Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

PART V
PPPPPP
Beam Me Up
We’ve traveled a long way in this book, from rooms in which we
live to the ends of the universe and finally back again, to plunge
into the cobwebbed depths of the human mind. Where, of course,
there is still more bad astronomy. Don’t think that the next chapters
are in this last section because the topics didn’t fit anywhere
else in the book! Oh no, these chapters are special, so special that
I decided that they didn’t belong earlier in the book. (That, and
they didn’t really fit in with anything either.)
In this final section we’ll see the best and the worst of ourselves
as reflected in our works. We’ll start with the Hubble Space Telescope,
certainly the most abused $6 billion observatory ever built.
There are so many misconceptions about Hubble that a whole
book could be written about them. I hope you’ll settle for just a
single chapter.
Hubble may have cost a lot, but you don’t need the gross
national product of a country to buy the stars. Some companies
will sell stars to you for a substantially reduced, though not inconsiderable
price. But this depends on what you mean by “sell.” It’s
not really stars these companies sell so much as a bill of goods.
They promise the sky, but all they deliver is a piece of paper of
dubious astronomical value. And there are darker implications of
this transaction, too.
Our final exploration of bad astronomy takes us back to the
silver screen. Epic myths may be Hollywood’s biggest staple, but
Tinseltown’s grasp of science has never been the best. The box office
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