I was surprised to learn that some scenes of the new and 22^nd James Bond film had some scenes shot at Mount Cerro Paranal with the VLT (Very Large Telescope).

Apparently, because the Atacama desert is so hot and arid, humidity drops below 10%, so architects had to build the ‘Residencia’, so called because it has a unique design (picture above).

You can also Have a Sneek Peak Inside It really is an amazing building. If you’re interested on how the movie shooting is going on, go to the Paranal Website

This makes it particularly appropriate for the filming of James Bond, and Andreas Kaufer, ESO’s Paranal Director, states We are very excited that the Bond production team have also chosen this location. The producer of Quantum of Solace (the film’s title), Michael G. Wilson said:

The Residencia of Paranal Observatory caught the attention of our director, Marc Forster and production designer, Dennis Gassner, both for its exceptional design and its remote location in the Atacama desert. It is a true oasis and the perfect hide-out for Dominic Greene, our villain, whom 007 is tracking in our new James Bond film.

Looks like it’s time for Bond to look for bad guys with a Telescope…

Interesting names are given to nebula nowadays (pacman nebula :D) , but the use of flower imagery for the name of NGC 7023 isn’t a rare custom. This delicate little nebula is actually a pretty big flower located at appoximately 1300 light-years from Earth. The young, hot stars the nebula is forming heats up the interstellar gas, ionizes it, and makes it glow. Of all of the nebula known today, and of all of those that remain to be discovered, we will always at a push be able to recognize some sort of pattern in it that we can relate to an object that we know. An interesting… and beautiful flower-like nebula.

Image Credit: CFHT

NASA’s Space Telescope Swift detected a powerful Gamma Ray Burst on March 19th in the Constellation Bootes called GRB080319B. Apparently, the blast was visible to the naked eye during 20 to 40 seconds, though no one actually remarked it because gamma rays are blocked by the atmoshpere, but also because it was just on the limit of naked-eye visibility. But the Swift telescope was built especially to track Gamma Ray Bursts, simply because these events last for a short amount of time. I suggest that you track the daily bursts detected by Swift on this page, where a little paragraph describes each burst.

The reasons to why Gamma Ray Bursts are still ambiguous today. Researches speculate that gamma ray bursts happen when large stars run out of fuel, that is Hydrogen gas. Their nuclei collapse and form black holes, neutron stars, and pulsars. When this happens, a huge amount of energy is released in the form of Gamma Rays, which are in practice the most energetic form of light. They then cross the universe at the speed of light, and heat gas clouds creating powerful glowing phenomena.
NASA states that “Gamma ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the universe since the big bang.”

Watch the Video of the Gamma Ray Burst just below, monitored all night by the “Pi of the Sky” Camera

Powerful Gamma Ray Bursts can also occur when a Neutron Star falls into a Black Hole, like in This Video (or Read the Explanation). This is the possible explanation for the extremely powerful Gamma Ray Burst that occured in 1998.

It has been reported that the distance of the burst is of 7.5 billion light-years. This means that the burst actually occured 7.5 billion light years ago because the distance separating Earth from this distant star is so large that it has taken 7.5 billion years for the light to reach our eyes.

Read more about this at NASA and at Slacker Astronomy.

Some people are nuts, and it’s amazing when you think about it that such a large amount of people in society just don’t think right. Conspiracy theories regarding astronomy have existed for a long time, like those peadbrain idiots who claimed that it was impossible to go on the moon, or others who claim that the US government have a base in the desert keeping all of the Alien stuff that we’ve found.

But this new conspiracy theory was initially started after someone filed a lawsuit against the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project on March 21. The LHC project was originally designed to try and find a hypothetical Higgs Boson that would prove the Standard Model of quantum physics. However, such a particle is extermely heavy, and therefore large amounts of energy are needed to generate it (E=mc², mass and energy are equivalent), making it necessary to build such a large underground particle accelerator. The first tests should start in May 2008 after the end of its building.

This conspiracy theories, like most ones, use a mixture of “facts” and “reason” to try and convince people that the LHC will eventually blow up the world. I suggest that you watch this Youtube video which gives the information from these people’s point of view

Watch it Here

You’ll be astonished of the number of people that actually believe everything this guy says if you look at the comments at the bottom of the page. It’s really important to keep an eye on what people say and to have a minimum of critical faculties. If there was any risk, I would say that the CERN would shut down the project and evaluate the risks. The risks have been evaluated, and they are close to nil.

