Viking biology (repeat from 2008)

        Mike Bara garbage-tweets this week about Viking biology. He was responding to this from Maureen Elsberry:

Retired #NASA Astrobiologist Will Present Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life at #UFO Conference

 Mike posted:

Already found on Mars in 1976. Dr. Gil Levin.

        As far back as April 2008 this blog set the record straight on Gil Levín and the meaning of his biology experiment. I'm repeating it below, with a few now-dead links removed.

{{cue the harp arpeggios}}

        Hoagland & Bara appear to be confused about Viking biology. For those interested, here is a digest of the actual facts:

        Both the Viking spacecraft landers had identical biology experiments. Each spacecraft carried three separate experiments designed to test for biology in Martian topsoil. The experiments were developed independently by three different Principal Investigators (PIs). The experiments were:

Gas Exchange (GEX) PI Vance Oyama, NASA Ames
Labeled Release (LR) PI Gilbert Levín, Biospherics, Inc.
Pyrolytic Release (PR) PI Norman Horowitz, CalTech

        In addition, a Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer (PI Klaus Biemann, MIT) supported the main biology package by testing for organic molecules.

Results: At both landing sites the results were essentially identical. GEX and PR were unequivocally negative. LR initially showed strongly positive results, with the control (a sterilized sample) showing negative as expected. Subsequent nutrient injections, however, showed no response. The GCMS detected no organic molecules.

Interpretation: Responsibility for interpreting this enigma fell on the Head of Viking Biology, Harold Klein, with support from Viking Chief Scientist Gerry Soffen. Both were NASA employees. Their call was thumbs down for Martian biology. From a scientific point of view, looking at the overall picture, an absolutely correct call -- but the LR results begged for an explanation. The hypothesis that was developed involved a chemical, not biological, reaction involving superoxides in the soil.

        Dr Levín has been protesting this interpretation for more than 40 years. His main point is that the LR experiment detected life as pre-defined by agreed criteria during mission design. He has developed quite persuasive explanations for why the two other experiments and the GCMS gave negative results.

        Hoagland & Bara seem aware that this is a controversy but they get it wrong. They maintain that there was a deliberate campaign within NASA to conceal Levín's data. That allegation is categorically untrue. Consider these points:

* The enigmatic results were extensively discussed with the media at the time by Klein and Soffen. 
* No attempt whatsoever has ever been made to suppress publication by Dr Levín of his own interpretation. Mike Bara himself posted on the darkmission blog links to six of Levín's publications on the question.
* The complete LR data set, including the PI's notebook, is available to anyone on a NASA-sponsored web site.

        Other comments by Hoagland & Bara suggest that they also think the consensus view is wrong — in other words, that they think Levín's experiment alone proves the existence of life on Mars. It's a contentious and highly technical issue, and considering that neither of them has any training in biology whatsoever, their views will certainly be ignored by anybody who matters.

A Facebook conversation

James Concannon posts:


Dateline: today. From a page called Conspiracies and Underground News: A Truther's Movement 

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CUNaT: "Below are links to four MUST HAVE BOOKS! If you want to expand your mind and help yourself find the TRUTH, check out any one of, or ALL of these books by famed Author, Mike Bara."

[List and promo follow, including a book that isn't yet written]


James Concannon: "Mike Bara has chosen to write about topics of which he has no knowledge. Not surprisingly, the result is a whole series of appalling, unforgivable errors. Here are a couple of examples:"

"From "The Choice"

"Mars's orbit is so eccentric that its distance from Earth goes from 34 million miles at its closest to 249 million miles at its greatest"

James Concannon: "FACT: Mike's figures are correct but they do not prove what he says they prove. Mars's eccentricity is a mere 0.09. If the orbit were perfectly circular there would still be a very great difference between the closest and furthest approaches to Earth."

"From AAotM, writing about views of Earth from space:

"the clouds are the highest in the atmosphere, meaning that they are reflecting more light back to the camera and at a faster rate. Since they are returning more light, the clouds are the lightest. The surface areas ... are darker, because they are a bit further away from the camera than the clouds and therefore the light has to travel further before it is reflected back. The deep blue oceans are therefore the darkest, because the light has to travel all the way to the ocean floor before it is reflected back to the camera."

James Concannon: "FACT: The speed of light is a fixed quantity. It cannot be reflected "at a faster rate" from clouds."

"FACT: The different colors on images of the Earth have nothing whatever to do with their altitude above the surface, still less the time it takes light to travel from them to the camera. The colors are a consequence of albedo."

"FACT: Light only penetrates a few hundred feet into the ocean, if that. It cannot possibly travel all the way to the bottom and, even if it could, it would not account for the wavelength."

CUNaT: "FACT: you're clearly jealous of his success and have nothing better to do with your time than ramble incoherently about why you're angry that hes successful"

James Concannon: "There's nothing incoherent about science. Please re-read."

CUNaT: "FACT: you're clearly a fake profile and you're stalking him like an ex-girlfriend. If you want his dick up your ass, just ask politely, you loose assholed, prick."

