Sunday, February 1, 2015

Review of Mike Bara on Coast-to-Coast AM, 1 February

        With Jimmy Church guest-hosting, Mike Bara was allowed out of the stable to frisk around the paddock for a couple of hours last night. An opportunity to pre-plug his next load of rubbishbook, Ancient Aliens and Secret Societies -- also to preen about what he thinks of as a successful prediction.

        It was quickly obvious that the new book will be another lame anti-NASA rant. Mike reiterated his false claim that Buzz Aldrin conducted a Masonic ritual on the Moon (it was a form of catholic mass, actually) and asserted that there was at least one freemason on each of the Apollo flights. I'd like to see his sources on that second claimnote 1, but even if the data is correct, I can't quite see what could be deduced from that. To Mike, it indicates that NASA had an astronaut selection bias toward people who could be trusted to keep secrets. Ergo, to him, this proves that there were secrets to be kept. Ergo, there are aliens on the Moon. Q.E.D. How very, very weak. How pathetic.

        Mike seems to have swallowed Zecharia Sitchen's Nibiru/Annunaki ideas hook, line and sinker — since he regurgitated them (without attribution) last night. I guess he thinks that's what the woo audience wants to hear. Any readers of this blog who don't know what I'm talking about could google Annunaki and settle in to read 861,000 pages of garbage. Alternatively, just pull up Mike Heiser's web site Sitchin Is Wrong.

Planet X, Planet Y
        The Planet X idea officially died last March, when the final results of the WISE infra-red survey were announced. There are no Saturn-sized objects out to 10,000 AU, and no Jupiter-sized objects out to 26,000 AU.note 2 A Scientific American podcast gave the news.

        But it seems the Planet X idea won't lie down. Just recently, astronomer Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of the Computense University of Madrid (with co-authors in Cambridge, UK) publishednote 3 findings on perturbations of the orbits of small extreme trans-Neptunian bodies which suggest the influence of one or two larger bodies out there.The survey is highly preliminary, and based on observations of only 13 small bodies, but that's good enough for Mike Bara the world-renowned planetary astronomer. The basis of his TOLDYA claim is that, in his book The Choice, he ripped off a Richard Hoagland notion that a relationship between angular momentum and luminosity could be seen as predicting trans-Neptunian planets. This blog dealt with that four years ago.

        So how come WISE missed these large bodies? "Oh," quoth the world-famous astronomer, "Maybe they detected them but decided to keep it quiet." As he said that, I felt the anger rising in me -- but then I thought it was better to just laugh it off. After all, when somebody has to posit something as ridiculous as that to make their story stand up, the weakness of the story becomes bloody obvious.

The Haters (that's us, I guess)
       Right at the end, we were treated to Mike's current thoughts about his many critics. Jimmy Church asked how he was coping with that — it went like this:

JIMMY CHURCH
“You know, Mike, you’ve been rolling that rock uphill in a lot... for a long time, for, uh, you know, twenty years.  And, what do you do, because— what do you do to fight uh, the, the wave that is going against you?  And, not only the skeptics, but the ones that just want to combat you at every step of the way? Because, you know, you choose... and like I said at the intro,  you’re steadfast in... in your research and your belief, and you don’t waver.  How do you keep up the good fight?”

MIKE BARA

“Well, you know, for me it’s that I know that we are all right about all this stuff.  I mean, there.. there may be certain issues that we’re wrong about.  There may be, you know, maybe some of the 9/11 stuff really isn’t all that serious. Not to bring up a sore subject, but, you know, there are going to be parts of what we believe in as a... as a unit, as a... what do you call them? ‘Fadernauts’ or the Coast to Coast AM audience, or anybody who’s interested in these kinds of TV shows and programs. We... we are gonna... Maybe there’s parts of the story that we’ve got wrong, but the VAST majority of it — 80% of it — we’ve got it right.  And it’s the truth.  And knowing that it’s the truth keeps pushing me forward.

"And, again, I don’t care about convincing those other guys.  I’ve  gotten to the point now where I’ve completely blocked out the people that attack me.  I... you know, I responded for a long time, it takes a lot of energy.  I basically set up a page where I said, ‘If you believe what these people say, here’s my counter-argument,’ uh... a dozen of them or so, and that’s it!  That’s... I’m just gonna let that stand.note 4

"Ummmm, and now I only wanna talk to the people that are actually interested in listening, and knowing that there are people out there that wanna listen, knowing that there are people out there that are gonna make their own discoveries because they’ll be inspired by me, or you, or George Noory, or listening to these programs, or some of the other guests you have on, just... That’s what fuels me — that’s what gets me up every day saying, you know, ‘Hey! We... we need to move forward with this.’

"And the other thing that’s really important, I think, that fires me up, is we are not the weird ones.  They are.  The people that look at us like we’re black sheep — like we’re crazy because we believe this weird stuff, they’re the ones who aren’t awake.  They’re the ones that aren’t paying attention, they’re the ones that are living with their heads in the sand.  So, I really have... feel like I’m on a quest to make people feel comfortable with who they are and with their fascination with this whole realm of stuff that’s out there: All these different issues that we talk about on shows like this."

