Ok this thread is not meant to be a dig at people that ask questions about astronomy. At my office I'm the "science guy" and love it when people come to me with questions. But sometimes the things people ask me just crack me up.

A while back I brought a picture of the sun I took through a solar filter (nothing fancy like an H-Alpha, just a basic filter) in to work. Somebody came up to my desk and asked what the picture was of. When I told her it was the sun she cocked her head to the side and started to really study the image. I asked her what was wrong and she looked and me and said "Is it really that round?"

I just kind of blinked a couple of times, looked at her and asked "Well what shape do you think it should be?"

She said she wasn't sure, which made us both laugh, but it gave me the chance to explain the gravity vs. the force of the fusion reaction, so it turned out fine.

Come to think of it, I had another person a couple years ago ask me how scientists knew the earth was round. Then again she also didn't know what a manhole was, even after we explained they were the access holes in the road covered by the large round metal plates that must have seen countless times (she thought it was nickname for a gay bar...seriously) so I'm not sure she even understood that we have pictures of it...

Anyway, what kind of funny questions have you guys been asked?

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

The most memorable/funny one for me was also in the office. We had a partial solar eclipse that day, I had taken some foil and made a pinhole lens and had taken it outside. I had come in and was explaining how the simple device worked, how you shine the sunlight through it onto a bit of paper behind it, and one lady asked "Can you use it in here?" Understand that overhangs prevented direct sunlight from ever coming in the office. She was, in effect, asking if it would work in the shade. I saw a couple other people turn away, looking like they were trying to control their faces, and I simply said "No." I don't think I could have managed a better explanation at the time without laughing.

Another, not so silly one: I have a nice image of Mars for my work computer's wallpaper, reddish-brown with an obvious white pole. I'm regularly asked what planet it is, or if it is the moon. That gives me a chance to explain it, noting the color and the white pole.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

It's not necessarily an astronomy question, but there was a girl in my chemistry class last year that asked me what .1 meant. After I spent a minute or so processing such a question from a high school senior, I tried to explain to her how the decimal system worked, but I don't think she completely got it.

I don't know if this qualifies, but I was once asked if the Saturn V rocket had been to Saturn?

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Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

--Niels Bohr, Danish Physicist.

My co-worker once unthinkingly asked me "did you take those photos too?" He was pointing to my prints of the more well-known shots that Pete Conrad took of Al Bean during the Apollo 12 mission. From the surface of the moon.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

I recall being asked by a classmate years ago about a plastic solar system model we saw at a planetarium visit . She was curious as to how come the metal arms that supported the planets in the model weren't visible in the night sky. When I explained that those were just physical aspects of the model that didn't exist in reality she suddenly beamed and said: "That was a really stupid question wasn't it?"

I had set up in the park (Lake of the Isles for MPLS locals) with my scope. I was giving people little tours of what could be seen from the city. One young woman (early to mid-20's) asked me how I knew what we were looking at was Jupiter. Kind of with a can-you-prove-it attitude.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

While working as an astronomy naturalist for the Appalachian Mountain Club, I was asked many remarkable questions. One evening at the Galehead Hut in the White Mountains, a person in her 20s asked me to point out the North Star. I did and was immediately told I was wrong. "That's too faint" she said, "everyone knows the North Star is the brightest star in the sky!"

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

A couple weeks ago, my brother called me. He and some friends noticed the moon hanging on the horizon, and it was very red (forest fires in the Rockies). One of his friends insisted it was Mars--and he'd just received a nice email confirming it!

Another one of my favorites was also not too long ago. I got an email from one of my co-workers saying that had she had seen a really bright star while standing on her driveway the night before and was wondering what it was. I told her it depended on where she was looking and proceeded to give her two examples. I don't recall what I told her it might be in the west, but I did tell her that if she was looking at the eastern sky it might be Sirius. She emailed me back saying "Well it can't be Sirius, I live on the west side of the valley, not the east."

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

That's right, it's only a couple days since August, and as we all know from various annual emails, Mars looks as big as the Moon every August.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Well, of course, right here on this very board, we got "How far out from the surface of the Moon does this alleged vacuum end?"

But in person . . . nothing remotely so dumb ever. Actually, I don't get a lot of dumb questions asked of me in science, even though I'm kind of the go-to person at the Washington State Renaissance Fantasy Faire on the subject of astronomy/general science. Which, for the record, is pretty sad. I hope there's someone there who knows more science than I but just doesn't say anything.

(Oh, in general science, I had friends who convinced a former roommate of mine that the water on one side of the Hood Canal Bridge was salt, but the other side was fresh.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

"Which is closer, the Moon or the stars?"

During a stargazing session with binoculars when I was a kid. The questioner was the lady who lived next door.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I was aboard a cruise ship to see the total solar eclipse that crossed the Caribbean some years ago. A woman onboard asked me, "So what time of the day is the eclipse?" "Around two," I told her. "Is that AM or PM?" she replied.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

In a physics class back in school a friend of mine asked our teacher "if there was a vacuum here on earth, would there be gravity in it?"
Our teacher simply replied in a very disapointed voice "im not going to teach you anymore"

In a conversation with my wives relatives - everyone was exalted about our son who was born on the 13th of August...

"Oh I'm sure:Won't he be an astrologer ? - JUST LIKE YOU!"

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooo!

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.