Podcast Episode 106: A Fission Origin for the Planets, Part 2ing

Could planets have formed
By budding off a young Sun?
Or, does that not work?

Several corrections and additions from the last episode form the lead-in to this one, going from forming the moon by budding off Earth to forming planets by budding off the Sun. The vast majority of this episode is a discussion of the material by the late Tom van Flandern, who was probably the most recent and vocal advocate of the model, excluding one with whom I was promised a debate that has not yet materialized.

This episode gets us back to the ~half-hour format, though besides the main segment, there is only some feedback and brief announcements of some upcoming interviews. More on that when they happen and are posted.

The episode was brought to you by:

• Argument from Personal Incredulity
• False Dichotomy
• False Analogy
• Cherry-Picking
• Quote-Mining
• Non sequitur

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Podcast Episode 105: A Fission Origin for the Moon, Part 1

Could the Moon have formed
By budding off a young Earth?
Or, does that not work?

I know Graham’s not going to be happy, but I’m putting off the Pioneer Anomaly episode for at least another two. Instead, this is the first of a two-parter on the fission model of solar system object formation. You might be thinking that this is a repeat of Episode 53 (lunar formation, though I’m sure you know all the episode subjects by heart), but it’s not. I go much more in-depth into the historic context, evidence for it at the time, but subsequent problems and why no scientist accepts it today (though some pseudoscientists do, which is what I’ll be talking more about in Part 2).

Due to time constraints (lots of cleaning, a “for realz” job interview with USGS tomorrow, and various other things), there is only the main segment and a New News related to Episode 85 (blood moons) — if it’s visible from your location, don’t miss the total lunar eclipse in two weeks!!

Oh, and the Reality Remix interview should be posted on their website, and I’ll be posting it shortly. I suggest clicking on the link for non-Flash users, it might work significantly better.

Podcast Episode 30: Was the Asteroid Belt a Planet? Part 2 (Exploding Planets!)

The follow-up to last episode, this one deals with Tom Van Flandern’s idea that Mars was a moon of an exploded planet that formed the asteroid belt 65 million years ago. So, last episode was basic science, this one gets back to some of those wacky and wonky ideas. Oh yeah … and lots of Coast to Coast clips!

I also spend around 10 minutes discussing feedback from the last episode.

Podcast #29: Was the Asteroid Belt a Planet? Part 1

In this episode that is one second shy of 30 minutes, I talk about some of the historical reasons why some people may think the asteroid belt was at one time a planet, but then I go into four ways to show that it could not have been a planet. Next episode (“Part 2”) will get more on the wacko-conspiracy/crazy/pseudoscience exploding planet ideas.