Posted on 09/20/2005 10:10:13 AM PDT by Conservomax
Sometimes, I wonder how gullible people can be.
Yahoo News, which will repeat anything it finds on the web as if it's true, published an article on September 12th about a "chaos cloud" headed toward Earth. This cloud, the article breathlessly exclaims,
...dissolves everything in its path, including comets, asteroids, planets and entire stars -- and it's headed directly toward Earth!
Oh no! Fear! Horror!
... skepticism? Disbelief? C'mon, folks! The source of this story is the Weekly World News. This is the same epic rag that brought us BatBoy, remember.
I can make this clearer: it's a joke. J O K E. The tabloid is satirical, not meant to be taken seriously, a, well, a joke. A joke.
I hope I've made myself clear.
Perhaps, just maybe, you weren't aware that the WWN is a joke newspaper (at least one friend of mine had never heard of it), so in that case you are marginally forgiven. But the next step to check the article's veracity would be to google the name of the scientist mentioned in the article, Dr. Albert Sherwinski. All you get are: references to the WWN article. Perhaps that might tip you off.
What's funny about the article to me is that there is some (small) amount of actual science in it. It says that the cloud is made of particles emitted from a black hole in a process called Hawking radiation, and the particles come in electron-positron pairs. This is pretty close to being right: black holes do (theoretically) emit particles due to bizarre quantum mechanical effects, and some of these will be electrons, and others will be their anti-matter counterpart, called positrons. When they collide, they give off gamma rays, which can be dangerous, though you'd have to be practically on top of the black hole to be in trouble, and if you're that close you have other more immediate problems, like being really close to a black hole.
But the article's accuracy ends there. There is no such thing as a "chaos cloud", black holes don't emit enough radiation to be dangerous (if Hawking was even right at all about this topic), and certainly the black hole in the center of our Galaxy (which the article implies is the source of the cloud) won't be a big producer of this radiation: the bigger the hole, the less radiation it emits. The black hole in the center of the Milky Way is a monster. If it emits Hawking radiation, it would be incredibly difficult to detect.
And another thing: the article says Chandra detected the cloud, but in reality Chandra would be rather blind to the type of radiation emitted as electrons and positrons collide. They emit gamma rays, the kind of energy seen by satellites like INTEGRAL. Chandra detects X-rays, which are lower energy, and are not produced by the collision of electrons and positrons.
So the next time you see some headline screaming about the end of the world, just take a look at the byline. But talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy! When people start taking the Weekly World News seriously, it may really be the end of the world.
LOL!
Darn. I was enjoying this one! It was even better than the meteor scare this past June/July from "Aussie" Bloke or whatever.
Let the finger pointing begin.
The fact they felt the need to debunk this (and not just them, but folks on tech boards too) tells us what a treacherous situation we are in with regard to science education and knowledge.
Scientific innovation is one the principle drivers in our economy and there are too many attacks on science to be good for the nation.
And don't forget that this was all about a black hole, not a spoon-fed, priveleged, upper-class white hole. Once again, negative and destructive behavior is presumed to come from the blacks.
Captain Picard to the bridge.
chaos ping!
Does the author know that Yahoo is not publishing WWN stories as if they are true?
Bush's fault!
Great, just when I maxed out my credit cards, cashed in my 401K for a porsche, and told my boss he's a flaming idiot.
Sometimes I have a Chaos Cloud floating in my head in the morning.
BUSH LIED! THE BIG DUST EATING CLOUD DIED!
WE'RE NOT DOOOOOOOMED!!!
No, say it isn't true! Someone made up this rediculous chaos cloud story? WOW!!!!! LOL!
The Weekly World News is a joke? That..that means...there's no Batboy?
DAMN! I just sold all of my stocks, bonds, closed my IRA's, divorced my wife, and married my 22 y.o. secretary over that article and was ready to run off to Tahiti!
Well, now that you have all the preliminaries out of the way, what's stopping you??
And children!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.