>>There are gobs of alien bases on the Moon, many of which I document in my recent book...<<
Checklist:
"The Castle" -- Photo fault. You say it's held up by a sagging support cable. What are the top ends attached to?
"The paperclip" -- Scanning error, curled fiber
Satellite dishes in Asada and Proclus A -- LRO NAC strips prove they don't exist
Glass skyscrapers -- Contamination on Hoagland's office scanner
Strut on East Massif -- Scanning error, confirmed by Davide de Martin, the Italian enthusiast who did the scan
Ziggurat -- LRO NAC strip and Selene image prove it's in your imagination.
Mike, it is self-evident that a lunar "alien base" would have had to erect solar energy arrays large enough to be clearly visible to Earth-based telescopes, let alone the 0.8m/px images of LRO NAC. Until you can find at least one such array, your fantasies do not stand a chance of being taken seriously by anyone who understands the lunar environment.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Alien Moon bases: Mike Bara hopelessly wrong as usual
Mike blogged today "No Virgina, It's Not an Alien Base on the Moon." I commented, but I might as well repeat it here (links added) because there's not a chance Mike will allow it to be seen over there --->
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Point-by-point critique of 'Ancient Aliens on Mars' PART TWO
As before, comprehension will be enhanced by loading the Picasa image gallery. Unfortunately the frame numbers aren't visible when the full gallery is displayed -- you have to select a specific image in order to see its frame number.
I didn't plan it this way, but I'm picking up Part 2 at the exact mid point of the book -- p.107 of 214, chapter 4 of 8. A simply enormous majority of the second half is a straight lift from Hoagland. I wouldn't know what arrangements (if any) those rascals Hoagland & Bara have for profit-sharing but, at a rough guess, I'd say 40% would be a fair share for Hoagland. Not that there will be truckloads of money anyway. When first listed the Amazon ranking was 1,040,783. The day after Mike Bara's appearance on Coast to Coast AM it improved to 6,055 (and #1 in Books > Professional & Technical > Profesional Science > Astronomy & Space Science > Mars). When it actually went on sale it improved further to 4,666. Today it has slumped to 9,228 (still no competition in > Mars) and it's discounted from $19.95 to $16.50.
8. pp. 107-120 You might think that Ralph Greenberg, professor of mathematics at Univ. Washington, had killed off the sheer insanity of Richard Hoagland's pseudo-mathematical analysis of Cydonia with his 2002 epic debunk. Apparently not, for here it is resurrected in its entirety by Hoagland's acolyte Mike Bara, and Bara even attempts to refute Greenberg. He's outclassed. Picasa frames #106-132 tell the story, and if they don't leave you utterly confused I don't really know what would. What's going on here is that Hoagland starts off with a presupposition that the marsography of Cydonia contains a hidden mathematical message, and then "proves" it by cherry-picking features and angles, and in some cases outright cheating.
What would Hoagland know about math anyway? This is the man who abjectly failed to apply the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation correctly and consequently produced a huge web page that was totally useless and invalid. He refuses to correct it, so you can still see it. Read it and weep.
There are mathematical absurdities here, like declaring that 2.720699, which is π × (√3)/2, is close enough to e, the base of natural logarithms, that it can be used as a substitute. The value of e is actually 2.71828.
What strikes me as I see all this nonsense again is not just that kind of comedy performance, but the overall sloppiness of the diagramming. Compare Picasa frames #107 and #113. In #107, a vertex of the D&M pyramid is shown to be pointing fairly accurately at the "face." Fair enough. But then the pointer to the center of the "tholus" does not follow a vertex and appears to be random. In #113 the whole pyramid has been rotated and suddenly one of the vertices is pointing directly at the "tholus." In #130 the same vertex again points at the "tholus" but suddenly the important point is not the center of the tholus but a spot on the north-west crater rim.
Better men than me have rejected this entire exercise because an orbital photograph has too much unknowable distortion to treat it as though it were a product of an accurate survey. Hoagland & Bara maintain that it's all OK because their images have been meticulously orthorectified. Actually, on p.107 Bara writes "orthographically rectified." That made me giggle -- it can only mean that the images were spell-checked. Mike Bara's spelling of the word "foreword" needs some orthographic rectification. Huuuurrrr...
9. pp.121, 125 (Picasa #123-127) Oh, here we go again. Another straight "lift" from Hoaglandiana. They want us to believe that there's something magic about the 19.5° latitude, and in support they cite all the wonderful instances of "energy upwelling" at that latitude throughout the solar system. On p.121 Bara specifically makes the claim that Jupiter's red spot, the giant Martian volcano Olympus Mons, and Mauna Kea are all at that latitude. Usually Hoagland writes "at or near," but here Bara says "at."
Such a pity that their data is dead wrong::
Jupiter's red spot is at 22°S
Olympus Mons is at 18°N
Mauna Kea is at 19° 49' N (if he'd written Mauna Loa he'd have been almost spot on)
On p.125 he makes the same claim about the Great Dark Spot of Neptune, adding for good measure that Hoagland specifically predicted it would be found at that latitude. Well, guess what? It's not true. Neptune's dark spot was first observed at about 25°S and it then wandered northwards before disappearing altogether. I believe there's a new one now, in the northern hemisphere.
What neither Hoagland nor Bara have ever addressed is the sad (for them) fact that NONE of history's top 100 volcanic eruptions or top 100 earthquakes has been at 19.5°.
10. pp.130-2 Here we go again, again. The claim that NASA suppressed the positive results of the Labeled Release biology experiment on both Viking landers. Untrue. The judgement of the experts (Gerry Soffen, again, and Harold "Chuck" Klein) was that, on balance, the enigmatic LR data could not prevail in the face of decidedly negative results from three other tests for life. That's not the same thing as suppressing the data -- in fact, the entire data set has been available on a NASA web site for 30 years. To be sure, Dr Gil Levín, the PI of the labeled release experiment, has protested pretty loudly over the years. Good luck to him, he's made some good points. His view has not found acceptance, particularly since the Phoenix lander found so much perchlorate hanging around Mars in 2008.
11. pp.132-5. More recycled anti-NASA propaganda. This is the one about how Mars really has a blue sky and sandy soil, but NASA artificially reddens it all. In particular, Bara tells the old, old story about the day JPL changed its mind and re-issued a bunch of Viking surface images making them redder.
I dunno, are these old fables really worth trotting out again today? Look -- here's what happened. The first few Viking images didn't capture the color wheel so the camera team just had to make a wild guess (Jim Bell has written about this.) When they were eventually able to get a look at the color wheel they realized the images they'd distributed were way off. So they reissued them with the correct color balance. It's as simple -- and as scientifically justified -- as that.
The space artist Don Davis has a very nice online resource dealing with the difficulties inherent in representing color on Mars. He knows what he's talking about. Mike Bara doesn't.
12. pp.147-67, Chapter 6, Picasa #151-182. Mars Pathfinder. Up pops the magic number 19.5 again, and also the almost equally magic 33. It's magic, you see, because of the masonic significance of the 33rd degree, and also because the sine of 19.5 is 0.333. Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.
Up pops another example of the blatant dishonesty of Hoagland & Bara. We see on p.148 that the designated landing site of Pathfinder was 19.5°N, 33.3°W. Actually according to the Press Kit it was 19.4°N, 33.1°W. OK, it's pretty close, but Bara's text is still a lie. And there's not the slightest reason in the world to think that there were any masonic or tetrahedral reasons for the choice. All planetary landing sites are a compromise between safety and scientific value. The actual landing site was 19.13°N, 33.22°W (and Bara reports that correctly.)
Take a look through the Picasa frames. Most of them are features Bara wants to persuade us are Martian technology. I want to persuade you that that's bullshit. #166-171 and #174-5 depict what Mike Bara calls the Sphinx. He writes (p.160) "this Martian sphinx has all the classic earmarks of its Egyptian counterpart." No it doesn't. He also writes that it faces due East, like the one at Giza. No it doesn't, it faces North.
("earmarks"???? Maybe he meant "hallmarks." Is anybody editing this rubbish?)
13. pp.169-179, Picasa #187-191. The famous catbox. I'm not going to write much about this because, frankly, it gets me annoyed. Mars Global Surveyor arrived overhead the so-called "face" at the worst possible moment for imaging. The mesa was basically fogged in. Picasa #187 is what came back from Mars. What gets me annoyed is when people like Hoagland & Bara fail to appreciate the effort Malin's boys exerted to process the image to #188. Instead they scream that it was a deliberate cover-up.
Ask yourself these simple questions: If Malin couldn't bear to let us see what was really down there at Cydonia, how come he was happy to go back when the fog had cleared and shoot a clear picture (#198)? The maximum resolution of the camera was 1.5 m/px. If NASA/JPL/Malin are so desperate to keep the "face" a secret, how come they later presented us with the magnificent image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at 0.5 m/px?
Well, I will just make one other comment because it's amusing. On p. 177 Bara protests that only 42 of a possible 256 levels in the gray-scale were present. My mind went back to that night on the Art Bell radio show (it was Art who christened the image "catbox") when Richard Hoagland was practically screaming "Somebody stole 200 gray levels!!!!"
Dear Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara, I have some information for you. Not every gray level has to have a value for an image to be faithful. It's perfectly possible for many gray levels to have a value of zero, in fact it's expected for an ultra-low contrast scene such as MGS saw that day.
Here's an actual concrete example of gray levels in a space image:
Levels 0-11 and 170-256 are zero. Only 157 of a possible 256 levels have information in them. Yet the image is perfectly readable, if low contrast.
