Yesterday, on his FB page, he declared that the fun is about to begin. He means that the European Planetary Science Congress 2010 opens in two weeks, in Rome, and his idea of "fun" is the announcement that Phobos is artificial. Others may think that the "fun" will be in ridiculing Hoagland when that announcement is NOT made.
Phobos will be discussed in session SB5 on Small Bodies and Planetary Moons, 20-22 Sept. The abstracts have been published and -- no surprise to anyone with any science training -- there's no sign of any announcement that Phobos is a spaceship.
Later in Hoagland's FB text yesterday is a clue as to how he's planning to handle things when the conference is over.
One word--
"Plastics" .... :)
No, I meant "Phobos."
Biggest bang for the buck!
NO question ... given what is WAITING there ....
Which, my lastest "intel" says the Europeans are going to unveil -- if not a GREAT deal more -- shortly .... :)
Stay tuned.
The fun is about to begin! :)
We've been double-crossed before ....
We just have to be patient; the "inside game" is rapidly coming to some kind of "climax."
What may come out in PUBLIC, however, is still not totally locked in
Positioning ... positioning ... positioning ....
When he's wrong, as he almost always is, his standard approach is to say nothing at all and move on to the next piece of utter nonsense. But in this case, look for Hoagland to say that HIS SOURCES have revealed to him that PRIVATELY the announcement WAS made in Rome.
Which, of course, would still be totally contrary to what he's been claiming ever since March. No doubt his disciples will not notice, and will continue to hail him as a hero and the only man who truly knows what's going on.
2 comments:
Oh I'm sure Hoagie has a set of excuses already set up. I'm not sure he can realistically ignore the announcement that will not happen, there is just too much on the line at this point. So he'll either take some little tidbit and spin it as a "this is it" moment, or (like you said), just say it was announced in secret and they are working the details of public disclosure towards the end of the year. Knowing Hoagland, it may even be a combination of the two.
On a more interesting subject, I was looking at the abstracts they have published for this thing. I'm a little lost as to what the one on the surface grooves was saying. I know they don't think they were caused by rolling ejecta because the grooves are going in the wrong way. What I don't understand is where they think they come from (I'm assuming the shipyards on Vega 12 is not one of the possibilities they are considering).
Because the main family of grooves radiates from a point very close to the leading apex of Phobos in its orbit, the current theory is that they were created by ejecta from Mars itself. I'm not aware of any counter to Hamelin's point that the grooves don't have boulders at the tail ends. I think this may be one of the most fascinating aspects of this session and I hope it gets well reported.
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