23 Facts About Phil Plait

Phil Plait has written three books, Bad Astronomy, Death from the Skies, and Under Alien Skies.

Phil Plait has appeared in several science documentaries, including How the Universe Works on the Discovery Channel.

Phil Plait has said he became interested in astronomy when his father brought home a telescope when Plait was 5 years old or so.

Phil Plait attended the University of Michigan and received his PhD in astronomy at the University of Virginia in 1995 with a thesis on supernova SN 1987A, which he studied with the Supernova Intensive Study.

Phil Plait went on to perform web-based public outreach for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and other NASA-funded missions while at Sonoma State University from 2000 to 2007.

Phil Plait established the badastronomy website in 1998 and the corresponding blog in 2005.

Phil Plait is a frequent guest on the SETI Institute's weekly science radio show Big Picture Science.

Phil Plait has contributed to a number of television and cinema productions, either onscreen as host or guest or in an advisory role offscreen.

Phil Plait hosted the three-part documentary series Phil Plait's "Bad Universe" on the Discovery Channel, which first aired in the United States on August 29,2010, but was not picked up as a series.

Phil Plait has appeared in numerous science documentaries and programs including How the Universe Works.

Phil Plait was a science advisor for the 2016 film Arrival and the 2017 CBS TV series Salvation.

Phil Plait was the head science writer of the 2017 show Bill Nye Saves the World on Netflix.

From 2008 to 2009, Phil Plait served as the president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, which promotes scientific skepticism, a position he eventually stepped down from in order to focus on the "Bad Universe" television project.

Phil Plait has been a regular speaker at widely attended science and skepticism events and conferences, such as The Amazing Meeting, Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, and DragonCon.

Phil Plait writes and speaks on topics related to scientific skepticism, such as advocating in favor of widespread immunization.

Phil Plait used to live in Boulder, Colorado with his wife, Marcella Setter, and daughter.

Between 2011 and 2018, Setter and Phil Plait ran Science Getaways, a vacation company that provides science-based adventures.

Phil Plait began publishing explanatory Internet postings on science in 1993.

Phil Plait's blog was then hosted by Substack, and since early 2024, on beehiiv.

Phil Plait has contributed significantly to the MadSci Network, a question-and-answer Ask-A-Scientist forum.

In September 2011, Phil Plait spoke at a TED conference in Boulder, his hometown.

Phil Plait's conference explained how to defend Earth from asteroids.

Phil Plait taught Astronomy on the YouTube educational series Crash Course for 47 episodes, from January 15,2015 to February 12,2016.