Know what that histogram comes from? Thank you Stuart Robbins, it's the histogram of the original "ziggurat" image that Mike Bara got from Call of Duty Zombies.
I didn't plan it this way, but I'm picking up Part 2 at the exact mid point of the book -- p.107 of 214, chapter 4 of 8. A simply enormous majority of the second half is a straight lift from Hoagland. I wouldn't know what arrangements (if any) those rascals Hoagland & Bara have for profit-sharing but, at a rough guess, I'd say 40% would be a fair share for Hoagland. Not that there will be truckloads of money anyway. When first listed the Amazon ranking was 1,040,783. The day after Mike Bara's appearance on Coast to Coast AM it improved to 6,055 (and #1 in Books > Professional & Technical > Profesional Science > Astronomy & Space Science > Mars). When it actually went on sale it improved further to 4,666. Today it has slumped to 9,228 (still no competition in > Mars) and it's discounted from $19.95 to $16.50.
8. pp. 107-120 You might think that Ralph Greenberg, professor of mathematics at Univ. Washington, had killed off the sheer insanity of Richard Hoagland's pseudo-mathematical analysis of Cydonia with his 2002 epic debunk. Apparently not, for here it is resurrected in its entirety by Hoagland's acolyte Mike Bara, and Bara even attempts to refute Greenberg. He's outclassed. Picasa frames #106-132 tell the story, and if they don't leave you utterly confused I don't really know what would. What's going on here is that Hoagland starts off with a presupposition that the marsography of Cydonia contains a hidden mathematical message, and then "proves" it by cherry-picking features and angles, and in some cases outright cheating.
What would Hoagland know about math anyway? This is the man who abjectly failed to apply the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation correctly and consequently produced a huge web page that was totally useless and invalid. He refuses to correct it, so you can still see it. Read it and weep.
There are mathematical absurdities here, like declaring that 2.720699, which is π × (√3)/2, is close enough to e, the base of natural logarithms, that it can be used as a substitute. The value of e is actually 2.71828.
What strikes me as I see all this nonsense again is not just that kind of comedy performance, but the overall sloppiness of the diagramming. Compare Picasa frames #107 and #113. In #107, a vertex of the D&M pyramid is shown to be pointing fairly accurately at the "face." Fair enough. But then the pointer to the center of the "tholus" does not follow a vertex and appears to be random. In #113 the whole pyramid has been rotated and suddenly one of the vertices is pointing directly at the "tholus." In #130 the same vertex again points at the "tholus" but suddenly the important point is not the center of the tholus but a spot on the north-west crater rim.
Better men than me have rejected this entire exercise because an orbital photograph has too much unknowable distortion to treat it as though it were a product of an accurate survey. Hoagland & Bara maintain that it's all OK because their images have been meticulously orthorectified. Actually, on p.107 Bara writes "orthographically rectified." That made me giggle -- it can only mean that the images were spell-checked. Mike Bara's spelling of the word "foreword" needs some orthographic rectification. Huuuurrrr...
9. pp.121, 125 (Picasa #123-127) Oh, here we go again. Another straight "lift" from Hoaglandiana. They want us to believe that there's something magic about the 19.5° latitude, and in support they cite all the wonderful instances of "energy upwelling" at that latitude throughout the solar system. On p.121 Bara specifically makes the claim that Jupiter's red spot, the giant Martian volcano Olympus Mons, and Mauna Kea are all at that latitude. Usually Hoagland writes "at or near," but here Bara says "at."
Such a pity that their data is dead wrong::
Jupiter's red spot is at 22°S
Olympus Mons is at 18°N
Mauna Kea is at 19° 49' N (if he'd written Mauna Loa he'd have been almost spot on)
On p.125 he makes the same claim about the Great Dark Spot of Neptune, adding for good measure that Hoagland specifically predicted it would be found at that latitude. Well, guess what? It's not true. Neptune's dark spot was first observed at about 25°S and it then wandered northwards before disappearing altogether. I believe there's a new one now, in the northern hemisphere.
What neither Hoagland nor Bara have ever addressed is the sad (for them) fact that NONE of history's top 100 volcanic eruptions or top 100 earthquakes has been at 19.5°.
10. pp.130-2 Here we go again, again. The claim that NASA suppressed the positive results of the Labeled Release biology experiment on both Viking landers. Untrue. The judgement of the experts (Gerry Soffen, again, and Harold "Chuck" Klein) was that, on balance, the enigmatic LR data could not prevail in the face of decidedly negative results from three other tests for life. That's not the same thing as suppressing the data -- in fact, the entire data set has been available on a NASA web site for 30 years. To be sure, Dr Gil Levín, the PI of the labeled release experiment, has protested pretty loudly over the years. Good luck to him, he's made some good points. His view has not found acceptance, particularly since the Phoenix lander found so much perchlorate hanging around Mars in 2008.
11. pp.132-5. More recycled anti-NASA propaganda. This is the one about how Mars really has a blue sky and sandy soil, but NASA artificially reddens it all. In particular, Bara tells the old, old story about the day JPL changed its mind and re-issued a bunch of Viking surface images making them redder.
I dunno, are these old fables really worth trotting out again today? Look -- here's what happened. The first few Viking images didn't capture the color wheel so the camera team just had to make a wild guess (Jim Bell has written about this.) When they were eventually able to get a look at the color wheel they realized the images they'd distributed were way off. So they reissued them with the correct color balance. It's as simple -- and as scientifically justified -- as that.
The space artist Don Davis has a very nice online resource dealing with the difficulties inherent in representing color on Mars. He knows what he's talking about. Mike Bara doesn't.
12. pp.147-67, Chapter 6, Picasa #151-182. Mars Pathfinder. Up pops the magic number 19.5 again, and also the almost equally magic 33. It's magic, you see, because of the masonic significance of the 33rd degree, and also because the sine of 19.5 is 0.333. Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.
Up pops another example of the blatant dishonesty of Hoagland & Bara. We see on p.148 that the designated landing site of Pathfinder was 19.5°N, 33.3°W. Actually according to the Press Kit it was 19.4°N, 33.1°W. OK, it's pretty close, but Bara's text is still a lie. And there's not the slightest reason in the world to think that there were any masonic or tetrahedral reasons for the choice. All planetary landing sites are a compromise between safety and scientific value. The actual landing site was 19.13°N, 33.22°W (and Bara reports that correctly.)
Take a look through the Picasa frames. Most of them are features Bara wants to persuade us are Martian technology. I want to persuade you that that's bullshit. #166-171 and #174-5 depict what Mike Bara calls the Sphinx. He writes (p.160) "this Martian sphinx has all the classic earmarks of its Egyptian counterpart." No it doesn't. He also writes that it faces due East, like the one at Giza. No it doesn't, it faces North.
("earmarks"???? Maybe he meant "hallmarks." Is anybody editing this rubbish?)
13. pp.169-179, Picasa #187-191. The famous catbox. I'm not going to write much about this because, frankly, it gets me annoyed. Mars Global Surveyor arrived overhead the so-called "face" at the worst possible moment for imaging. The mesa was basically fogged in. Picasa #187 is what came back from Mars. What gets me annoyed is when people like Hoagland & Bara fail to appreciate the effort Malin's boys exerted to process the image to #188. Instead they scream that it was a deliberate cover-up.
Ask yourself these simple questions: If Malin couldn't bear to let us see what was really down there at Cydonia, how come he was happy to go back when the fog had cleared and shoot a clear picture (#198)? The maximum resolution of the camera was 1.5 m/px. If NASA/JPL/Malin are so desperate to keep the "face" a secret, how come they later presented us with the magnificent image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at 0.5 m/px?
Well, I will just make one other comment because it's amusing. On p. 177 Bara protests that only 42 of a possible 256 levels in the gray-scale were present. My mind went back to that night on the Art Bell radio show (it was Art who christened the image "catbox") when Richard Hoagland was practically screaming "Somebody stole 200 gray levels!!!!"
Dear Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara, I have some information for you. Not every gray level has to have a value for an image to be faithful. It's perfectly possible for many gray levels to have a value of zero, in fact it's expected for an ultra-low contrast scene such as MGS saw that day.
Here's an actual concrete example of gray levels in a space image:
Levels 0-11 and 170-256 are zero. Only 157 of a possible 256 levels have information in them. Yet the image is perfectly readable, if low contrast.
Know what that histogram comes from? Thank you Stuart Robbins, it's the histogram of the original "ziggurat" image that Mike Bara got from Call of Duty Zombies.
Monday, November 4, 2013
Point-by-point critique of 'Ancient Aliens on Mars' PART ONE
I don't propose to write much about the nauseating Foreword to this book -- an exercise in adolescent petulance whose main target is Dr Stuart Robbins. Robbins is a well qualified working astronomer who knows infinitely more about planetary astronomy than Mike Bara. The foreword (which Bara inexplicably calls a "Forward") is available on Mike's blog. This is not quite the same as the book version -- it includes a ridiculous juvenile cartoon depicting me driving a bus over Stuart Robbins, plus other cringe-worthy excesses.
I'll just write two things:
ONE: Mr Michael Bara, you wretched, ignorant, belligerent man, if you're going to accuse me of sending sexually harassing messages to your female FB friends, LET'S SEE THE EVIDENCE. James Concannon has provided a specific and clear example of sexual harassment in the other direction. Unless you can show a similarly specific example of what you mean, SHUT THE FUCK UP.
