The Blooper thread

[Blue Fire]

I just ran across the following news item and it immediately gave me an idea to liven things up here.
From: Southern Arizona Telescope Hits Astronomy Milestone

The world's most powerful telescope is now operating from a remote mountaintop in Southern Arizona.
Scientists with the Large Binocular Telescope, L.B.T., on Mount Graham released the first images Thursday. The telescope captured several different versions of a spiral galaxy, commonly known as the Milky Way, 102-million light years from Earth.

My initial reaction was simply "Hunh??" Heh, if that last sentence was true, I'm a very long way from home and it's no wonder that it's nasty weather outside.
I should note that the report is corrected at the page linked for more details and pics. (KOLD First Alert Blog)

The first binocular light images (one at left) show three false-color renditions of the spiral galaxy NGC 2770. The galaxy is 102 million light years from our Milky Way, a relatively close neighbor.

In any case, I thought it might be fun to share other bloopers here. So If ya got any, post 'em!

[Blue Fire]

From: Space.com A photo of

A solar tsunami racing across the Sun at millions of kilometers per second. Credit: NASA STEREO Consortium

"...millions of kilometers per second..." There you have it folks - FTL travel has arrived!

[Nokton]

Hi Blue, pleased to meet with you, no one ever yanked the truth from me,
never will. My way of thinking not allow that. What do you determine as truth?
Is not truth tied in with reason and logic? Has not truth a scientific basis?
Do not understand your comment,
Live well and grow old.
Nokton

[Blue Fire]

Hi Nokton!
My signature is meant to refer to a process that I imagine is common in many folks who are in a constant quest for the truth of things. I agree that truth is tied in with reason and logic. But without knowledge, reason and logic are often not sufficient. My own life has been a process of evolving ideas, knowledge, and concepts that seems too often to have been a pattern of repeated attempts to get at the truth only to find out that I was going the wrong way and had to regroup and find a better way. Sort of like the old cliche of "taking one step forward and then two steps backward." It seems that I all too often I think I am finally approaching some particular truth or understanding (after a great deal of effort) when suddenly I learn something new (or someone points out something crucial I have missed or misunderstood) that changes everything, that "throws a monkey wrench into the works" so to speak, or that makes me realize that the particular "truth" I was after is "beyond my reach" for the moment and that I wasn't as close to understanding the truth as I first thought.

I am curious: have you never found yourself to be in error suddenly about something that you thought you knew, understood, or believed? I don't remember the details anymore, but I once thought years ago that I was getting close to truly understanding Einstein's theory of relativity - and suddenly I came across a book about it that showed me quickly that my notions of relativity were quite wrong and that I had a seemingly impossible task yet ahead of me to understand the full impact of relativity. In other words, it just seemed at the time that my understanding of relativity was "yanked" out of my reach by this book.

So, there you have it - my rather long winded explanation of my sig.