        So Praise the Lord, Mike admits he might be wrong some of the time. On the other hand, Curse the Lord, Mike has a new policy. It's known as LAAAA LAAAA LAAAA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.


======================================
[1] According to this list, only Apollos 7 (Eisele,) 10 (Stafford,) 11 (Aldrin,) 14 (Mitchell)  and 15 (Irwin) qualify. When the book came out, it did not contain that claim.

[2] For comparative  reference, the Kuiper Belt, of icy asteroids, extends to 50 AU. The Oort cloud, containing millions of comets, is at roughly 30,000 AU (80% of a light-year).

[3] C. de la Fuente Marcos, R. de la Fuente Marcos. "Extreme trans-Neptunian objects and the Kozai mechanism: signalling the presence of trans-Plutonian planets? Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters 443(1): L59-L63, 2014. Here's a summary.

[4] This is the page he means. Note the barefaced lie: "As you will see, I never said that orbital eccentricity was measured from the Earth, that centrifugal force makes you heavier..." (See Ancient Aliens on Mars, p.42, and The Choice, p.32.)

25 comments:

expat said...

When I have more time I intend to transcribe Mike's comments about "blocking the haters" verbatim.

Binaryspellbook said...

I wonder if Mikey boy would be kind enough to indicate which 20% of his bullshit may be wrong. Maybe if we asked him nicely.

Anonymous said...

Isn't it funny how the word Haters is used by so many? I prefer the word Critics or Reviewers, or even Disenfranchised Readers, Listeners or Reviewers.

Binaryspellbook said...

I don't hate Mike Bara. But I do hate what he does to real science. Almost as much as I hate his political views.

Trekker said...

"When I have more time I intend to transcribe Mike's comments about "blocking the haters" verbatim."

Oh, do!

astroguy said...

I have two comments. First, I think I very eloquently addressed the issue of "hater" in this blog post. I suggest folks read it. I'm sure Mike didn't.

Second, literally by coincidence (seriously, it was coincidence), the podcast episode I released last night on black hole denial features Mike Bara's denial. Seriously, coincidence. I have had this episode scheduled for 124 for the last 3 months, but it got pushed back to 125 because I didn't have it written in time for January 16.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Could the mythological transiting planetoid, Nibiru have been the Saturn sized object which exploded between Mars and Jupiter, which became the Asteroid belt, or was that object a neighboring planet of Mars' in orbit around Earth's Sun?

expat said...

Thanks to industry beyond the call of duty by Astroguy, the verbatim transcript of Mike's comments is now up.

TVM Stuart.

expat said...

Novvak: No, the hypothesized planet of which Mars was the moon was called Planet V by Tom Van Flandern. It was much smaller than Saturn. It's very tempting to think of the asteroid belt as a broken-up planet, but in fact it's far, far more likely that it's a slice of the accretion disk that never accreted because of the enormous gravitation of Jupiter.

The aggregate mass of all the asteroids is less than that of the Moon.

Binaryspellbook said...

I listened to it. I had no idea Bara's world view was so weird. I mean I knew he believed some really crazy stuff. But this was right up there with the likes of Kerry Cassidy and Laura Einsenhower in it's utter lunacy.

Annunaki are spoken of as fact. Sitchin is truth. And of course all the usual NASA stuff. Incredible.

Anonymous said...

@Novvak

a few simple questions

".....Saturn sized object...."
this conclusion is based on who's measurements/calculations/observations and when was it done??

"... which exploded between Mars and Jupiter, which became the Asteroid belt..."
this conclusion is based on who's measurements/calculations/observations and when was it done??

the notion quoted by expat "The aggregate mass of all the asteroids is less than that of the Moon."

that one must have hurt :-) and it wasn't even below the belt :-)

Binaryspellbook said...

According to the late Dr Van Flandern.

"Although over 10,000 asteroids have well-determined orbits, the combined mass of all other asteroids is not as great as that of the largest asteroid, Ceres. That makes the total mass of the asteroid belt only about 0.001 of the mass of the Earth. A frequently asked question is, if a major planet exploded, where is the rest of its mass?

Consider what would happen if the Earth exploded today. Surface and crustal rocks would shatter and fragment, but remain rocks. However, rocks from depths greater than about 40 km are under so much pressure at high temperature that, if suddenly released into a vacuum, such rocks would vaporize. As a consequence, over 99% of the Earth’s total mass would vaporize in an explosion, with only its low-pressure crustal and upper mantle layers surviving."

I am not sufficiently qualified to comment on the above. One for Dr Stu methinks.

expat said...

This whole idea of exploding planets is too SciFi for my taste. I don't know what might cause a planet to literally explode. I can see how a planet might break up, due to excess tidal force or runaway tectonics. That's a bit different.

Van Flandern is no doubt right that, in a hypothetical explosion, part of the planet would vaporize. But then, as the pressure dropped to zero and the temperature to near-zero, wouldn't the vapor recondense?