TWO: You never did get around to explaining why the ziggurat does not appear in images that are far, far more up-to-date and with far, far better resolution than the Apollo frame. Now's your chance. WHERE IS THAT ZIGGY, BARA?
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Wide Angle Camera
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Narrow Angle Camera
Japanese Selene lunar orbiter
So, now to the book. There's a Picasa gallery containing all the figures from the book (plus some that got trimmed out,) and you might like to have that handy as you read on.
1. p.40 "In Egyptian mythology, the Sphinx God Horus was also frequently associated with the planet Mars, and in fact the Sphinx was at one time painted red in honor of this connection. They also shared a name in the ancient Egyptian tongue, Hor-Dshr, literally 'Horus the Red.' "
This is pure Graham Hancock, and therefore unreliable. As is now well known, Hancock was a major fan of recreational pharmaceuticals, and they are what largely inspired his work Fingerprints of the Gods ( see Hancock's page on the Rational Wiki.) As far as I know, the ancient name of the Great Sphinx of Giza was Hor-em-Akhet (trans: Horus of the horizon) but then I make no claim to any expertise in Egyptology. I was able to find some corroboration for the claim that the Sphinx was once stained red. Interesting. -ish. Nothing to do with Mars, though (just like the foreword.)
2. p.41. We know we're in trouble with this book when we read this as early on as p.42:
"Because of its highly "eccentric" ... orbit ... Mars' distance relative to Earth varies a great deal. In fact, Mars' orbit is so elliptical that its distance to the Earth can be as much as 249 million miles at its farthest to as little as about 34 million miles at its theoretical closest approach."
This, of course, is almost word for word the same catastrophic error that Mike Bara made in his earlier book The Choice. I got on his case about it, so did an Amazon reviewer, and so did Stuart Robbins. In case you're wondering why it's such a dreadful howler, Robbins explains.
3. pp. 42-43. It immediately gets worse, much worse. Mike Bara reveals such incredible ignorance about simple astronomical terminology that I really had to force myself to keep reading. On p. 42 we see an illustration of Earth and Mars at conjunction, which Bara labels as aphelion. On p. 43 an illustration of opposition is labeled as perihelion. You can see these images as #7 and #8 in the Picasa gallery, along with snarky comments mocking Stuart Robbins. Can you possibly imagine anything more embarrassing for an author than ridiculing his critics and getting it wrong??
It doesn't stop. He writes "[Mars and Earth] are at their closest to each other when they are on the same side of the Sun and both at their perihelion points." (p.43)
Not true. They're closest when Mars is at perihelion and Earth is at aphelion. What an unmitigated disaster these two pages are.
4. pp.53-56 At the end of an exposition of a device called the Jenkins Radio Camera, Bara shows us one of its prints. This apparatus was a far-fetched idea used during the 1924 opposition. In some way that Bara doesn't make quite clear, this thing detected radio signals from Mars and made them into crude and very fuzzy images. You can see the three images Bara shows as #60, #61 and #63 in the Picasa gallery, plus a better pic of Voldemort (#62.) Mike is saying "Oh look, doesn't this radio transmission from Mars look like a J.K. Rowling character?"
...which is a very strange fantasy for someone who has repeatedly insisted that there's no such thing as pareidolia (and he says it yet again, on p.99)!
5. pp. 60-63 Mike Bara really loves the astronomer Tom Van Flandern, for some reason -- possibly because Van Flandern is the only professional astronomer Mike ever met. Van Flandern, who died in 2009, was a very bright spark who had some ideas that are considered eccentric by the mainstream. One of them was that the accepted theory about how the solar system was formed is wrong.
The accepted theory is that planets are left behind in orbit as a circumstellar accretion disk shrinks and coalesces. Van Flandern said "No, the star forms first, then spins off planets in pairs in a process called solar fission." Fission is depicted in Picasa gallery #38.
In vigorously supporting this now discredited theory, Mike once again shows ignorance. On p.61 he writes "The accretion model ... requires the planets to have highly eccentric (elliptical) orbits during their proto-planet phase." On p. 63 he writes "Only the fission theory can explain why all the planets are in the so-called 'plane of the ecliptic,' the equatorial plane of the Sun. If the accretion model was correct, planets would form all over the place and have orbits at all different angles to the Sun."
As far as I know, both those statements are what is technically known as poppycock. The second one, in particular, simply contradicts common sense. If planets form from a spinning disc, it's pretty obvious that all their orbits will stay in the same plane as the disc that gave them birth. Duhhhh. (Pluto is a different story).
6. pp. 69-78 Another Van Flandern idea that both Bara and Hoagland love is that Mars was once the moon of a larger planet that exploded. Hoagland has also proposed that Mars was tidally locked to this planet that he calls Planet V or Maldek. I previously blogged about how these two ideas, not by any means silly in themselves, don't sit well together. I'll just quote myself (ref. Picasa gallery #28-34):
I'm obliged to my commenter Dee for pointing out that Hoagland himself cited this problem in his web article. (Load this page into MSIE, the only browser that will render it readably.) He writes:
He has a wriggle-out which begins...
It's all very hypothetical and, to me at least, not at all convincing.
7. pp.90-105 This is really bad writing -- or perhaps more accurately, bad book planning. Fifteen pages (of a total 216) about the early discovery of the so-called Face on Mars. It reads now, in 2013, like a piece of discarded history that some old codger wants to reminisce about (Mike is 53 and not yet a codger.) We have so much better imagery available for inspection now that, really, who cares what DiPietro, Molenaar and Carlotto did to enhance the image?
However, I can't resist once again coming to the defense of someone I admired greatly -- Gerry Soffen, Chief Scientist of the Viking missions to Mars in 1976. It was the Viking 1 Orbiter, of course, that took the picture that Richard Hoagland built a career out of -- Frame 035A72 (#99 in the Picasa gallery.) Gerry Soffen presented the image to the press on 26th July, and added "When we took another picture a few hours later, it all went away; it was just a trick, just the way light fell on it." Mike Bara has been saying for years, and repeats here on p. 92, that Soffen was lying. This blog previously discussed this in September 2012. Picasa gallery #101 is the actual announcement, showing left to right Jim Martin, Viking Project Manager, Tobias Owen (who first spotted the "face") and Gerry Soffen.
The basis of Bara's accusation is that there was no second picture, and could not have been because by the time the orbiter hit that latitude again the "face" was rotated out of range. How far? Bara, very math-challenged as we know, cannot be more precise than "between 15 and more than 20.4 miles." (p.92)
Well, let's see. I prefer to work in kilometers but for the purpose of explicit comparison with Bara, let's do it in miles. The difference in longitude on successive passes of a satellite is known as the "walk."
DATA:
Orbit of Viking 1: Polar, 24.66 hours
Rotation period of Mars: 24.622 hours
Equatorial radius of Mars: 2110 miles
Latitude of Cydonia: ~40°N
During one Viking orbit, Mars rotates 360 x 24.66 / 24.622 degrees.
That's slightly more than a full rotation -- 360.55°.
So when Viking came around to 40°N latitude again, the "face" was 0.55° cross-track
Rotational circumference at 40° is 2.π.2210.cos40 = 2 x 3.1416 x 2210 x 0.766 = 10,636 miles
Walk for 0.55° = 10636 x 0.55 / 360 = 16.25 miles.
So in fact that does fall within Bara's "between 15 and more than 20.4 miles" (which is a very strange way of expressing a range, actually.) But why couldn't he have done the math himself?
Well now let's see what that means for the camera, and a possible second shot. Here's the dataset for 035A72 (the designation means the 72nd image taken on the 35th orbit by Orbiter A.) Data from this source.
HFOV means Horizontal Field of View -- the width of the image on the ground. It's 55 km, or 34 miles. It follows that, since the "Face" was only 16.25 miles cross-track, it was in range. Now, I'm not saying I know that second image exists, only that it could have been taken. Mike Bara is mistaken, and I call on him to withdraw the accusation.
There's much more detail on the Malin Education page. Pseudoscientists like Hoagland & Bara hate Michael Malin because they think he keeps too tight a control over the imagery his technology creates, but he certainly releases plenty of info. And yet the ignorant Mike Bara has the nerve to write (p.170) of "Malin's well-documented hostility toward the Cydonia issue."
On to PART TWO
I'll just write two things:
ONE: Mr Michael Bara, you wretched, ignorant, belligerent man, if you're going to accuse me of sending sexually harassing messages to your female FB friends, LET'S SEE THE EVIDENCE. James Concannon has provided a specific and clear example of sexual harassment in the other direction. Unless you can show a similarly specific example of what you mean, SHUT THE FUCK UP.
TWO: You never did get around to explaining why the ziggurat does not appear in images that are far, far more up-to-date and with far, far better resolution than the Apollo frame. Now's your chance. WHERE IS THAT ZIGGY, BARA?
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Wide Angle Camera
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Narrow Angle Camera
Japanese Selene lunar orbiter
===========================
So, now to the book. There's a Picasa gallery containing all the figures from the book (plus some that got trimmed out,) and you might like to have that handy as you read on.
1. p.40 "In Egyptian mythology, the Sphinx God Horus was also frequently associated with the planet Mars, and in fact the Sphinx was at one time painted red in honor of this connection. They also shared a name in the ancient Egyptian tongue, Hor-Dshr, literally 'Horus the Red.' "
This is pure Graham Hancock, and therefore unreliable. As is now well known, Hancock was a major fan of recreational pharmaceuticals, and they are what largely inspired his work Fingerprints of the Gods ( see Hancock's page on the Rational Wiki.) As far as I know, the ancient name of the Great Sphinx of Giza was Hor-em-Akhet (trans: Horus of the horizon) but then I make no claim to any expertise in Egyptology. I was able to find some corroboration for the claim that the Sphinx was once stained red. Interesting. -ish. Nothing to do with Mars, though (just like the foreword.)
