Separating Fact from Fiction: New Book, The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos, Released Today

The other day one of our kids, age seven, came home from school with a garbled account of what he had learned about the moon by watching an episode of "Bill Science Guy." He meant Bill Nye the Science Guy. He went on to talk about how he also learned that "Back a long time ago, everyone thought the world was square. And this guy, he said it was round? So they burned him."

I'm not sure what that was in reference to -- some kind of a mash-up between Giordano Bruno and Christopher Columbus, perha...