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

HUBBLE TROUBLE 235
can assure you that these hardworking, intelligent, and clever people
have no interest in covering anything up.
It gets even better. Not only was NASA not covering anything
up, it actually initiated a fairly large amount of hoopla over the
Hubble Moon images. Like most cranks, Hoagland is capable of
weaving entire empires from fantasy, and would rather accuse people
of lying than actually try to think logically for a moment.
In the end, the cranks and conspiracy theorists will believe whatever
tale they tell themselves, as they always do and always will.
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS
I’ll leave Hubble with one more story.
Probably my favorite media misadventure with Hubble involves
that bastion of near-reality, the Weekly World News. Everyone
knows their articles are jokes . . . or do they? It sells pretty well in
grocery stores, and I always wonder how many people take it seriously.
Headlines often scream, “Angels are Real—and Visiting Your
Bathroom!” or “Boy Born Half-Bat Terrorizes Neighborhood!”
On July 19, 1994, the News had a story headlined “First Photos
from Hell!” with the subtitle, “Listening device picks up screams
coming from Black Hole!” (They use a lot of exclamation points.)
According to the article, Hubble was observing a black hole when
it detected a clear signal of people screaming. Obviously, these
were the tortured souls of the damned in hell.
Ignoring for the moment (or forever) the silliness of Hubble
picking up sounds at all, especially from hell, the best part of the
article for me was the accompanying picture of a Hubble image of
Supernova 1987a, a star that exploded in 1987. I studied this
object for four years for my Ph.D., analyzing Hubble images and
spectra. I sometimes worked until late at night trying to decipher
what I saw, pounding my head on my computer screen in hopes of
shaking loose some rusty cog in my brain. I never heard any tortured
screams except my own.
So the last thing I need is for the Weekly World News to tell
me that Hubble images of Supernova 1987a were hell. I wrote a
whole thesis about it!