2. p.41. We know we're in trouble with this book when we read this as early on as p.42:
"Because of its highly "eccentric" ... orbit ... Mars' distance relative to Earth varies a great deal. In fact, Mars' orbit is so elliptical that its distance to the Earth can be as much as 249 million miles at its farthest to as little as about 34 million miles at its theoretical closest approach."
This, of course, is almost word for word the same catastrophic error that Mike Bara made in his earlier book The Choice. I got on his case about it, so did an Amazon reviewer, and so did Stuart Robbins. In case you're wondering why it's such a dreadful howler, Robbins explains.
3. pp. 42-43. It immediately gets worse, much worse. Mike Bara reveals such incredible ignorance about simple astronomical terminology that I really had to force myself to keep reading. On p. 42 we see an illustration of Earth and Mars at conjunction, which Bara labels as aphelion. On p. 43 an illustration of opposition is labeled as perihelion. You can see these images as #7 and #8 in the Picasa gallery, along with snarky comments mocking Stuart Robbins. Can you possibly imagine anything more embarrassing for an author than ridiculing his critics and getting it wrong??
It doesn't stop. He writes "[Mars and Earth] are at their closest to each other when they are on the same side of the Sun and both at their perihelion points." (p.43)
Not true. They're closest when Mars is at perihelion and Earth is at aphelion. What an unmitigated disaster these two pages are.
4. pp.53-56 At the end of an exposition of a device called the Jenkins Radio Camera, Bara shows us one of its prints. This apparatus was a far-fetched idea used during the 1924 opposition. In some way that Bara doesn't make quite clear, this thing detected radio signals from Mars and made them into crude and very fuzzy images. You can see the three images Bara shows as #60, #61 and #63 in the Picasa gallery, plus a better pic of Voldemort (#62.) Mike is saying "Oh look, doesn't this radio transmission from Mars look like a J.K. Rowling character?"
...which is a very strange fantasy for someone who has repeatedly insisted that there's no such thing as pareidolia (and he says it yet again, on p.99)!
5. pp. 60-63 Mike Bara really loves the astronomer Tom Van Flandern, for some reason -- possibly because Van Flandern is the only professional astronomer Mike ever met. Van Flandern, who died in 2009, was a very bright spark who had some ideas that are considered eccentric by the mainstream. One of them was that the accepted theory about how the solar system was formed is wrong.
The accepted theory is that planets are left behind in orbit as a circumstellar accretion disk shrinks and coalesces. Van Flandern said "No, the star forms first, then spins off planets in pairs in a process called solar fission." Fission is depicted in Picasa gallery #38.
In vigorously supporting this now discredited theory, Mike once again shows ignorance. On p.61 he writes "The accretion model ... requires the planets to have highly eccentric (elliptical) orbits during their proto-planet phase." On p. 63 he writes "Only the fission theory can explain why all the planets are in the so-called 'plane of the ecliptic,' the equatorial plane of the Sun. If the accretion model was correct, planets would form all over the place and have orbits at all different angles to the Sun."
As far as I know, both those statements are what is technically known as poppycock. The second one, in particular, simply contradicts common sense. If planets form from a spinning disc, it's pretty obvious that all their orbits will stay in the same plane as the disc that gave them birth. Duhhhh. (Pluto is a different story).
6. pp. 69-78 Another Van Flandern idea that both Bara and Hoagland love is that Mars was once the moon of a larger planet that exploded. Hoagland has also proposed that Mars was tidally locked to this planet that he calls Planet V or Maldek. I previously blogged about how these two ideas, not by any means silly in themselves, don't sit well together. I'll just quote myself (ref. Picasa gallery #28-34):
There are the two claimed tidal bulges, Arabia at the 60° longitude and Tharsis at 240°. They define Mars's orientation in relation to the claimed parent planet. And it's tidally locked, too, so Tharsis is always on the planet side. But then, what happens when the parent planet explodes? Van Flandern observes, correctly, that one hemisphere of Mars is much more heavily cratered than the other. So logically that would be on the Tharsis side, the equatorial west.
Except it isn't. It's the entire Southern hemisphere that got preferentially splatted. The hemisphere that was not pointing at the planet when the biggie went down. Oops...
I'm obliged to my commenter Dee for pointing out that Hoagland himself cited this problem in his web article. (Load this page into MSIE, the only browser that will render it readably.) He writes:
"the authors acknowledge that this presents some serious problems for this entire model."
He has a wriggle-out which begins...
"We propose that as it was approaching Planet V toward its ultimate collision, Planet K passed close by Mars in its orbit around Planet V (Figure 19). This close encounter gravitationally interfered with the tidal lock between Mars with Planet V. In fact, it began a radical, gravitationally induced reorientation of the entire Mars’ spin axis relative to Planet V."
It's all very hypothetical and, to me at least, not at all convincing.
7. pp.90-105 This is really bad writing -- or perhaps more accurately, bad book planning. Fifteen pages (of a total 216) about the early discovery of the so-called Face on Mars. It reads now, in 2013, like a piece of discarded history that some old codger wants to reminisce about (Mike is 53 and not yet a codger.) We have so much better imagery available for inspection now that, really, who cares what DiPietro, Molenaar and Carlotto did to enhance the image?
However, I can't resist once again coming to the defense of someone I admired greatly -- Gerry Soffen, Chief Scientist of the Viking missions to Mars in 1976. It was the Viking 1 Orbiter, of course, that took the picture that Richard Hoagland built a career out of -- Frame 035A72 (#99 in the Picasa gallery.) Gerry Soffen presented the image to the press on 26th July, and added "When we took another picture a few hours later, it all went away; it was just a trick, just the way light fell on it." Mike Bara has been saying for years, and repeats here on p. 92, that Soffen was lying. This blog previously discussed this in September 2012. Picasa gallery #101 is the actual announcement, showing left to right Jim Martin, Viking Project Manager, Tobias Owen (who first spotted the "face") and Gerry Soffen.
The basis of Bara's accusation is that there was no second picture, and could not have been because by the time the orbiter hit that latitude again the "face" was rotated out of range. How far? Bara, very math-challenged as we know, cannot be more precise than "between 15 and more than 20.4 miles." (p.92)
Well, let's see. I prefer to work in kilometers but for the purpose of explicit comparison with Bara, let's do it in miles. The difference in longitude on successive passes of a satellite is known as the "walk."
DATA:
Orbit of Viking 1: Polar, 24.66 hours
Rotation period of Mars: 24.622 hours
Equatorial radius of Mars: 2110 miles
Latitude of Cydonia: ~40°N
During one Viking orbit, Mars rotates 360 x 24.66 / 24.622 degrees.
That's slightly more than a full rotation -- 360.55°.
So when Viking came around to 40°N latitude again, the "face" was 0.55° cross-track
Rotational circumference at 40° is 2.π.2210.cos40 = 2 x 3.1416 x 2210 x 0.766 = 10,636 miles
Walk for 0.55° = 10636 x 0.55 / 360 = 16.25 miles.
So in fact that does fall within Bara's "between 15 and more than 20.4 miles" (which is a very strange way of expressing a range, actually.) But why couldn't he have done the math himself?
Well now let's see what that means for the camera, and a possible second shot. Here's the dataset for 035A72 (the designation means the 72nd image taken on the 35th orbit by Orbiter A.) Data from this source.
035A72 VO75 1B PICNO= 035A72 FILTER 4 (CLEAR) EXP 34 MSEC FGD 111 FSC 26588045 OET-GMT 76 207 15 25 14 TPER +00 12 05 RNG= 5239 KM HFOV= 55 KM VFOV= 50 KM SCL= 46 M/PXL NOR AZ 154 DG SUN AZ 88 DG S/C AZ 323 DG INA 79 DG EMA 10 DG PHA 86 DG SUNS LS= 99.2 DG EDR= CN1244 01 MAX-D= LAT C= +40.90 UL= +41.14 UR= +40.28 LL= +41.52 LR= +40.65 LONG C= 9.52 UL= 8.76 UR= 9.28 LL= 9.77 LR= 10.28
HFOV means Horizontal Field of View -- the width of the image on the ground. It's 55 km, or 34 miles. It follows that, since the "Face" was only 16.25 miles cross-track, it was in range. Now, I'm not saying I know that second image exists, only that it could have been taken. Mike Bara is mistaken, and I call on him to withdraw the accusation.
There's much more detail on the Malin Education page. Pseudoscientists like Hoagland & Bara hate Michael Malin because they think he keeps too tight a control over the imagery his technology creates, but he certainly releases plenty of info. And yet the ignorant Mike Bara has the nerve to write (p.170) of "Malin's well-documented hostility toward the Cydonia issue."
On to PART TWO
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Review of Mike Bara on Coast to Coast AM, 28 Oct
Mike Bara's gratuitous insult directed at Stuart Robbins at the start of hour 4 ("He may be a scientist but he sucks at it") will come back to bite him, as Stuart will now get a guest spot on C2C and quite possibly a chance to debate Mike live. I can hardly wait.
Oh, Ziggy, Where Art Thou?
