Jackie Faherty

American Museum of Natural History and SUNY Stonybrook, PhD Candidate

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Astronomy in the Media

For many of us, the media is our primary source for scientific information. We depend on newspapers, popular science magazines, and even TV and movies to inform us on what the interesting science stories of today are. Sometimes the media gets it right, sometimes it gets it wrong, and sometimes it just gets into science fiction. I'll review some famous examples of this, both good and bad, and equip you with some basic physics that will help distinguish between the good, the bad, and the ugly in science reporting.