise you -- it did me as I investigated it.
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September 1, 2017 • 42 mins
This past eclipse on August 21, 2017, was perhaps one of the most-hyped and most-viewed solar eclipses in human history. As with any such mass-sighted event, pseudoscience is bound to rear its ugly head. In this episode, I address doom and gloom, earthquake predictions, astrologic predictions, Planet X predictions, and other topics related to the eclipse.
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April 16, 2017 • 33 mins
Young-Earth creationists who are not geocentrists - those who accept the Copernican Revolution so far as Earth's place in the universe - have a vested interest in combatting some forms of pseudoscience, including geocentrism. In this episode, I lay out some of their more convincing arguments against geocentrism and point out that their methods of argument are very similar to scientists, which leads one to wonder about hoe much cogn...
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April 1, 2017 • 33 mins
Inspired by one of the longest-running primetime television shows in history, and frustration with late-night radio hosts pretending they can Science, this episode addresses two common misconceptions about the forces from and on water on our planet and their effects on human scales. I first discuss whether Coriols makes toilet bowls swirl in opposite directions in opposite hemispheres, and then whether the moon's tides are strong e...
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March 16, 2017 • 18 mins
A return to a tried-and-true subject of skepticism: the Apollo Moon Hoax. In this shorter episode, I discuss two of the most common claims that you may hear: Why does the US flag appear to be waving in photographs, and if we went to the moon, why haven't we been back?
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March 1, 2017 • 51 mins
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union sparked an uproar and furious debate among scientists and non-scientists alike when they voted for a definition of the word, planet. Numerous proposals since that time have been made for the definition of that term. Eleven years later, a new proposal has gotten a lot of media attention and in this episode, we discuss that new proposed definition. This is closer to a friendly debate styl...
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February 16, 2017 • 75 mins
In past episodes, I have talked about how you can't get any more information out of an image than what is in a single pixel. Dr. Tod Lauer is an astronomer who has worked on all kinds of telscopes and instrument data and has developed numerous image processing techniques over his career. In this episode, we discuss some of those and how to correctly - versus incorrectly - apply them to image data to get to the best representation o...
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February 4, 2017 • 70 mins
In a special cross-over episode, the cast of The Reality Check (Cheque?) podcast come over and we all did short-ish segments on astronomy-related topics: Do we live in a black hole, the Drake equation, are aliens likely to be hostile, did Earth's magnetic field recently collapse, and lunacy. I also did a quiz and learned how difficult it is to make quiz questions that work over a podcast.
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