Even though the main topic was Mars, Mike couldn't resist attempting to justify his irresponsible promotion of the Daedalus Ziggurat on the Moon. He actually acknowledged that Stuart Robbins and I had done his research for him, but denied he ever doubted that Terry James (kksamurai) had created the original image. Good thing this blog keeps an archive, and I can therefore remind you that on the Inception Radio Network, Friday June 14th this year, he did indeed say that. And he did write on his blog that he "enhanced" the image before passing it to Hoagland, who apparently "enhanced" it some more. The image that finally got posted to the Coast to Coast web site was named AS11-38-5564-Mike-oirginal-enhanced3.jpg.
Mike's new position on the wiggy ziggy is set out in incredible detail in his new book, now copied to his blog. I can't imagine even his greatest fans wading through all that garbage, and Mike needs to learn the difference between "forward" and "foreword."
Caught by Logic
As he droned on through the usual accusations of sinister NASA cover-ups, the logical problem that this blog has often mentioned became very clear. Mike and his ilk really have painted themselves into a corner. They come up with these triumphant toldyas all the time -- the sneaker on Mars (titter), the satellite dishes on the Moon, bla bla bla -- but since their sole source of this imagery is NASA itself, they force themselves to claim, simultaneously, that NASA is covering things up and also that NASA photography reveals things that ought not to be there.
So we have the spectacle of Mike claiming that one Apollo 11 frame, AS11-38-5564, contains incriminating evidence that NASA covered up the ziggy but failed to cover up a crane, a spaceship, a gun emplacement, a jack, a flying saucer, a beach house and a human head (but of course there's no such thing as pareidolia.) Last night he referred to a feature on Mars which JPL scientists themselves have nicknamed the "Inca City." Are they covering it up? No, of course not, they're even jokily comparing it to a Peruvian archaeological site. Mike, of course, wants to have it both ways.
Mike last night talked himself right into another logical trap, when describing the "tidal model" of Mars proposed by Richard Hoaglandnote 1, combined with Tom Van Flandern's hypothesis that Mars was once the moon of a larger planet that exploded. Neither of these is a daft idea per se, but what Mike doesn't get is that they don't work well together. In fact, they're mutually exclusive.
There are the two claimed tidal bulges, Arabia at the 60° longitude and Tharsis at 240°. They define Mars's orientation in relation to the claimed parent planet. And it's tidally locked, too, so Tharsis is always on the planet side. But then, what happens when the parent planet explodes? Van Flandern observes, correctly, that one hemisphere of Mars is much more heavily cratered than the other. So logically that would be on the Tharsis side, the equatorial west.
Except it isn't. It's the entire Southern hemisphere that got preferentially splatted. The hemisphere that was not pointing at the planet when the biggie went down.note 2 Oops...
"Wait... you mean planets can explode?"
Kudos to George Noory, for once, for asking Mike a very direct question -- Why would NASA want to cover up evidence? -- and refusing to accept the tired old Brookings Report as the answer. It had Mike scrambling a bit before he came up with what he thought was a scary scenario. A NASA press conference at which they announce that, yes, they have definite evidence that the parent planet of Mars once exploded and wiped out a civilizationnote 3, all other life, several oceans and an entire atmosphere. Mike seemed to think there would be panic in the streets. Is it me, or is that an incredibly weak argument?
Sexy FB messaging
Mike reiterated his accusation that his critics (and I assume he includes me) have been sexually harassing his FBgfs. I take exception to that. I say this: Mike Bara, put up or shut up. James Concannon has posted a specific and detailed example of reverse sexual harassment directed at him. Let's see a specific example of a sexual message from any of us. If you can't come up with one, stop saying that. And apologize.
[1] In the course of the whole four hours, Mike managed to avoid mentioning Hoagland even once. Considering how much of his new book is recycled Hoagland material, I'd say that's remarkably ungentlemanly of him. But then, we know Mike is no gentleman even though he may spend plenty of time in "gentlemen's clubs" in Las Vegas.
[2] Arabia Terra and Tharsis Montes are in fact both in the Northern hemisphere, just to make things worse for the theory. Tharsis at about 2°N, Arabia at 20°N.
[3] Although according to Hoagland mythology, the civilization had prior knowledge of the impending catastrophe (just like I have prior knowledge of the impending catastrophe of Mike's new book) and escaped unharmed. So it really isn't such a scary proposition after all.
Oh, Ziggy, Where Art Thou?
Even though the main topic was Mars, Mike couldn't resist attempting to justify his irresponsible promotion of the Daedalus Ziggurat on the Moon. He actually acknowledged that Stuart Robbins and I had done his research for him, but denied he ever doubted that Terry James (kksamurai) had created the original image. Good thing this blog keeps an archive, and I can therefore remind you that on the Inception Radio Network, Friday June 14th this year, he did indeed say that. And he did write on his blog that he "enhanced" the image before passing it to Hoagland, who apparently "enhanced" it some more. The image that finally got posted to the Coast to Coast web site was named AS11-38-5564-Mike-oirginal-enhanced3.jpg.
Mike's new position on the wiggy ziggy is set out in incredible detail in his new book, now copied to his blog. I can't imagine even his greatest fans wading through all that garbage, and Mike needs to learn the difference between "forward" and "foreword."
Caught by Logic
As he droned on through the usual accusations of sinister NASA cover-ups, the logical problem that this blog has often mentioned became very clear. Mike and his ilk really have painted themselves into a corner. They come up with these triumphant toldyas all the time -- the sneaker on Mars (titter), the satellite dishes on the Moon, bla bla bla -- but since their sole source of this imagery is NASA itself, they force themselves to claim, simultaneously, that NASA is covering things up and also that NASA photography reveals things that ought not to be there.
So we have the spectacle of Mike claiming that one Apollo 11 frame, AS11-38-5564, contains incriminating evidence that NASA covered up the ziggy but failed to cover up a crane, a spaceship, a gun emplacement, a jack, a flying saucer, a beach house and a human head (but of course there's no such thing as pareidolia.) Last night he referred to a feature on Mars which JPL scientists themselves have nicknamed the "Inca City." Are they covering it up? No, of course not, they're even jokily comparing it to a Peruvian archaeological site. Mike, of course, wants to have it both ways.
Mike last night talked himself right into another logical trap, when describing the "tidal model" of Mars proposed by Richard Hoaglandnote 1, combined with Tom Van Flandern's hypothesis that Mars was once the moon of a larger planet that exploded. Neither of these is a daft idea per se, but what Mike doesn't get is that they don't work well together. In fact, they're mutually exclusive.
There are the two claimed tidal bulges, Arabia at the 60° longitude and Tharsis at 240°. They define Mars's orientation in relation to the claimed parent planet. And it's tidally locked, too, so Tharsis is always on the planet side. But then, what happens when the parent planet explodes? Van Flandern observes, correctly, that one hemisphere of Mars is much more heavily cratered than the other. So logically that would be on the Tharsis side, the equatorial west.
Except it isn't. It's the entire Southern hemisphere that got preferentially splatted. The hemisphere that was not pointing at the planet when the biggie went down.note 2 Oops...
"Wait... you mean planets can explode?"
Kudos to George Noory, for once, for asking Mike a very direct question -- Why would NASA want to cover up evidence? -- and refusing to accept the tired old Brookings Report as the answer. It had Mike scrambling a bit before he came up with what he thought was a scary scenario. A NASA press conference at which they announce that, yes, they have definite evidence that the parent planet of Mars once exploded and wiped out a civilizationnote 3, all other life, several oceans and an entire atmosphere. Mike seemed to think there would be panic in the streets. Is it me, or is that an incredibly weak argument?
Sexy FB messaging
Mike reiterated his accusation that his critics (and I assume he includes me) have been sexually harassing his FBgfs. I take exception to that. I say this: Mike Bara, put up or shut up. James Concannon has posted a specific and detailed example of reverse sexual harassment directed at him. Let's see a specific example of a sexual message from any of us. If you can't come up with one, stop saying that. And apologize.
=============================
[1] In the course of the whole four hours, Mike managed to avoid mentioning Hoagland even once. Considering how much of his new book is recycled Hoagland material, I'd say that's remarkably ungentlemanly of him. But then, we know Mike is no gentleman even though he may spend plenty of time in "gentlemen's clubs" in Las Vegas.
[2] Arabia Terra and Tharsis Montes are in fact both in the Northern hemisphere, just to make things worse for the theory. Tharsis at about 2°N, Arabia at 20°N.
[3] Although according to Hoagland mythology, the civilization had prior knowledge of the impending catastrophe (just like I have prior knowledge of the impending catastrophe of Mike's new book) and escaped unharmed. So it really isn't such a scary proposition after all.
Friday, October 25, 2013
You didn't think Mike Bara was going to get this right, did you?
...No, of course you didn't. I'm surprised he's still alive -- you might think he'd make mistakes every time he tries to feed himself.
Today he proudly announced a Picasa gallery which we can all admire -- the 223 figures from his new book, plus the front cover. I have a few comments. Numbers are his frame numbers.
4. I think his numbers are correct. It pains me to see a mixture of kg and miles. Perhaps I'm over-trained.
7.
This illustrates opposition, but not perihelion. Perihelion and opposition are totally unrelated.
8.
This illutrates conjunction, but not aphelion. Aphelion and conjunction are likewise totally unrelated.
30. I think I understand the intent of this diagram (stolen from Hoagland,) but lunar gravity is not shown by blue arrows anywhere. I guess it's the arrow labeled 12 micron/s/s but lunar gravity should also be shown on the opposite side. Centripetal acceleration should be the same on both sides. I hope his text makes this a lot clearer.
