A bit of a rant today about bad science and exaggeration, as two topics in the news highlight how bad reporting of science topics has become. I won’t rant much today about the flooding in North Carolina since it deserves a post of its own, and while it it was a bit surprising and has caused significant misery, calling it a 1000 year event may be technically statistically true but highly misleading. It doesn’t take in to account the earth’s climate cycles, or our relatively short observational period, so it’s almost certainly an exaggeration. That said, a LOT of rain fell in a very short time just south of Wilmington, NC, over 18″ in places (the orange blob in this map:
It’s still raining up there as the remnants of PTC8 dissipate. Hopefully it won’t cause much additional damage, and as always try to help if you can and don’t forget those harmed when the news cycle moves on. We’re still cleaning up from Debby here in coastal Georgia, recovery is measured in months, not minutes.
The lunar eclipse tonight is a neat event, and please go take a look if you have the chance, but I hope folks aren’t disappointed.
This eclipse is a partial (link to NASA article) – and not much of a partial at that. Only 8% of the moon will be in the dark inner shadow of the earth (the Umbra) at the peak, which occurs at 10:44pm Eastern Time. Chances are if you look before 10:13pm, or after 11:16, you won’t notice much because the outer shadow, the penumbra, generally only causes a slight dimming of the moon. But go look around 9pm so you can tell the difference when you go look later.
One thing that makes eclipse watching fun is no two ever look the same because they depend so much of the weather around the entire globe. Eclipses after major volcanic eruptions are darker and redder than those that occur when there hasn’t been one for a while. Even the clouds can change the nature of the eclipse – if it’s cloudy along the edge of the earth, the eclipse will be darker than if the air is clear. You can see how this works in this GOES image from this morning, showing the terminator (the line between night and day) and how the clouds, dust, and upper air changes the light filtering through …
So if you are up, go out and take a look. It probably won’t be a “blood moon” or anything spectacular, but consider that our ancestors figured out that this was the shadow of the earth, and proof that the earth is round, among other interesting discoveries that can be made just by watching the sky with your eyes..
The term “supermoon” wasn’t coined until 1979, but I don’t recall seeing it used much in the media until the last 10 years or so. In my opinion it is a dumb term.
The moon’s orbit around the earth isn’t a circle, it is an ellipse, and the distance varies from about 226,000 miles to 253,000 miles. A “supermoon” is when full moon occurs at the closes point of the moon to the earth, known as perigee. It is slightly larger and brighter than a normal full moon, much less one at apogee (the point in the orbit farthest from earth). How slight? 0.07% brighter. In other words, the human eye can’t tell the difference.
Now, it does make a difference in the tides due to the way gravity works. The force of gravity is about 18% higher than a typical full moon, which can add a foot of extra water to the high tides at this time of year (March or September, when the sun-earth-moon system is in better alignment – the solstices).
As a scientist it’s frustrating when stuff like this, which is interesting and fascinating in it’s own right, are exaggerated through the media. It’s especially destructive when something like the “supermoon” and partial eclipse are hyped, people go out and try to see it, and are disappointed. We live in an amazing universe. It doesn’t need embellishment.
I couldn’t decide which music video to post with this. The first that popped into my mind was Echo and the Bunnymen’s classic “Killing Moon …
But then there’s this … which proves that there is still good music being created:
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My wife and I just saw Echo and the Bunnymen in ATL a few months ago. They still sounded pretty good.