It is sometimes said that the reason Soviet Union has produced so many outstanding scientists is that a lot of attention was being paid to introducing kids to science early and in a way that kept them interested. Indeed, a large amount of popular science books has been printed over the years as well as translations made of the best ones offered in the rest of the world. Martin Gardner and Richard Feinman, absolutely fascinating Robert Wood biography, Smullyan, Soviet authors Perelman and Makovetsky - all of those made me fall in love with physics, mathematics, mechanics, chemistry as a kid. And of course these books were fairly accurate as they were either authored or reviewed by respected professionals.

Times change and these days people find that you cannot blindly trust books you buy. Quite recently a very lively discussion took place in one of the LiveJournal communities (very popular in Russia). It was about a book recently printed in Moscow called "Unabridged Encyclopedia of Astronomy". The book that contains 25000 articles, has many entries that make even a casual student of science do a doubletake (some of it could be explained by the fact that the entire author team somehow did not have a single specialist in astronomy or even general physics among them).

Here are some gems (translated from original Russian as closely as possible)

"Gravitational waves - are emitted by electrical charge oscillating in space"

"Barnard star - a stationary star with visual magnitude of 9.5m... Known for being fast-moving..."

"Visible radiation - radiation that is not only visible to the naked eye, but to the special astronomical equipment and devices..."

"Visible light - light being radiated by a heated body..."

"Escape velocity - [is] defined as speed required for a man-made satellite to reach the Earth orbit. Equals 12km/s"

"Galactic Cannibalism (Extragalactic Astronomy) - a part of Astronomy dealing with celestial bodies (stars, galaxies, quasars etc) that exist outside our Galaxy"

"Ultraviolet radiation - radiation emitted by the Sun and stars"

"Interference - wave oscillation produced by the light source generates so called spherical wave fronts"

"Polar Star - the main star L of Ursa Minor constellation and the brightest star of the northern hemisphere"

"Rigel - the brightest star in the constellation of Orion and in the entire sky"

"Lynx - one of the constellations of the southern hemisphere"

"Triton - a constellation discovered by Lassell in 1846. It's mass is calculated at 2.14x10^22 kg"

The next one is tricky. It makes no sense at all in Russian, so be prepared for the same in English translation.

"Phase angle - an angle situated at a distance from the Sun to the Moon as well as from the Moon to the Earth"

"Fundamental Astronomy - modern physical-mathematical discipline growing interdependent with advances in science and technology"

Fortunately, some astute readers (one of them employed by Moscow planetarium - must know her astronomy, eh?) were able to spot it and raise some ruckus. As they were not able to get any response from the publisher, someone suggested to make a formal complaint to the russian authorities, invoking Consumer Protection Act. We'll see how it goes.