37. I like this one because it neatly falsifies Bara's contention that large eccentricities are common in the solar system. He takes this as support for the solar fission model, but it isn't true. If Pluto is disregarded, only one planet has eccentricity >0.1.
41. Much of Bara's artwork has copyvio problems, none more than this one. It's ripped off from solstation.com -- a site that clearly states that its data is free for personal use. NOT for commercial use, Mike Bara.
43. More flagrant copyvio.
63. Isn't this a perfect example of the pareidolia that Bara says doesn't exist?
74. A perfect match? No way.
77. Carl Sagan mis-spelled.
79. Nice to see Gil Levín getting some exposure, he deserves it. IT IS TOTALLY UNTRUE that NASA suppressed his findings. What part of "The Labeled Release data has been publicly available in its entirety on a NASA-sponsored web site for 30 years" doesn't Bara get?
82. Incorrect sky color. The best description of the color is "butterscotch."
86. Ridiculous. Just because the discoloring on the Mars rock reminds Bara of lichens, it doesn't mean it actually is lichen. More pareidolia.
90. Bad sky color again.
97. Extremely unconvincing.
101. The gentleman on the left is Jim Martin, Viking Project Manager, not Arden Albee.
NOTE: Bara has now (2nd Nov) removed Arden Albee's name in the online version.
114-117, and 128-133. This fantasy has been well debunked by better men than me.
124. I hope his text doesn't claim that Neptune's dark spot is at 19.5°. It isn't. It appeared at about 25°S then wandered north before disappearing completely. Then a new one appeared in the Northern hemisphere.
125. Olympus Mons isn't at 19.5° either. It's centered at 18.65°N.
153, 168. No, it doesn't look like a sphinx. It isn't a sphinx.
212. No, these don't look like structural ruins.
217. Hilarious. TOTALLY UNCONVINCING.
Today he proudly announced a Picasa gallery which we can all admire -- the 223 figures from his new book, plus the front cover. I have a few comments. Numbers are his frame numbers.
4. I think his numbers are correct. It pains me to see a mixture of kg and miles. Perhaps I'm over-trained.
7.
This illustrates opposition, but not perihelion. Perihelion and opposition are totally unrelated.
8.
This illutrates conjunction, but not aphelion. Aphelion and conjunction are likewise totally unrelated.
Dr Stuart Robbins has hit his keyboard about this, producing a very informative blog making this terminology clear. Bara's snarky comments to Robbins in the captions to 7, 8, and 9 are so childish they make me reach for the vom-bag.
Let's be perfectly clear about this: If the orbit of Mars were perfectly circular, its distance from Earth would still be variable from 47 to 236 million miles. Bara is totally wrong.
30. I think I understand the intent of this diagram (stolen from Hoagland,) but lunar gravity is not shown by blue arrows anywhere. I guess it's the arrow labeled 12 micron/s/s but lunar gravity should also be shown on the opposite side. Centripetal acceleration should be the same on both sides. I hope his text makes this a lot clearer.
37. I like this one because it neatly falsifies Bara's contention that large eccentricities are common in the solar system. He takes this as support for the solar fission model, but it isn't true. If Pluto is disregarded, only one planet has eccentricity >0.1.
41. Much of Bara's artwork has copyvio problems, none more than this one. It's ripped off from solstation.com -- a site that clearly states that its data is free for personal use. NOT for commercial use, Mike Bara.
43. More flagrant copyvio.
63. Isn't this a perfect example of the pareidolia that Bara says doesn't exist?
74. A perfect match? No way.
77. Carl Sagan mis-spelled.
79. Nice to see Gil Levín getting some exposure, he deserves it. IT IS TOTALLY UNTRUE that NASA suppressed his findings. What part of "The Labeled Release data has been publicly available in its entirety on a NASA-sponsored web site for 30 years" doesn't Bara get?
82. Incorrect sky color. The best description of the color is "butterscotch."
86. Ridiculous. Just because the discoloring on the Mars rock reminds Bara of lichens, it doesn't mean it actually is lichen. More pareidolia.
90. Bad sky color again.
97. Extremely unconvincing.
101. The gentleman on the left is Jim Martin, Viking Project Manager, not Arden Albee.
NOTE: Bara has now (2nd Nov) removed Arden Albee's name in the online version.
114-117, and 128-133. This fantasy has been well debunked by better men than me.
124. I hope his text doesn't claim that Neptune's dark spot is at 19.5°. It isn't. It appeared at about 25°S then wandered north before disappearing completely. Then a new one appeared in the Northern hemisphere.
125. Olympus Mons isn't at 19.5° either. It's centered at 18.65°N.
153, 168. No, it doesn't look like a sphinx. It isn't a sphinx.
212. No, these don't look like structural ruins.
217. Hilarious. TOTALLY UNCONVINCING.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Mike Bara: As wrong as it's possible to be
James Concannon guest-blogs:
Well, that was pretty funny.I've been contributing to a lively discussion about the so-called "Face" on Mars, on the Final Frontier Farcebook page. My posts today amounted to the following:
Well, behold, just minutes later Mike Bara posted this utterly wrong, utterly hilarious essay to his blog.
How wrong is Mike Bara? Let me count the ways...
º "In recent years, as better and better images of the Face on Mars and other anomalies on the Red Planet have become increasingly recognized as artificial..." No, Mike, the "Face" is increasingly recognized as just an eroded mesa. See my text from FB.
º "Debunkers ... never ... use the far more accurate and more directly overhead views, of which there are now many. " Oh yes we do, oh yes we do. In fact, the excellent image taken in 2007 by the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is the very first thing I would use if explaining this controversy to someone who didn't already know about it.
º Bara states, emphatically, that no scientific or medical literature exists authenticating pareidolia. Oh yeah??
Hadjikhan et al. "Early (M170) activation of face-specific cortex by face-like objects" in Neuroreport 2009 Mar 4;20(4):403-7. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e328325a8e1
Uchiyama et al. "Pareidolias: complex visual illusions in dementia with Lewy bodies" in Brain 2012 Aug;135(Pt 8):2458-69. doi: 10.1093/brain/aws126. Epub 2012 May 30.
Maranhão-Filho et al. "Neuropareidolia: diagnostic clues apropos of visual illusions" in Arquivas de neuro-psychiatria 2009 Dec;67(4):1117-23.
º Bara cites prosopagnosia as a well-documented and medically-established disorder, "unlike pareidolia." He should have followed his own hyperlink, and actually read the text. It reads, in part,
º Bara might usefully have followed, and read, the hyperlink in his own footnote.
Bara cited this article from Wordspy to establish that the earliest citation was from Skeptical Inquirer 1994. True. But it also establishes that, regardless of what you call it, it's REAL.
º One final point: If the ancient aliens built a 2 km long sculpture to resemble a face, weren't they relying on pareidolia (regardless of what they called it) for us to recognize it as a face?
--James C (thanks to Chris Lawrence for speedy research and Photoshoppery)
Update:
This just in from Mike Bara to me:
Well, that was pretty funny.I've been contributing to a lively discussion about the so-called "Face" on Mars, on the Final Frontier Farcebook page. My posts today amounted to the following:
Features claimed by the gullible, when the resolution was 125 m/px:
- Headdress
- 2 eyes
- A tear duct in one eye
- Nostrils
- Teeth
- Lateral symmetry
Now that the resolution has improved to 0.3 m/px, all those have gone away. All they have left is lateral symmetry of the BASE, which is striking but not too unusual.
You'd have to be really, really gullible or really, really obstinate to persist in claiming artificiality.
=============================
Mike Bara's new book "Ancient Aliens on Mars" is due out 1st November. We can confidently expect fresh claims that this is a large artwork made by ancient aliens, since Bara falls into both categories "really, really gullible" and "really, really obstinate." He also belongs in the categories "really, really inaccurate" and "really, really obnoxious."
Well, behold, just minutes later Mike Bara posted this utterly wrong, utterly hilarious essay to his blog.
How wrong is Mike Bara? Let me count the ways...
º "In recent years, as better and better images of the Face on Mars and other anomalies on the Red Planet have become increasingly recognized as artificial..." No, Mike, the "Face" is increasingly recognized as just an eroded mesa. See my text from FB.
º "Debunkers ... never ... use the far more accurate and more directly overhead views, of which there are now many. " Oh yes we do, oh yes we do. In fact, the excellent image taken in 2007 by the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is the very first thing I would use if explaining this controversy to someone who didn't already know about it.
credit: NASA/JPL/Univ. Ariz.
That's the one whose resolution is 0.3 m/px. The full version is here. Anyone see any tear-ducts or teeth? Headdress? By the way, it's upside down. They did that to annoy George Haas.º Bara states, emphatically, that no scientific or medical literature exists authenticating pareidolia. Oh yeah??
Hadjikhan et al. "Early (M170) activation of face-specific cortex by face-like objects" in Neuroreport 2009 Mar 4;20(4):403-7. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e328325a8e1
Uchiyama et al. "Pareidolias: complex visual illusions in dementia with Lewy bodies" in Brain 2012 Aug;135(Pt 8):2458-69. doi: 10.1093/brain/aws126. Epub 2012 May 30.
Maranhão-Filho et al. "Neuropareidolia: diagnostic clues apropos of visual illusions" in Arquivas de neuro-psychiatria 2009 Dec;67(4):1117-23.
º Bara cites prosopagnosia as a well-documented and medically-established disorder, "unlike pareidolia." He should have followed his own hyperlink, and actually read the text. It reads, in part,
"The specific brain area usually associated with prosopagnosia is the fusiform gyrus,[2] which activates specifically in response to faces. Thanks to this specialization, most people recognize faces much more effectively than they do similarly complex inanimate objects."
