{"id":8047,"date":"2012-12-09T19:33:09","date_gmt":"2012-12-09T19:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=8047"},"modified":"2012-12-09T19:33:09","modified_gmt":"2012-12-09T19:33:09","slug":"sir-patrick-moore-1923-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/sir-patrick-moore-1923-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Patrick Moore (1923-2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of Britain\u2019s television legends has just died.<\/p>\n

His Daily Telegraph<\/em> obituary can be found here<\/a>. Some key extracts:<\/p>\n

A genuine eccentric who never took himself too seriously, Moore played up to his image as a \u201cmad professor\u201d, and wrote more than 100 books \u2014 most of them about astronomy for a popular audience. Meanwhile, his monthly Sky at Night programme \u2014 launched on BBC Television in April 1957 \u2014 attracted millions of viewers.
\nOn television Moore became celebrated for the thunderous fervour with which he would utter the words: \u201cWe just don\u2019t know!\u201d to emphasise that our comprehension of the universe is incomplete\u2026<\/p>\n

The Sky at Night started almost by accident. One day in 1957 the BBC broadcast a somewhat sensationalist programme about flying saucers. Producers wanted a counterview by a \u201cthoroughly reactionary and sceptical astronomer who knew some science and could talk\u201d. This turned out to be Moore. He little guessed that he was starting a series that would last for half a century\u2026.<\/p>\n

He had as little sympathy either for the peddlers of what he considered pseudoscience. Astrology he declared \u201crubbish\u201d. And he was deeply angered in the 1970s by a book co-written by the journalist John Gribbin called The Jupiter Effect, which predicted that in 1982 the planets would be so closely aligned that their combined gravitational fields would cause earthquakes all over the world\u2026 Both the data and the conclusion, Moore said, were nonsense. The planets were not in alignment, and even if they had been, they were much too small and too far away to cause the predicted earthquakes. Despite his efforts, Gribbin\u2019s book became a bestseller and was the subject of a solemn presentation at the London Planetarium.<\/p>\n

Moore was furious. A show at the Planetarium gives an idea scientific authority, and people who saw its treatment of the \u201cGribbin effect\u201d were seriously alarmed. Moore campaigned successfully to have the Planetarium show taken off and afterwards presented a humorous Sky at Night programme showing the idea up as the nonsense he considered it to be.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, when some of the Moon astronauts apparently claimed that in space they had had visions of God, he was asked: \u201cWhat do you think they really saw?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they saw the Moon\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He was also a euroskeptic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Britain\u2019s television legends has just died. His Daily Telegraph obituary can be found here. Some key extracts: A genuine eccentric who never took himself too seriously, Moore played up to his image as a \u201cmad professor\u201d, and wrote … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[983,468],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8047"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8047"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8059,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8047\/revisions\/8059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}