Science journalists naturally want their readers excited. So we’re always on the prowl for cool nontechnical news. These can be new discoveries, like evidence of life-friendly gases on a distant planet. Or we’ll try fear-mongering, with a flash about a new comet on a possible collision course with Earth. Also in the playbook might be a thought-provoking aspect of an old topic, like creating original analogies to try to make sense of the infinite density of a black hole’s singularity.
But sometimes writers are stuck. Then, some will recycle old ideas, or, worse, offer ancient news as if it’s brand new. A few weeks ago the knowledgeable astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson, on his Facebook page, headlined the “news” that an asteroid named Apophis might collide with Earth a few years from now. The problem? Well, way back in 2009 this Night Sky page explored that object’s 2004 discovery and NASA’s calculated collision odds as being 2.7%. We noted that NASA soon dramatically downgraded the collision danger to one chance in 45,000 and then further tweaked it to one chance in 250,000. A decade later we shared new 2019 orbital radar data that stirred NASA to announce that Apophis actually cannot possibly hit us during the next century. The risk during our lifetimes was now zero. So the whole scary Apophis story has come and gone. Yet that didn’t stop Tyson from plastering a frightening click bait headline featuring the “possible collision with Earth.”
It was the explosive growth of the internet that gave rise to the phrase “click bait,” because editors could now tell whether a particular headline pulled readers into the story and its ads. The unhappy result is that nowadays you should be as skeptical of science headlines as you hopefully already are with political announcements. Even the New York Times cannot fully be trusted, since they don’t seem to have an observational astronomer among their fact checkers. For example, last week the Times front paged that people in New York City could expect to see an aurora Sunday night. They advised observers to “find a place with a clear view of the North.” Auroras are a hot topic, but they’re completely hidden by urban light pollution. So actual useful advice should have urged aurora chasers to get to a place where skies are at least somewhat dark. Without such a caveat, a “see the Northern Lights!” headline will likely end in disappointment.
That’s why, 35 years ago, when I took over as astronomy editor of the Old Farmers Almanac, the first thing I did was eliminate all event listings that readers would find impossible to see. Being totally unable to view an exciting-sounding, supposedly brilliant comet (because it hovers too low or is hidden in bright twilight) cannot win any friends for astronomy. The last thing science needs is to make people feel sky-watching is a disappointing activity.
Shooting stars are fabulous, for example, but I’ve eliminated any Almanac mention of meteor showers that do not deliver at least one streaker every ten minutes, which is all but four of them. And spotting Mercury induces a strange thrill, but requires a combination of planet elevation and brightness that only arrives a couple of weeks each year. Catching that charbroiled world is an art all its own.
So first you need a trustworthy source for sky-watching news, like the annual Observers Handbook from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. Dodging inaccuracy is an old challenge: canals on Mars were mainstream news well into the 20th century before being exposed as fictitious. Falsehoods dating from even before the Roman Empire remain alive, with some people still believing our world is flat despite telescopes showing no plates or disks floating around up there.
Your computer gives access to more (and better) information than even existed in the Alexandria library. (It’s been rebuilt and is an amazing place, though they wouldn’t issue me a library card.) Given that bounty, some of us even randomly peruse reference works just to learn unexpected things.
This topic is more than a little consequential, since low information individuals determined the last election, and the degree of modern obliviousness can be hard to believe. Citing only a space science example, do any of your friends know that the Sun crosses the sky by moving rightward? Or, pondering fun stuff rather than basics, isn’t it cool to learn that Earth’s rotation carries the Hudson Valley eastward at exactly the speed of sound? That the Sun’s strongest emission is green light? That just like the Moon it rotates in one month? That the nearest planet has the deadliest surface?
It’s a bit amazing that no one you know can name a single experiment performed on the space station during its entire history. Meaning, basically, nobody has any idea what they’ve been doing up there.
Enough. Perhaps it’s easiest just to hang out with me here. Cross my heart, you can trust the stuff on this page, even though I make it all up.
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