º Bara might usefully have followed, and read, the hyperlink in his own footnote.
"In 1978, some 8,000 people made pilgrimages to the home of a New Mexico woman who discovered a picture of Jesus in a burned tortilla. And in 2001, thousands saw the face of Satan captured in a CNN video and Associated Press photos of smoke billowing from the World Trade Center."
Bara cited this article from Wordspy to establish that the earliest citation was from Skeptical Inquirer 1994. True. But it also establishes that, regardless of what you call it, it's REAL.
º One final point: If the ancient aliens built a 2 km long sculpture to resemble a face, weren't they relying on pareidolia (regardless of what they called it) for us to recognize it as a face?
--James C (thanks to Chris Lawrence for speedy research and Photoshoppery)
Update:
This just in from Mike Bara to me:
"As to the papers you cite (we all know there is no "James Concannon") the first only measures how fast a portion of the brain responds to visual stimuli, and nothing more. The 2nd only makes subjective conclusions about patients with dementia, and the 3rd is a study of animals. None of these establishes that there is any such thing as "pareidolia" in humans. So once again, you have nothing to stand on. Good luck finding a real medical study on the subject. There isn't one. It doesn't exist.
Nice touch turning the image of the Face upside down. All it does is prove how desperate and pathetic your arguments are.
A study of animals??? Yes, the pareidolic images of animals IN THE HUMAN BRAIN. Sheesh...Not that anybody's paying attention to you anyway."
Sunday, October 13, 2013
"Ritual Alignment Model" falsified
To put it simply, Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara have long made the claim that NASA preferentially times mission events when certain stars are at certain elevations as seen from some relevant vantage point. In November 2009 Mike Bara said "NASA always seems to want to land or launch when the
stars are in favorable positions, at least according to their
mythology."
This blog has commented many times, starting with this post in December 2010 and continuing with this one and this one. I pressed Hoagland & Bara further on 16 September this year:
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 16 Sept 2013
Subj: Ritual Alignment Model
Greetings...
I've been asked to do further analysis on what you have called NASA's "obsessive, relentless"[1] drive to pay homage to the Egyptian Gods Isis, Osiris and Horus. The idea would be to either confirm or falsify your proposition.
I need to know what tolerance you allow on the times of alignment. Also, please confirm that it's the launch and landing times as planned, rather than as occurred, that should be considered. I believe you said that at the time of the final Shuttle mission.
The latter point is extremely important, given that only 55 of 135 Shuttle launches were on time. However you do seem to have been inconsistent with this, since you cite the landing of Apollo 16 at a time when Sirius was at 33°. As you know, the landing was delayed 6 hours and the entire mission was delayed a month.
That assumes great importance since 16 was one of only two Moon landing you cite in Ritual Alignment. If you are forced to abandon that one, your "hit rate" reduces to one in six -- hardly "relentless" or "obsessive."
Please provide the information I need to confirm your work. Thanks.
Regards,....
[1] Caption to Fig. 5-10, Dark Mission
=================================================
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 11 Oct 2013
Subj: Ritual Alignment Model
Let me try one more time, perhaps you're in a co-operative mood today:
- What tolerance do you allow on the star elevation?
- Do you take the time of an event as planned, or as occurred?
If you refuse to provide this information, how do you expect other researchers to confirm or falsify your work?
Regards,...
========================================================
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 13 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
In the face of your steadfast refusal to give the information that would be needed to confirm or falsify your so-called Ritual Alignment Model, I have done some research and found the answer to one of the questions.
On 19 April 2011 you posted to Facebook as follows:
"You're forgeting[sic] one important detail ... regarding "symbolic rituals":
It's NOT when they "eventually" happen ...; it's when (and how) they're first PROPOSED (birthed) that's critical. :)"
I also notice that you refer to a "two-minute window" in association with a few of your events, and that is perhaps the answer to the other key question.
Accordingly, I have re-analyzed your Table of Coincidence. My guide is the following passage from p.14 of "Dark Mission" 2nd edn:
"only five stellar objects ... have any significance ...: the three belt stars of Orion, ...Sirius, ... and Regulus. And only five narrow bands of stellar altitude (19.5° above and below the horizon, 33° above and below the horizon, and the horizon itself) have any significance."
I find the following errors in the table:
1. Inauguration of George Washington
New York inappropriate as vantage point
2. Newt Gingrich's resignation
EQ Pegasi, Comet Encke not allowable
3. Launch of Ranger 7
Moon not allowable
4. Landing of Surveyor 3
Moon not allowable
5. Launch of Freedom 7
51° not allowable
6. Launch of Friendship 7
Encke not allowable
7. Apollo 13 planned landing site/time
Pegasus not allowable
8. Apollo 16 landing
Landing 6 hours late, not "as birthed"
9. Apollo 16 landing seen from Houston
Ditto
10. Ascent of Apollo 17
Apollo 12 site irrelevant
11. Mars Pathfinder landing
Earth not allowable
12. MGS imaging Owen Mesa
Giza plateau irrelevant
13. Release of MGS Viking 1 landing site image
Giza plateau irrelevant
14. Launch of STS-88
Encke not allowable. Mars not allowable. -3.33° not allowable. Phoenix irrelevant. Launch not "as birthed"
15. Docking of Zarya and Unity
Mars not allowable. Encke not allowable. Phoenix irrelevant. Apollo 11 landing site irrelevant
16. STS-88 EVA-1
3.33° not allowable. Not "as birthed". Mars not allowable. Apollo 11 landing site irrelevant. Encke not allowable. Viking landing site irrelevant
17. ISS activation
EQ Pegasi not allowable. Phoenix irrelevant. Apollo 11 landing site irrelevant
18. Loss of contact with SOHO
Mars not allowable. Giza plateau irrelevant
19. Closest approah of J1 comet
Giza plateau irrelevant
20. World premiere of Armageddon
Totally irrelevant
Twenty errors in a table of that size is unacceptable. I am now declaring your "model" falsified and void.
Regards,....
================================================
To: expat
From: RCH
Date: 13 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
You REALLY need psychological help for your (obvious) continuing pathological obsession; and, the idea that you "declaring" ANYTHING "falsified and void" ... means ANYTHING -- is only final confirmation of your sad pathology.
One obvious example:
Your "definitive" statement that "New York is inappropriate" as the optical "vantage point" for celestial alignments around Washington's First Inaugural -- thus revealing a (apparent) TOTAL LACK of basic knowledge, that George Washington was sworn in as the First President of the United States, April 30, 1789--
In NEW YORK CITY.
NOT ... Washington, DC (which didn't EXIST yet!).
With this as a RANDOM example of your "careful scholarship" and "research rigor" in trying, relentlessly and obsessively, to attack every aspect of this work, your continuing delusion -- that your prejudiced opinions on our research MATTER in the slightest -- is only further evidence for just how "separated from reality" you really are.
NO ONE'S listening.
Enterprise "out."
RCH
===================================================
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 13 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
I apologize. I certainly didn't know about George Washington's inauguration. I withdraw that one, reducing the number of errors in your table to 19.
This is not, however, a RANDOM example as you claim. It's one mistake made by me, for 19 made by you. My analysis of your research is not opinion, Richard, it is fact.
Regards,...
Update 1:
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 14 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
You quite rightly took issue with the first of my error list yesterday. My mistake.
So that's one down, 19 to go. In a table whose total entries are 42. CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT that this belief of yours is false? CAN YOU POSSIBLY justify your contention that NASA has an "obsessive, relentless" preoccupation with Egyptian ritual?
Regards, etc.
Update 2:
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 15 Oct 2013
Subj: Failure of your Ritual Alignment Model, by program
Ranger: Zero hits of a possible 18 (9 missions, events are launch and lunar impact)
Surveyor: Zero qualified hits of a possible 28 (7 missions, events are launch and lunar landing, vantage point either The Cape or JPL)
Lunar Orbiter: Zero hits claimed of a possible 20 (5 missions, events are launch and lunar orbit insertion, vantage point either The Cape or JPL)
Mercury: Zero qualified hits of a possible 14 (7 missions, events are launch and splashdown)
Gemini: Zero hits of a possible 48 (12 missions, events are launch and splashdown, vantage point either The Cape or Houston)
Apollo: 2 hits of a possible 94 (11 manned launches, 6 lunar landings, 6 lunar takeoffs, 9 Lunar Orbit Insertions, 9 Trans Earth Insertions, vantage point either The Cape or Houston, or the lunar landing site where applicable)
Shuttle: Zero qualified hits of a possible 536 (135 launches, 133 landings, vantage point either The Cape or Houston. NOTE: If -- as in your Table of Coincidence -- events could include EVAs, possible hits would be in the thousands)
Aggregate: 2 hits of a possible 744.
If you have any integrity at all you will withdraw the Table of Coincidence in addition to Von Braun's Secret.
Regards, etc.
This blog has commented many times, starting with this post in December 2010 and continuing with this one and this one. I pressed Hoagland & Bara further on 16 September this year:
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 16 Sept 2013
Subj: Ritual Alignment Model
Greetings...
I've been asked to do further analysis on what you have called NASA's "obsessive, relentless"[1] drive to pay homage to the Egyptian Gods Isis, Osiris and Horus. The idea would be to either confirm or falsify your proposition.
I need to know what tolerance you allow on the times of alignment. Also, please confirm that it's the launch and landing times as planned, rather than as occurred, that should be considered. I believe you said that at the time of the final Shuttle mission.
