National Geographic Society

In the world of science journalism, we writers and editors often walk along the edge of a very sharp sword.

On one side lies the realm of Pure Accuracy, filled with semantics and pedantry and enough qualifiers to turn the discovery of giant squid fossils on Mars into a 40-page report on "the theoretical life-cycle and behavioral dynamics of a novel Architeuthis species as revealed by spectroscopic analysis of Noachian coprolites in the Syrtis Major quadrangle."

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

But on the other side of the sword's edge lies Pandering Sensationalism, where almost every headline seems to end with an exclamation point [Missing Link Found!] and every discovery is hopelessly lacking in context.

Scientists rail about being misrepresented, misquoted, and full of misgivings when it comes to working with the press. Journos counter that if they don't make science palatable for the average American, science coverage in general will promptly disappear in a puff of logic.

It's a tough job finding the middle ground, for writers and for researchers.

For me, one of the hardest things to grapple with is the media's perpetuation of popular myths.

Gentle metaphors may not always be 100% accurate, but they serve a purpose. Solar wind, for example, is not *technically* wind, but it's a great, media-friendly name for the stream of ionized particles constantly emanating from the sun.

Some lay-language fallbacks, meanwhile, are totally wrong, totally unnecessary, and need to stop. Now.

Say it with me, now: Black holes DO NOT suck.

—Illustration of a star getting too close to a supermassive black hole courtesy NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Via Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: suck
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): -ed/-ing/-s
Etymology: Middle English soken, souken, from Old English sumacrcan; akin to Old High German sumacrgan to suck, Old Norse sumacrga, Latin sugere to suck, Middle Breton sunaff juice, Greek hyei it is raining, Lithuanian sunkti to filter, ooze, Tocharian B swese rain transitive verb
1 a (1) : to draw (a liquid) into the mouth by a partial vacuum caused by motion of the mouth ...

A vacuum is a total absence of matter, even molecules of air. By creating a partial vacuum, someone sucking through a straw makes the liquid move toward them because, that's right, Nature abhors a vacuum and will want to fill the absence with whatever's close at hand.

By contrast, a black hole is what's left of a very massive star that went supernova. The darn thing is so dense that it exerts a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape.

Objects near the lip of the black hole, known as the event horizon, can be said to be getting pulled in or—since this is gravity we're talking about—to be falling in to the black hole.

They are NOT being sucked in. Different effect entirely.

Even more exciting and just as poorly understood, matter needs to be in just the right place near a black hole for it to be affected. Galaxy Girl has a great explanation for why, if the sun suddenly became a black hole, Earth would not get pulled in.

And now we know that it definitely wouldn't get sucked in.

Of the more than 300 planets circling other stars we've found so far, only a handful have ever had their pictures taken directly.

Astronomers strongly suspect the vast majority of these so-called exoplanets exist based solely on indirect evidence, such as their gravitational effects on stars.

So the trick, then, is figuring out anything else about those planets beyond the fact that they're there.

Is a given exoplanet the size of Jupiter or Mars? What's it made of, and what's in its atmosphere? And perhaps the most exciting question, is there liquid water?

Enric Pallé, of Spain's Astrophysics Institute of the Canaries, and colleagues figured the best way to answer some of these questions would be to look no farther than home.

—Image courtesy Gabriel Perez Diaz/Nature

What's more, the researchers decided to advance the frontiers of 21st-century astronomy using one of the oldest known astrophysical tools: a lunar eclipse.

—Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Today NASA announced that its next flagship Mars rover has been granted a name: Curiosity.

Sixth-grader Clara Ma of Lenexa, Kansas, penned an essay about the concept of curiosity that won her the right to name the new probe, an SUV-size rover that will be the largest, most technically capable craft yet landed on the red planet.

"Curiosity is an everlasting flame that burns in everyone's mind. It makes me get out of bed in the morning and wonder what surprises life will throw at me that day," Ma wrote in her essay.

"Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder." [read the full essay here.]

It's a beautiful bit of prose and a very mature sentiment from such a young person. Now let's hope that inflated budgets and political tugs-of-war don't tarnish the dream.

Launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, as the rover was formerly known, has already been delayed by two years due to rising costs.

All that high technology led to some serious technical problems and scrapped designs that not only cost the MSL program dearly, they also sent engineers scrambling to finish all the hardware and safety tests before the original 2009 launch date.

After weighing their options, NASA managers decided to postpone the mission to 2011, a slip that caused the budget to swell to about $400 million over initial projected costs.

In addition to fears that MSL would be set back (or scrapped completely), the move made "planetary scientists worry that pushing back the mission could have a ripple effect, delaying and even canceling future missions," Andrew Lawler wrote in a Science news article last September.

After all, those extra dollars will have to come from somewhere, likely from other less high-profile planetary missions.

Meanwhile, the abrupt resignation of senior NASA science official Alan Stern last fall allowed said official to open a huge can of whoopass on NASA in general, with the MSL as his poster child for all the things that have gone wrong at the agency.

In a scathing article in the New York Times, Stern called the project a "poorly managed" symptom of a "cancer" growing at the space agency in the form of "a NASA culture that has lost control of spending."

Irresponsible decisions and pet projects lead to budget overruns that lead to smaller but worthy projects getting shown the door, Stern says.

In January a hearing of the Planetary Science Subcommittee set out rules for how MSL's budget woes would impact other projects.

While most major planned missions will move ahead as scheduled, an atmospheric probe bound for Mars, an orbiter headed for Jupiter, and U.S. involvement in an international moon collaboration are all now at risk of delays and/or losing funds.

And geez, NASA, you know it has to be bad when you get a several hundred-word spoof in the Onion.

On the flip side, people whinging about costs and wringing their hands over delays really are nothing new in the world of Big Science [cough, LHC]. Hubble had its share of start-up troubles, but it's now arguably one of the most beloved science instruments of all time, not to mention one that has made some significant discoveries.

So out of all the things NASA has money to study, what would you like the agency to focus on? It's a federal agency, after all, and publicly accountable. All it takes is enough people willing to step up and make some noise—look what public outcry did for the future of Hubble and is still doing for Pluto's demotion.

It's your space agency people, you have to decide whether it's going to be a blessing or a curse.