Random fact of the day
Dec. 1st, 2009 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI'm reading Death by Black Hole by Neal deGrasse Tyson. Amongst all the astrrophysics is this little tidbit.
You've heard about the canals on the surface of Mars? The strongest proponent of this idea, who made it part of pop culture, was Percival Lowell, a turn-of-the-century astronomer who founded the Lowell Observatory. At the time, no one else had observed the canals he described, but he had the best telescope in the world, so they figured theirs just weren't good enough. But even years after he died, even with much more powerful telescopes, no one saw the elaborate canals he'd drawn.
A few years ago, an optometrist published a paper after noticing that the construction of the Lowell observatory telescope is similar to what is used to examine patients' eyes. He showed pretty conclusively that the network of canals Lowell saw on the surface of Mars was...the veins on his own cornea.
There's an object lesson in here about observer bias, but I think there's something deliciously ironic about the fact that this man looked out to the cosmos but never saw past his own eyes.
You've heard about the canals on the surface of Mars? The strongest proponent of this idea, who made it part of pop culture, was Percival Lowell, a turn-of-the-century astronomer who founded the Lowell Observatory. At the time, no one else had observed the canals he described, but he had the best telescope in the world, so they figured theirs just weren't good enough. But even years after he died, even with much more powerful telescopes, no one saw the elaborate canals he'd drawn.
A few years ago, an optometrist published a paper after noticing that the construction of the Lowell observatory telescope is similar to what is used to examine patients' eyes. He showed pretty conclusively that the network of canals Lowell saw on the surface of Mars was...the veins on his own cornea.
There's an object lesson in here about observer bias, but I think there's something deliciously ironic about the fact that this man looked out to the cosmos but never saw past his own eyes.
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