Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Contrarian View: British Physicist Brian Cox is Either an Idiot or a Publicity Hound

The Internets is going agog over that dude dropping a bowling ball and a feather in a large vacuum chamber in order to show that Galileo's idea that objects accelerated by gravity fall independent of the object's mass:



In order to think that this is something special, you'd have to forget that the same experiment had already been done forty four years ago, on the surface of the Moon, by Astronaut David Scott during the Apollo 15 mission:



Yes, some photogenic Ph.D. reran the experiment for television, with better photography and inspiring background music. Big fucking deal.


on or about

11 comments:

  1. Anonymous11/04/2014 3:53 PM

    Of course, no "documentary" is worthy unless the narrator has an Australian or English accent!

    ReplyDelete
  2. montag11/04/2014 6:22 PM

    BFD Indeed! But it will probably impress the grants committee.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Old NFO11/04/2014 6:40 PM

    Who cares...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Comrade Misfit11/04/2014 8:01 PM

    Well, those of us who wear PJs and blog about crap from our mothers' basements might care a little bit. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. BadTux11/05/2014 1:27 AM

    I vote for publicity hound. So what. If it convinces even one mouth breathing cretin that this "science" stuff actually has some truth to it, it'll be worth it. Remember, mouth breathing cretins need things to be repeated for them. Over. And. Over. And. Over. Repetition might bore you and I, but we're not the intended audience because we have more brains than Jehovah gave a caterpillar.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Unknown11/05/2014 1:29 AM

    I'm old enough to remember when Dave Scott made that lunar demonstration of Galileo's observation.

    I'm young enough to appreciate that Brian Cox came up with a fun, dramatic way to demonstrate that same 420 year old observation to a new audience.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Comrade Misfit11/05/2014 8:09 AM

    Ah, get offa my lawn. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ole Phat Stu11/05/2014 9:49 AM

    Surely it is part of the scientific method that experiments can be repeated at any time by different people with the same result?

    Qod erat demonstratum :-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Stewart Dean11/05/2014 11:13 AM

    The thing *I* want to know is who paid for this...pump time, facilities and personnel cost. I hope it was the BBC and not us taxpayers. Or maybe this is all we can do with science and facilities like these days. :(

    ReplyDelete
  10. BadTux11/05/2014 11:49 AM

    Uhm, Stewart, BBC is taxpayer-funded. I don't get your point.

    ReplyDelete
  11. 338311/05/2014 11:45 PM

    BBC is funded by an annual TV license fee, no?

    ReplyDelete

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