http://www.nasa.gov/home/, NASA's main page, has a panel entitled Popular Search Terms. I presume it lists statistically popular search terms entered into the site search facility, so you, the visitor, can see what other people are curious about, and perform the same searches yourself.

I don't frequently read it carefully, but I don't recall ever seeing quite so much woo-woo content. I guess it's a bad news/good news sort of thing. At least people are coming to NASA for their facts.

Spot the topics from the fringe:


Click to enlarge.

I laugh. At least one of the terms led to some 7000 searchers reading the media advisory from May: NASA to Announce Success of Long Galactic Hunt. You remember all the hot speculation about that one -- that turned out to be the tepid: Chandra Uncovers Youngest Supernova in Our Galaxy

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wow, the search engine does attract lots of woo-woos

It may also be people trying to find references from NASA to show their wooish friends have it wrong. Some of it, I mean.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Ignorance convinces" -- slang's dad
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson

Whether we like it or not, these Topics they exist.

Going to NASA to research it is actually much better than asking at YahooAnswers...

Why would conspiracy theorists be searching NASA's site for Planet X information? Isn't NASA part of the evil government plot to hide Planet X?

It is part of that whole conspirators are really brilliant (for example, hide the existence of entire planet) and really stupid (for example, some person with google and an internet connection can uncover the whole thing) duality.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Not everyone who hears of those whacko stories immediately believes them, even if they're not knowledgeable enough to dismiss them. If they did we'd be flooded by true believers here.

__________________
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Ignorance convinces" -- slang's dad
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson

I seem to remember a plan to place an RTG or two on ISS for extra power and can't find that citation...