CUNaT: "FACT: Mike Bara has 4 published books, 2 television shows that he regularly appears on and several international radio shows. He has seen massive success and the only thing you've managed to master, is how to stalk him while bitching like the cunt you are. Find something better to do with your time, dickwad, because you clearly do nothing else right now, aside from twiddle your needledick to Mike's books and shows. WE GET IT, YOU'RE MAD HE WONT FUCK YOU... now move on, psycho."

James Concannon:"Yes, 4 books (actually 2 and a half) and several radio shows, all full of appalling factual errors. I've cited two examples -- there are many more."

CUNaT: "When you go back and reference his writings, do the pages stick together?"

James Concannon: "No. Are you planning to address the _issues_ at all, or just trot out the obscene insults?"

CUNaT:  "I'm not going to argue with you, moron. You agree his facts are correct yet you still blather on. You're blocked, bye asshole."

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The entire exchange was then deleted. I have some evidence that CUNaT is actually Sara Shanae a.k.a. Sara Casm.

Malice and homage

        I do declayah, I don't know what to do about y'all blog readers and commenters. I go away for a few days (and the wine wasn't too bad, thanks James—there was even a bottle of Picpoul de Pinet to be had) —I go away for a few days and first you let Mike Bara post 20,000 words of ad hominem drivel, then you go and let one of my all-time heroes die from surgery that should never have been attempted in the first place. Then to cap it all you let Mike make an utter drooling nincompoop of himself by calling that hero a liar. Now I suppose you expect me to clean this place up. Well, I will—first things first.

The day I met Neil Armstrong

        The occasion was a small press conference announcing his appointment as Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cincinnati University. I was there as producer of a BBC TV documentary about the Apollo program 10 years after Apollo 11. Prof. Armstrong had just recently slammed one of his hands in the door of a pickup truck. He'd had surgery on two fingers, and was very noticeably rubbing at the stitch-line as he spoke. On the one hand it humanized him, but on the other it seemed to emphasize the nervousness he always had when speaking in public. During question-time his answers were brief but not in any sense evasive. I was able to use about a minute of the tape in my production.

        Afterwards I approached him personally and he was pleasant, asking about my project and which other Apollo astronauts I was going to interview. He even signed a photo for me—a practice he later discontinued after he learned how much $$$ his autograph was worth.

        R.I.P., world-class hero. James Oberg was a guest on a short NPR obit show.

Mike's blogpost malice

        An extraordinary performance, wasn't it? According to Mike Bara, I'm a dumbass and an obsessive nutcase. Stuart Robbins is a NASA shill "on the take," and James Oberg is a bloated sack of protoplasm. Well, I say Mike's tutorials on image editing are inaccurate, irrelevant and needlessly rebarbative. All that matters for him to truly make his case is the Kaguya imagery. If the ziggy exists, he should be able to show it. He cannot do that. In fact, he conspicuously tries and fails. In public.

It's not there, Mike

        Mike's attempt to make a direct comparison with the features of the Ziggurat at Ur shows, in my opinion, the exact reverse of what he intends. Since there's no conceivable way anyone outside a loony bin would believe an exact copy of the Urzig was built on the Moon, it simply shows that if you badly want to see something in a jumble of lunar craters, that's what you will see.

        Anyway, as usual Stuart Robbins has done a far better job than I could rebutting the rebuttal of the rebuttal (it's not RUBUTTING, Mike), I'll direct you to read that and just say "Yes, I agree." It's here and here and here and  here.

More malice

        First we had Richard Hoagland using the anniversary of Apollo 11 to launch a wholly specious attack on NASA. Then Mike Bara commemorated the death of Neil Armstrong by calling him a liar. Malice seems more natural than homage to these two specimens.

        Hoagland & Bara don't seem too good at reading their own work, either. Nowhere in the oeuvre have they ever said that glass domes and technical artifacts were present at the Apollo 11 site. Unless I misunderstand, the only Apollo sites they are claiming are under glass are 12, 14 and 17. So what are Prof. Armstrong's "secrets" supposed to be?

On p. 541 of Dark Mission, we find this:

"[O]n the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Apollo 11 ... Armstrong himself had seemed frustrated. He started his highly emotional address by first comparing himself to a parrot—saying only what he had been told to say."

         In fact, Armstrong said the exact opposite. His words were "Wilbur Wright once noted that the only bird that could talk was the parrot, and he didn't fly very well. So I'll be brief." Quite obviously, he's apologizing for not being a good speaker because his talent, UNLIKE A PARROT, is for flying, not talking.

        Anybody can judge for themselves whether he seemed frustrated, or whether this speech was "highly emotional." I personally don't find it so. That's what Armstrong is always like as a public speaker. And remember, I have personal knowledge of this.

Are we done?

        There, that's cleaned this place  up a bit. It's nice to be back, congratulations to Catriona for joining the ranks of the banned douchebags, and I sincerely hope this is the last time I write about the damned ziggy. Mike Bara, SHAME ON YOU.