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Most of the rubble could well have been blasted to the surface of Mars and our Moon, as evidenced by the pock marks on one side only on each of those bodies.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

The cause for a planet to explode might well be an experiment gone awry, if not an outright war with Torsion Weapons. Despite the quibbling over terminology, such as "Aether," there are facts in evidence of hypotheticalTorsion Physics.

expat said...

« as evidenced by the pock marks on one side only on each of those bodies. »

The problem with that, as this blog has pointed out more than once, is that it's the SOUTH hemisphere of Mars that was bombarded, and that is not the hemisphere that was pointing toward the hypothetical Planet V.

«there are facts in evidence of hypothetical Torsion Physics.»

There may be, but they are not elucidated in your link.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Torque
Posted on 22/08/2012
by Steve Ehrenreich

theyichuanmethod.com/2012/08/22/torque

An interesting aspect of integrated strength is the internalization of momentum, which in our lineage is referred to as martial velocity or torque. The presence of torque within a gesture is one of the reasons integrated strength can be applied with little or no visible movement. The idea is that when the entire body is in motion there is kinetic energy in that momentum. That energy is very obvious when a football player crashes into a training dummy but much less evident when movement of mass is contained within an internal orbit. Consider this video of my teacher coaching me through a testing strength exercise:


Yi Chuan Testing Strength
CFKungFu Fu
youtube.com/watch?v=Y387no4088A

Each time my fellow students attempt to use their strength on me the presence of torque within my gesture allows me to hijack their strength and redirect their energy at an angle of my choosing. The kinetic energy of momentum is present but there is very little visible movement of my body to indicate its presence. The mass in my internal orbit is being used to route the force they are attempting to use on my frame back to them.

This is all possible because inside what looks like a static frame is a constant orbit of my mass. Like a ball bearing rolling around on the inside of a sphere it can go any direction and never stops. Because my mass and center are in a state of constant change it is difficult for my training partners to move my center. I developed this ability through my teacher’s process of elongating the external orbit, condensing it internally and then folding the internal orbit inside of the external one. Only later, while learning stand up paddle boarding, did I realized how the internal orbit is really just a natural part of our balancing capacity.

SUP is exhausting at first. Trying to stay balanced while standing on something so unstable leaves you looking forward to getting back on solid ground. After a while you relax and find balance by letting your body constantly adjust to the subtle changes being introduced by waves, wind and paddle strokes. The process reminded me of the challenges I endured in the beginning stages of standing practice (Jam Jong). Trying to hold my balance on the paddle board was as exhausting as remaining motionless in Jam Jong . My feet even hurt the same way in the beginning stages of both activities.

Much like accepting a state of constant change allowed me to relax on the paddle board it was allowing constant change in my frame during Jam Jong that transformed it from a bitter practice of will and endurance to a sweet experience of unity and flow.

Perhaps the movement required to maintain the stasis of balance is the mother of martial velocity or torque in Yi Chuan. Anytime I am able to let go and really relax inside my standing practice a subtle orbit appears. By accelerating and controlling that orbit I am able to control the external orbit and motion of my body through space. When interacting with an opponent the same orbit controls the route used to defeat their attempt to take my center of balance.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

What caused the destruction on the Southern hemispheres of Mars and on our Moon?

expat said...

« What caused the destruction on the Southern hemispheres of Mars and on our Moon? »

For the Moon, it was what's called the "late-stage bombardment" -- the final stage of accretion (of all but the asteroid belt). It was not the Southern hemisphere but the hemisphere facing away from Earth.

It's possible that this is also the explanation for the dichotomy of Martian cratering. There's another theory which turns the Van Flandern idea on its head -- in this scenario the whole planet was once densely cratered, until a very large planetoid smacked into the Northern hemisphere and obliterated many old craters.

Anonymous said...

@Novvak

since you brought Kung Fu?? into an astronomical discussion.....

"Silence is a source of great strength" Lao Tzu

and

“Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment” Lao Tzu

so...Expat...well done :-)

Adrian

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

I was just asking, but now that you mention it, don't confuse Lao Tzu with Da Mo.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
expat said...

Comment from Novvak disallowed. I should never have allowed that Yi Chuan stuff in the first place. The discussion is definitely closed now.

expat said...

Last comment from Adrian also deleted, to be even-handed.

Unknown said...

Phil (Dr. Phil) Plait once discussed the destruction of Alderaan in his movie debunking page. Basically, it would take an enormous amount of energy to break up a planet and send the debris flying out into space.

First of all, planets are HEAVY. So, a lot of energy would be needed to overcome the effects of gravity. I doubt if all the world's nuclear weapons were deposited at the core and detonated simultaneously, they would have enough power.

Second of all, there's something called gravity. Unless the planet blows apart above escape velocity (around 40,000 kph) everything is eventually going to slow down and re-form into a new planet.

The only way I can see a planet exploding would be from a high velocity collision with another planet where they'd both be pulverized.

(Either that or anti-matter but there's not much of that in this neck of the woods)