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Re: (meteorobs) Coming in November Sky & Telescope: "Is This the Leonids' Year?"

Lew Gramer wrote:

> Browsing the Sky & Telescope Web site today, I noticed the following
> 'teaser' for an article in their November issue:
>
>   Is This the Leonids' Year?
>   Six experts predict 5,000+ meteors per hour during November's
>   shower; two others disagree. We've got the full story."
>
> Jumping to the conclusion that some or all of the eight experts
> mentioned may be 'meteorobs' readers, I wanted to ask if any of them
> would be willing to give us here on the list a "sneak peak" into the
> nature of the "full story"! Interestingly, I believe the above article
> may have been written BEFORE Dr. Jennisken's talk at the Meteoroids
> Conference - since S&T goes to press today, and their dead-line for
> article and feature submissions is six months ahead of publication.
>
> A sincere thanks ahead of time to our "resident theorists", for any
> insights they can share on these soon-to-be published predictions.
>
> Lew Gramer

It has been demonsrated by Rob McNaught's posts on MeteorObs for the last
2 years, that S&T's Leonids articles are full of misinformation.

"..what were the bods at Sky&Tel thinking?.."

The media is incapable of "translating" scientific journal articles, for
layman-type stories.  They don't understand science, they are not
scientists, they are journalists out to sell copy.

"Well, my opinion of the went-down-the-tubes-many-years-ago S&T is
similar to what you have expressed yourself before.  During my formative
years in the 60's and 70's I savored every word and it fueled my evolving

interest and intellect.  When it became a glitzy pulp production many
years
back with more fluff than substance I sadly canceled my subscription
shaking my head."
-- astronomer at Steward Observatory, U of Arizona (he is a HST
instrument scientist)

The recent solar eclipse coverage by S&T in Zambia, had 2 glaring
mistakes, which indicate someone is "hallucinating" observations &
another is totally inexperienced.  The articles were laughable, in terms
of any substantiative information.  I picked up an old S&T, & was
immdiately confronted by a letter written by a chemist, which had a
scathing criticism on some glaring errors (a picture, which was dumbed
down for the layman, totally distorted the science).

Anybody who takes S&T seriously, who subscribes that magazine, has no
semblance of scientific integrity (they are in some kind of "reality
distortion field").  Just look at the ads...Adorama, vendors selling
cheap telescopes.  That ought to be a tipoff, on their target audience.


******
  Is This the Leonids' Year?
  Six experts predict 5,000+ meteors per hour during November's
  shower; two others disagree. We've got the full story."

Jumping to the conclusion that some or all of the eight experts
mentioned may be 'meteorobs' readers, I wanted to ask if any of them
would be willing to give us here on the list a "sneak peak" into the
nature of the "full story"! Interestingly, I believe the above article
may have been written BEFORE Dr. Jennisken's talk at the Meteoroids
Conference - since S&T goes to press today, and their dead-line for
article and feature submissions is six months ahead of publication.

A sincere thanks ahead of time to our "resident theorists", for any
insights they can share on these soon-to-be published predictions.
********

Let me inform you on something.  Nature is nature, & scientists develop
models to explain the phenomena.  Models are inherently approximate
(better ones have less uncertainty).

"It's just another model"
-- Dr. xxxx, physicist, Caltech
[ my conversation with him, on the new wave of Evolutionary Based models
in Physics & Engineering ]

You seem to imply, there is deterministic solution to Leonids '01..well,
there ain't.  Anyone who tells you about their models, without describing
the uncertainties (statistical nature of data, which model is based on.
modeling errors, in itself, incl computational), isn't being
scientifically rigorous.  Nature is by nature probablistic.

"Nature is Simple, but Subtle"
"There is NO theory in Biology!! there are many mechanisms to get from
point A to point B"
-- Dr.  xx
[ told to me by my brother-in-law, who is an Evolutionary Biologist ]

The same holds true for models, you have a whole spectrum of models for a
phenomena, such as meteor dust streams.  The models are inherently, a
function of the (incomplete) data-set (data measured to this date, which
itself has some statistical uncertainty).  It;'s like the physicists in
the 1800;s who were looking for determinism, but failed.  Quantum
Mechanics proved the world is fundamentally probabilistic.

You can talk all you want about S&T (whose statistical-scatter for
quality science information is outlandishly large.  the contributing
articles by scientists are OK, but their own articles are quite bad),
laud your theorists, but in the end..you'll never know.  Physics debates
can get quite "religious" (dogmatic), scientific discourse can easily get
into personal arguments ("my theory is better than yours").

Bottom-line?  Go out & observe, take data.  (to add to the data set, to
help theorists come up with improved theories).  What the Leonids '01
will do, you'll only know when you go out & observe.  Predictions are
just that..predictions.  Take weather forecasts, for example.

I couldn't believe that S&T article on the Geminids, a while back.  It
totally ignored the radiant-rise, & looking for earth grazers.  The
author is very naive, & misinformed readers on properly observing the '98
Geminids.  I observed one of the most memorable meteors, a Geminid
horizon to horizon earth-grazer:

http://www.comet-track.com/meteor/geminids98/geminids98.html


You would also help the cause of crediblity, i fyou  would quit the
bi-weekly posts for Meteorobs chat rooms:

Chat rooms:
place for losers to hang out & gossip (why aren't you out observing
meteors on a Saturday evening?)



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