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Philip Plait |
Dr. Philip C. Plait (a.k.a. The Bad Astronomer) is an astronomer and skeptic who runs the website BadAstronomy.com. He formerly worked at the physics and astronomy department at Sonoma State University. In early 2007 he resigned his job to write his new book Death from the Skies. On August 4, 2008 he became President of the James Randi Educational Foundation.1
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Plait grew up in the Washington, D.C. region and lived there for many years. He received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Virginia in 1994 with a thesis on SN 1987A, which he studied with the Supernova Intensive Study (SINS). He first worked with the COBE satellite and then with the STIS on the Hubble Space Telescope for five years. He currently resides in Boulder, Colorado2 and writes full time, but often hosts special events and serves as an adviser and commentator in several capacities, including events focusing on skepticism.
Plait performed, before he resigned his job, web-based public outreach for GLAST, which launched in 2008. He has appeared on the radio show Coast to Coast AM many times, but refused to debate Richard C. Hoagland (chief proponent of the "Face on Mars" theory), citing among his reasons as, "A radio debate is not a debate in the real sense, it's more of an argument, and whoever is more emotionally persuasive tends to 'win'." 3 Phil Plait has been featured on TV and on such websites as Space.com. His work has also appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook of Science and the Future and Astronomy magazine. He has a regular column in Night Sky magazine (an offshoot of Sky and Telescope) called "Straight Talk", which has appeared since the magazine's first issue.
He is also a frequent guest on the SETI Institute's weekly science radio show Are We Alone? hosted by Seth Shostak. He can be heard on many Are We Alone? installments debunking junk science and waxing poetic on the sublime nature of the universe.
He has written a book, Bad Astronomy, which deals with much the same subject matter as his website. He is also currently writing a second book under the working title, Death from the Skies, which details multiple ways astronomical events could wipe out life on Earth and is due out in Fall of 2008. 4
In March 2008, Plait had an asteroid named after him. Asteroid 2000 WG11 was renamed (165347) Philplait in his honor. Fellow astronomer Jeff Medkeff nominated the naming of the celestial body after Plait.56
Badastronomy.com is a website dedicated to clearing up public misconceptions about astronomy and space science in movies, the news, print, and on the Internet. Plait also debunks several pseudoscientific theories related to space and astronomy, such as Planet X, Richard Hoagland's theories, and most famously, the moon landing "hoax". In March 2006, Science magazine's NetWatch feature lauded the Bad Astronomy website, praising in particular the Bad Astronomy Blog which Plait began in March 2005. This blog was also a finalist for the 2006 Weblog Award (the "Bloggie"), in the "best topical weblog" category since the Bloggies, like many blog awards, do not have a specific science category. Plait also contributes occasional science articles to The Huffington Post.
On January 28, a new segment of the blog called Q & BA7 was announced. The feature consists of a video log where questions sent by the blog's readers are answered. New videos were originally posted every Monday, but because of time management issues, Plait decided to temporarily stop making new videos.
The Bad Astronomy message boards were merged with the Universe Today message boards to form a more robust, combined site, appropriately titled, the "Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Message Board."
On July 1, 2008, it was announced that the Bad Astronomy Blog would become integrated with Discover Magazine.
The BA blog was a co-winner of best science blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards.8
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