• Home
  • About the Author
  • About the Blog
  • About the Book

Posts Tagged ‘television’

History Channel Appearance — Next Tuesday!

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

 

The episode of “The Universe” on which I will appear — though probably only briefly — has now been scheduled! It will have its first showing on the History Channel at 9:00 pm (8:00 pm Central time) on the History Channel. For those people who don’t get the History Channel, I think that it will also be available on the Web. Go to the main page for “The Universe” and click on “Watch Full Episodes.”

The title of the episode is “The Day the Moon was Gone.” It looks at various scenarios for what Earth would be like if we had no moon. What if we had never had a moon? What if the moon suddenly disappeared?

Also, for those of you who missed my first appearance on ”The Universe” in 2007, they are re-running that episode (simply called “The Moon”)  just before the new one — 8:00 Eastern time, 7:00 Central.

If you have been following my blog entries — this one, this one, and this one – you know already that I have some concerns about the upcoming episode. I have not yet seen the episode, but I am worried that the show is going to exaggerate certain claims.  Some ideas might be presented or emphasized not because they are good science, but because they are good TV. After the show has aired, please feel free to ask me what I think is good science, what is doubtful, and what is just plain bogus. Keep in mind, though, that anything I say is just one person’s opinion! I can be wrong, too.

By the way, I have no such reservations about the earlier episode. On the whole I think that the History Channel (or really, Flight 33 Productions, which has produced all the episodes of “The Universe” except one) did a really nice job with that episode, and I am proud to have appeared on it.

Tags: Flight 33 Productions, History Channel, television, The Universe
Posted in Media, websites | No Comments »

History Channel and “This Week’s Finds”

Friday, July 31st, 2009

 

Just a little update on the History Channel program … I must have talked with Adrian, the writer/producer, about fifteen times this week. Today was his deadline for the script, and he kept on checking little details with me. Even as recently as Monday he said that persons unknown had snuck some words into the script about the giant impact creating the oceans, which is NOT TRUE!!

I am not in the television biz, but it amazes me that anyone would have the audacity to put statements of fact (especially false ones) into a writer’s script without checking with the writer first. I write for the print media, and I don’t think that any of my editors would ever do that. If they did, they wouldn’t be my editor for long!

Anyway, I’m confident that Adrian is trying his best to get the story right, and I hope that he will get the last word.

Today I found a reference to the giant impact theory in an unexpected place on the Web: Physics World magazine. The article is called “The Earth — for physicists,” and it talks about four catastrophes that Earth has been through, including the giant impact that formed the moon and the “late heavy bombardment” that formed most of the moon’s large impact features. The article says complimentary things about my book, so I’m happy to reciprocate with a link to it!

I found the article intriguing for a reason you might not expect. The author, John Baez, was perhaps the first blogger on the World Wide Web. He was certainly the first physics blogger. I interviewed him one time (for reasons that I have now forgotten), and he pointed out that he had been writing his blog since before the word “blog” existed! It’s called “This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics,” and he has kept it going since January 19, 1993. It is now up to Week 276.

If you do the math, you’ll see that he has not written an entry every week. Nevertheless, his blog is a fantastic place to learn about math or really theoretical kinds of physics, because he thinks hard about how to explain difficult concepts in the most straightforward, informal, intuitive way. Usually, the only way you can get this stuff is to talk with someone at the blackboard. That’s what John Baez’s blog is like. A really great blackboard session. And somehow he manages to do it over and over … not every week, but pretty darned often.

Anyway, Baez is usually into very cerebral math-y stuff, and so it amazed me to see him writing for Physics World about something as concrete as how the moon formed, how we got an oxygen atmosphere, etc. It amazed me in a good way, I hasten to add.  After all, I was also in a previous life a card-carrying mathematician, and look what I’m writing about now!

Tags: blogs, giant impact, John Baez, late heavy bombardment, physics, television, world's first blogger?
Posted in Media, Science, websites | No Comments »

  • Categories

    • Arrive (2)
    • Future exploration (6)
    • Just for Fun (10)
    • Media (18)
    • Meetings (7)
    • Missions (17)
    • Movies (1)
    • NASA (13)
    • Popular culture (4)
    • Science (29)
    • Survive (1)
    • Thrive (1)
    • websites (5)
  • Subscribe

    Subscribe in a reader
    Subscribe by email
  • Earthly links

    • dana blogs chess
    • Dana's website
  • Lunar links

    • Bad Astronomy
    • Emily Lakdawalla – Planetary Society Blog
    • Lunar Picture of the Day
    • Moon-Wiki
    • Paul Spudis – The Once and Future Moon
    • Space.com
    • The Big Splat, or How Our Moon Came to Be
    • Wandering Space
  • Recent posts

    • Hiatus
    • Obama’s Speech — Some Cheers, Some Jeers
    • Discover article on the Moon
    • New Scientist article
    • The Moon and Easter
    • Lunar water update
    • Change of Pace — and Puzzle
  • Previous posts

    • June 2010 (1)
    • April 2010 (3)
    • March 2010 (2)
    • February 2010 (1)
    • January 2010 (3)
    • December 2009 (3)
    • November 2009 (4)
    • October 2009 (2)
    • September 2009 (4)
    • August 2009 (5)
    • July 2009 (11)

Copyright © 2023 - Who Hung the Moon? | Entries (RSS) | Comments (RSS)

WordPress theme based on 9ths Current designed by web design