Here are some of the beliefs of these people, and why they are wrong:

The LHC will create Micro Black Holes that will eventually devour the Earth
According to the Standard Model, the energy that the LHC can build up is far too low in order for micro black holes to be created. For a Black Hole the size of Planck’s length (10^-35 m), approximately 10¹⁹ Giga Electron Volts (GeV) would be required, and the LHC’s maximal potential of energy creation is only 10⁴ GeV. That means that the LHC is 10¹⁵ times too small to create such a black hole.

In some extensions of the Standard Model, there are extra dimensions, and therefore a micro black hole be created.
Yes, indeed, these black holes could be created if these extensions were proved, but the conspirationists have forgotten to include a point in their reasonning: Hawking Radiation would cause these black holes to evaporate and dissappear. Furthermore, the such a multi-dimension model has never been proved and is only based on loose assumptions

Apparently, the risks of the LHC destroying human kind is of about 1 in 50 million, therefore there is absolutely no reason to freak out. But these conspirationists never have enough, do they?

The LHC could create Strangelets, and transform the Earth into a Strange Star
Indeed, if Strangelets could be created in the LHC, they would transform all of the matter on Earth into Strangelets. However, Frank Close (Physics Professor at Oxford) stated that the ‘chance of this happening is like you winning the major prize on the lottery 3 weeks in succession; the problem is that people believe it is possible to win the lottery 3 weeks in succession.’ It is in fact possible, but te chances of it are so low that there are way more chances for you of dying from suffocation on Saturn than you dying because of the LHC.

I just stumbled on an article at the Cosmology Curiosity blog which I like to read, which talked about Russel Humphreys’ White Hole Cosmology Theory, and which basically underlined its main points (Read it Here), and I felt a need to react to such a theory, given the fact that I thought it was unnacceptable to deal with God and Science in such a way. Here was my response:

Please keep in mind that I am a fervant atheist, although I respect the religious beliefs of other people.

I find it extremely amusing (though this is my point of view…) to see people using science to try and prove that God created the world. I think that doing this undermines the whole theory, because, no matter how much you base your research on hard facts, you are trying to prove something that you actually have no proof of, which is extremely unscientific: scientific methodology should be the following: observing, analyzing results and finally deducing stuff from it, and not, observe, analyze, and say that the results prove something that you actually have no proof of. I’m not saying that this theory is false, because just as there’s no proof of God’s existence, there isn’t any proof either of his inexistence.

I’m an atheist, but that doesn’t mean that I think that science should be used to prove that God does not exist. We should get the data and create scientific theories that can work on a stand-alone basis. To sum up, you use rationalism, empiricism, and then you say that it proves something when it actually doesn’t. What’s funny is that only the people who believe in God do this, I feel that they are trying to justify their faith in God. What I dislike about this is that it’s more or less trying to make the fact say something that it doesn’t. Think of it this way: would this theory have ever been created if Christianity didn’t exist, or the author did not believe in it?

This makes the theory so subjective and biased that it just seems obviously wrong. Proving the existence (or non-existence of God) with science is totally pointless, and I think that science and religion should be kept appart for the moment, until we have, if we ever do, the actual possibility to prove or not God’s existence. But for the moment, we are like cavemen trying to measure the curving of the universe with two silexes.

I hate it when people use numbers to say what they don’t, because there will always be people who disagree with your interpretation of them, at least on such a large scale where it’s just so ambiguous and we’re so ignorant that there’s not even a point to arguing about it. Debates do become interesting when it regards things that can actually be proven. But no one, at this point of time, is able to say with absolute certainty if God exists or not, therefore let’s not debate about it, because you’ll never be able to prove your results. As a result, your theory must be rejected (at least by those who believe in Science and reason), not because its wrong or false, but simply because you are not actually proving anything and not using facts appropriatly. Therefore, you are not using Science, and the so called Scientific Creationism shouldn’t be called that way, because it makes people think that you are proving God’s existence when in fact you’re not.

Please feel free to comment and react, lets have a debate!
Clement

Other Sites about Scientific Creationism, Further Reading

• Creation Science Debunked - Anti Creation Science Website
• Creation Science - Pro Creation Science Website

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