Planetary conspiracy theories

The dwarf planet formerly known as Xena has been renamed Eris, and it’s companion has been named Dysnomia, and Phil finds something funny: a guy who thinks renaming planets after discord and strife is a moonbat plot to mock the Bush administration. Seriously.

He’s nuts. War and chaos don’t come to anyone’s mind when they hear the name GW Bush. We all know the real devious reasons for juggling the names around.

  • It’s an anti-feminist plot to deprive that famous female historical figure and butt-kicking lesbian, Xena the Warrior-Princess, of her due honor.
  • It’s a feminist plot to punish Xena for making those horribly uncomfortable leather bustiers popular.
  • It’s a Discordian conspiracy to destroy Christianity. Hail Eris!
  • Look at that name, “Eris”. It makes no sense. But it’s “Sire” spelled backwards…obviously, the British Royal Family is behind it, and we all know that they are up to no good, those shape-shifting reptoid bastards.
  • Alternatively, it’s a typo: it’s supposed to be “Bris.” It’s a Jewish feminist conspiracy, and they decided that a butt-kicking lesbian warrior wasn’t aggressive enough, so they went to something more likely to strike fear in men’s hearts.
  • It’s a coded message from the Democrats. No more Floridas, no more Ohios—they’re calling in Electoral Reform International Services.
  • Aww, heck, forget the secret conspiracy stories. This is an organization under the Bush administration, after all…somebody screwed up and accidentally typed random letters into a form. Has anyone seen Deutsch lately?
  • They were going to name the two bodies Eros and Dysmenorrhea, but those two just didn’t get along, so they picked the next best names.
  • The REAL answer, the one we should worry about, is that all this shuffling about and renaming and categorizing of planets is an anti-evolutionist conspiracy. We now have dwarf planets; soon they’ll unveil pygmy planets, and then we’ll have the cosmic version of an irrefutable creationist argument, and we’ll be doomed.

Confirming the last possibility, we have the fact that this goon is so stupid, he thinks Kent Hovind makes a good scientific argument.

A new bathtime dilemma

Both Proper Study of Mankind and Thoughts in a Haystack have summaries of this bizarre paper that was published in Science last week, showing a connection between a sense of cleanliness and ethical thought. I guess it’s not surprising that physical sensations impinge on unconscious decisions, but it is interesting in that it hooks into some cultural rituals. I’m not at all clear on what it means, though: should I skip out on taking a shower so I’ll feel more compelled to do good in thought and deed to compensate, or should I do pre-emptive washing so I won’t be hindered from skullduggery?

Alien planets and cephalopodoids

The latest issue of Science has a fascinating article on Exotic Earths—it contains the results of simulations of planet formation in systems like those that have been observed with giant planets close to their stars. The nifty observation is that such simulations spawn lots of planets that are in a habitable zone and that are very water-rich.

i-733d7bc1f57250f9f1057c2ab05c900b-simulated_planets.jpg
(click for larger image)
Final configuration of our four simulations, with the solar system shown for scale. Each simulation is plotted on a horizontal line, and the size of each body represents its relative physical size (except for the giant planets, shown in black). The eccentricity of each body is shown beneath it, represented by its radial excursion over an orbit. The color of each body corresponds to its water content, and the inner dark region to the relative size of its iron core. Orbital values are 1-million-year averages; solar system values are 3-million-year averages. Note that some giant planets underwent additional inward migration after the end of the forced migration, caused by an articial drag force. This caused many hot Earths to be numerically ejected, but had little effect outside the inner giant planet.

Dynamics of Cats has a better summary than I could give, and it leads in with this lovely illustration of an hypothetical alien organism on one of these hot water worlds.

biojove.jpg

The only thing cooler than a cephalopod has to be a tentacled alien cephalopodoid. There’s a high-res version of that image at Dynamics of Cats—and I’ve got a new desktop picture.

Maybe it’s an Australian custom

I’ve been asked if this is a common occurrence at scientific conferences: at an Australian conference on climate change, the entertainment at a social dinner was a burlesque show. And the answer is…no. Every meeting dinner I’ve attended has had some white-maned elder statesperson of the discipline do the ‘entertainment’, which is usually thin on the bare flesh and the humor, thick with jargon and historical detail. It can be fun—I recall one talk by JZ Young that was full of squid and voltages that I really enjoyed—but I don’t think it would have been improved if he’d been up on the podium wearing nothing but balloons.

It’s an odd story. The cabaret was cut short after 10 minutes, so I think it’s clear that a significant number of attendees must have expressed their disapproval immediately, and that this was a bit beyond the pale, even for wild ol’ Australia. Some organizer somewhere made a very, very bad decision, I think.