Philip Plait

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Philip Plait (a.k.a. The Bad Astronomer) is an astronomer who runs the website Badastronomy.com. He works at the physics and astronomy department at Sonoma State University.

1 Biography
2 Work
3 Badastronomy.com
4 Books
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Plait grew up in the Washington, D.C. region and lived there for many years. He received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Virginia in 1994 with a thesis on SN 1987A, which he studied with the Supernova Intensive Study (SINS). He first worked with the COBE satellite and then with the STIS on the Hubble Space Telescope for five years.

[edit] Work

Plait currently performs web-based public outreach for GLAST, which will launch in 2007. He has appeared on the radio show Coast to Coast AM many times, but refused to debate Richard C. Hoagland (chief proponent of the "Face on Mars" theory), citing among his reasons as, "A radio debate is not a debate in the real sense, it's more of an argument, and whoever is more emotionally persuasive tends to 'win'." [1] Phil Plait has been featured on TV and on such websites as Space.com. His work has also appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook of Science and the Future and Astronomy magazine. He has a regular column in Night Sky magazine (an offshoot of Sky and Telescope) called "Straight Talk", which has appeared since the magazine's first issue.

He is also a frequent guest on the SETI Institute's weekly science radio show Are We Alone? hosted by Seth Shostak. He can be heard on many Are We Alone? installments debunking junk science and waxing poetic on the sublime nature of the universe [2].

He has written a book, Bad Astronomy, which deals with much the same subject matter as his website.

[edit] Badastronomy.com

Badastronomy.com is a website dedicated to clearing up public misconceptions about astronomy and space science in movies, the news, print, and on the Internet. Plait also debunks several pseudoscientific theories related to space and astronomy, such as Planet X, Richard Hoagland's theories, and most famously, the moon landing "hoax". In March 2006, Science magazine's NetWatch feature lauded the Bad Astronomy website, praising in particular the Bad Astronomy Blog which Plait began in March 2005. This blog was also a finalist for the 2006 Weblog Award (the "Bloggie"), in the "best topical weblog" category since the Bloggies, like many blog awards, do not have a specific science category. Plait also contributes occasional science articles to The Huffington Post.

On January 28, a new segment of the blog called Q & BA^[1] was announced. The feature consists of a video log where questions sent by the blog's readers are answered. New videos are posted every Monday.

The Bad Astronomy message boards were merged with the Universe Today message boards to form a more robust, combined site, appropriately titled, the "Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Message Board."

[edit] Books

Philip Plait (2002). Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax". John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-40976-6.