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worth · 04-17-2009, 10:35 AM

So, did anyone else ditch the Flames game and go to Phil Plait's lecture last night, or was I the only one?

The theater was full. Good crowd and pretty enthusastic.

Phil had a slide powerpoint that he does when he does these sorts of talks. He basically focused on two main points.

The first thing he focused on was the standing an egg on end and how it was false that you could only do this on the equinox. Led into a talk about why the earth has seasons and actually the origins of the myth can be traced back to 1947 or 48 when a journalist went to China and found people doing this on spring as a tradition of rebirth and somehow it got transfered in the states that you can only do this on the first day of spring. Funny thing is that the Chinese don't even celebrate spring on the same day as we do in North America.

Phil also made a point to say that the way we have our season set up is completely wrong. Summer starts on our calendars when the days are at the longest point in the year. This means that every day after the first day of summer, the days are getting shorter. All the seasons should actually start 6 weeks earlier than they do at the cross-quarter days. So in actuality, when we celebrate the first day of spring here, it's actually the middle of spring. When we celebrate the first day of summer, it's actually the middle day of summer. So actually, the first day of summer is the beginning of May.

Phil went on to talk at length about the movie Armageddon and how basically this is the worst movie for science ever made. He said the only thing in this movie that is accurate is that Meteors exist. Everything else about the movie is pure garbage.

He did say though that a similar movie released the same year, Deep Impact, was one of the best scientifically done movies. The only real mistake they made was that when they blew up the 5 mile comet, it's pieces wouldn't have disintegrated in the atmosphere, the 5 miles of mass still has the same amount of energy whether it is in one chuck or a million chunks, so everyone would have died still.

But he said the tidal wave from the 1 mile chunk that engulfs New York is extremely accurate.

It was a great lecture. Spoke for about an hour and a half and then took questions.

04-17-2009, 10:35 AM	#88
worth Franchise Player Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Vancouver Exp:	So, did anyone else ditch the Flames game and go to Phil Plait's lecture last night, or was I the only one? The theater was full. Good crowd and pretty enthusastic. Phil had a slide powerpoint that he does when he does these sorts of talks. He basically focused on two main points. The first thing he focused on was the standing an egg on end and how it was false that you could only do this on the equinox. Led into a talk about why the earth has seasons and actually the origins of the myth can be traced back to 1947 or 48 when a journalist went to China and found people doing this on spring as a tradition of rebirth and somehow it got transfered in the states that you can only do this on the first day of spring. Funny thing is that the Chinese don't even celebrate spring on the same day as we do in North America. Phil also made a point to say that the way we have our season set up is completely wrong. Summer starts on our calendars when the days are at the longest point in the year. This means that every day after the first day of summer, the days are getting shorter. All the seasons should actually start 6 weeks earlier than they do at the cross-quarter days. So in actuality, when we celebrate the first day of spring here, it's actually the middle of spring. When we celebrate the first day of summer, it's actually the middle day of summer. So actually, the first day of summer is the beginning of May. Phil went on to talk at length about the movie Armageddon and how basically this is the worst movie for science ever made. He said the only thing in this movie that is accurate is that Meteors exist. Everything else about the movie is pure garbage. He did say though that a similar movie released the same year, Deep Impact, was one of the best scientifically done movies. The only real mistake they made was that when they blew up the 5 mile comet, it's pieces wouldn't have disintegrated in the atmosphere, the 5 miles of mass still has the same amount of energy whether it is in one chuck or a million chunks, so everyone would have died still. But he said the tidal wave from the 1 mile chunk that engulfs New York is extremely accurate. It was a great lecture. Spoke for about an hour and a half and then took questions.