This Dummy Failed Astronomy 101

Uranus through the Hubble
Telescope (NASA photo)

You gotta love it: A Demand Media dumbass for the second day in a row! Who ever thought that pretending you're not eHow.com could erase that site's well-deserved reputation as a galactic-class source of misinformation? Whoever it was deserves to be fired... Whatever the case, for today we visit the realm of astronomy, where DMS's Susan Sherwood "helped" some poor schmuck with his or her elementary-school science homework, specifically the question "How Does Uranus Revolve?"¹ Our research staffer found this freelancer's poorly researched answer in the Education (snicker) section of the Seattle P-I's website.

Over 300 or so words, Sherwood regurgitated a wealth of factoids about the orbit, history, and dimensions of the seventh planet, easily obtained from Wikipedia and decorated with cutesy subtitles. The closest she ever got to actually answering the original question was in the final section, in which she mentioned the planet's axial tilt. What she did not say anywhere within the text was that Uranus has retrograde rotation, meaning that its rotation is opposite to the direction it travels in its orbit. Venus is the only other planet to display retrograde rotation; five rotate in a prograde sense, and Mercury is tidally locked with the Sun

For her deep (mis)understanding of astronomy and her apparent inability to come up with the actual one-word answer to "How does Uranus revolve?" we hereby award to Susan Sherwood the singular honor of Dumbass of the Day.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   education.seattlepi.com/uranus-revolve-5659.html

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