The latter point is extremely important, given that only 55 of 135 Shuttle launches were on time. However you do seem to have been inconsistent with this, since you cite the landing of Apollo 16 at a time when Sirius was at 33°. As you know, the landing was delayed 6 hours and the entire mission was delayed a month.
That assumes great importance since 16 was one of only two Moon landing you cite in Ritual Alignment. If you are forced to abandon that one, your "hit rate" reduces to one in six -- hardly "relentless" or "obsessive."
Please provide the information I need to confirm your work. Thanks.
Regards,....
[1] Caption to Fig. 5-10, Dark Mission
=================================================
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 11 Oct 2013
Subj: Ritual Alignment Model
Let me try one more time, perhaps you're in a co-operative mood today:
- What tolerance do you allow on the star elevation?
- Do you take the time of an event as planned, or as occurred?
If you refuse to provide this information, how do you expect other researchers to confirm or falsify your work?
Regards,...
========================================================
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 13 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
In the face of your steadfast refusal to give the information that would be needed to confirm or falsify your so-called Ritual Alignment Model, I have done some research and found the answer to one of the questions.
On 19 April 2011 you posted to Facebook as follows:
"You're forgeting[sic] one important detail ... regarding "symbolic rituals":
It's NOT when they "eventually" happen ...; it's when (and how) they're first PROPOSED (birthed) that's critical. :)"
I also notice that you refer to a "two-minute window" in association with a few of your events, and that is perhaps the answer to the other key question.
Accordingly, I have re-analyzed your Table of Coincidence. My guide is the following passage from p.14 of "Dark Mission" 2nd edn:
"only five stellar objects ... have any significance ...: the three belt stars of Orion, ...Sirius, ... and Regulus. And only five narrow bands of stellar altitude (19.5° above and below the horizon, 33° above and below the horizon, and the horizon itself) have any significance."
I find the following errors in the table:
1. Inauguration of George Washington
New York inappropriate as vantage point
2. Newt Gingrich's resignation
EQ Pegasi, Comet Encke not allowable
3. Launch of Ranger 7
Moon not allowable
4. Landing of Surveyor 3
Moon not allowable
5. Launch of Freedom 7
51° not allowable
6. Launch of Friendship 7
Encke not allowable
7. Apollo 13 planned landing site/time
Pegasus not allowable
8. Apollo 16 landing
Landing 6 hours late, not "as birthed"
9. Apollo 16 landing seen from Houston
Ditto
10. Ascent of Apollo 17
Apollo 12 site irrelevant
11. Mars Pathfinder landing
Earth not allowable
12. MGS imaging Owen Mesa
Giza plateau irrelevant
13. Release of MGS Viking 1 landing site image
Giza plateau irrelevant
14. Launch of STS-88
Encke not allowable. Mars not allowable. -3.33° not allowable. Phoenix irrelevant. Launch not "as birthed"
15. Docking of Zarya and Unity
Mars not allowable. Encke not allowable. Phoenix irrelevant. Apollo 11 landing site irrelevant
16. STS-88 EVA-1
3.33° not allowable. Not "as birthed". Mars not allowable. Apollo 11 landing site irrelevant. Encke not allowable. Viking landing site irrelevant
17. ISS activation
EQ Pegasi not allowable. Phoenix irrelevant. Apollo 11 landing site irrelevant
18. Loss of contact with SOHO
Mars not allowable. Giza plateau irrelevant
19. Closest approah of J1 comet
Giza plateau irrelevant
20. World premiere of Armageddon
Totally irrelevant
Twenty errors in a table of that size is unacceptable. I am now declaring your "model" falsified and void.
Regards,....
================================================
To: expat
From: RCH
Date: 13 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
You REALLY need psychological help for your (obvious) continuing pathological obsession; and, the idea that you "declaring" ANYTHING "falsified and void" ... means ANYTHING -- is only final confirmation of your sad pathology.
One obvious example:
Your "definitive" statement that "New York is inappropriate" as the optical "vantage point" for celestial alignments around Washington's First Inaugural -- thus revealing a (apparent) TOTAL LACK of basic knowledge, that George Washington was sworn in as the First President of the United States, April 30, 1789--
In NEW YORK CITY.
NOT ... Washington, DC (which didn't EXIST yet!).
With this as a RANDOM example of your "careful scholarship" and "research rigor" in trying, relentlessly and obsessively, to attack every aspect of this work, your continuing delusion -- that your prejudiced opinions on our research MATTER in the slightest -- is only further evidence for just how "separated from reality" you really are.
NO ONE'S listening.
Enterprise "out."
RCH
===================================================
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 13 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
I apologize. I certainly didn't know about George Washington's inauguration. I withdraw that one, reducing the number of errors in your table to 19.
This is not, however, a RANDOM example as you claim. It's one mistake made by me, for 19 made by you. My analysis of your research is not opinion, Richard, it is fact.
Regards,...
Update 1:
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 14 Oct 2013
Subj: Your Ritual Alignment Model falsified
You quite rightly took issue with the first of my error list yesterday. My mistake.
So that's one down, 19 to go. In a table whose total entries are 42. CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT that this belief of yours is false? CAN YOU POSSIBLY justify your contention that NASA has an "obsessive, relentless" preoccupation with Egyptian ritual?
Regards, etc.
Update 2:
To: RCH/MB
From: expat
Date: 15 Oct 2013
Subj: Failure of your Ritual Alignment Model, by program
Ranger: Zero hits of a possible 18 (9 missions, events are launch and lunar impact)
Surveyor: Zero qualified hits of a possible 28 (7 missions, events are launch and lunar landing, vantage point either The Cape or JPL)
Lunar Orbiter: Zero hits claimed of a possible 20 (5 missions, events are launch and lunar orbit insertion, vantage point either The Cape or JPL)
Mercury: Zero qualified hits of a possible 14 (7 missions, events are launch and splashdown)
Gemini: Zero hits of a possible 48 (12 missions, events are launch and splashdown, vantage point either The Cape or Houston)
Apollo: 2 hits of a possible 94 (11 manned launches, 6 lunar landings, 6 lunar takeoffs, 9 Lunar Orbit Insertions, 9 Trans Earth Insertions, vantage point either The Cape or Houston, or the lunar landing site where applicable)
Shuttle: Zero qualified hits of a possible 536 (135 launches, 133 landings, vantage point either The Cape or Houston. NOTE: If -- as in your Table of Coincidence -- events could include EVAs, possible hits would be in the thousands)
Aggregate: 2 hits of a possible 744.
If you have any integrity at all you will withdraw the Table of Coincidence in addition to Von Braun's Secret.
Regards, etc.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Mike Bara plays "My gf is prettier than yours"
Part 1
He cheated!! His "girl" is Shana Eva, a married actress he met at Conscious Life Expo. I don't believe she's ever been a girlfriend in any truly satisfying sense. What does it say about a man that he attempts to rebut a Ph.D. astronomer with this drivel, and then cheats into the bargain??
There's more...
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Amazingly, Bara allowed two of my comments to appear, and counter-commented with what look like death threats. I'm not sure if Google's ToS cover those...
Two more comments of mine were suppressed:
Derek Eunson's comment was also suppressed:
Update:
I sent Mike another message informing him (politely) that If Mars' orbit were perfectly circular its distance from Earth would still vary from 47 million miles to 236 million. His reply was as follows:
I'm seeking clarification. That's where we stand for the moment.
He cheated!! His "girl" is Shana Eva, a married actress he met at Conscious Life Expo. I don't believe she's ever been a girlfriend in any truly satisfying sense. What does it say about a man that he attempts to rebut a Ph.D. astronomer with this drivel, and then cheats into the bargain??
There's more...
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Amazingly, Bara allowed two of my comments to appear, and counter-commented with what look like death threats. I'm not sure if Google's ToS cover those...
Two more comments of mine were suppressed:
You write that your statement about the eccentricity of the orbit of Mars is FACTUALLY CORRECT. However, it is not. The reason is that the disparity between closest and furthest approaches to another planet IS NOT A MEASURE of eccentricity.
You may have forgotten that, on 12th November 2010, you made it FAR WORSE by writing this:
"I was simply using the example of the wildly varying distance between the Earth and Mars as an example of how eccentric, meaning eliptical [sic], Mars orbit is. If both orbits were circular, there would be no such variation. They would maintain basically the same distance relative to each other. It is Mars' orbital eccentricity which creates this 200 million mile variation."
It's good that you showed the histogram of planet eccentricities. It makes the point that, discounting Pluto, ONLY ONE planet has eccentricity > 0.1. That falsifies your opinion that high eccentricities throughout the solar system are good evidence for solar fission.
Later...
You write here that orbital eccentricity "has nothing to do with the Solar fission theory." Please re-read The Choice, pp.33-37 from "The problem we face today..." to "....got there in the first place."
THEN PLEASE ISSUE A RETRACTION.
Derek Eunson's comment was also suppressed:
Why won't you allow a discussion on your blog regarding your attempted rebuttal of Dr Robbins' critique? You are exercising extreme moderation.All readers are encouraged to post comments themselves. Ya never know, ya might get lucky.
Why do you refuse to debate me 1v1 ? Instead you tuck tail and run like a chickenshit, yellow bellied wee pansy. What's up Mike, scared of engineers ?
Update:
I sent Mike another message informing him (politely) that If Mars' orbit were perfectly circular its distance from Earth would still vary from 47 million miles to 236 million. His reply was as follows:
"You're a complete fucking idiot."
I'm seeking clarification. That's where we stand for the moment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)