Thursday, May 26, 2011

Hoagland's wet dream

        Richard Hoagland was invited for the first hour of Coast to Coast AM last night, primarily to mark the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's "I believe this nation should commit itself..." speech to Congress. Surprise, surprise, he was half right about Kennedy. JFK really was rather keen on a joint US/USSR Moon program. The other half—that he was assassinated for that reason—is the usual rubbish, for reasons this blog has already explained.

        In the second half-hour, however, he was ignoring the truth as usual, mis-reporting two recent findings in planetary science. His versions of these stories were SO wrong that one wonders if he was paying any attention to his sources at all.

Beachfront property on the Moon?

To quote the C2C program summary verbatim, he said this:

"the moon has as much water inside it as the Earth has in its oceans."

        Yes, he did, he really did. So, let's see: Volume of the oceans is about 1.3 x 109 km3. That means the planet is 1 part in about 850 water. Volume of the Moon is 2.2 x 1010 km3. If what Hoagland said were really true, old devil Moon would be 1 part in 17 water. Those Apollo astronauts would have needed waders, not lunar boots, to get around.

        So what was the real story on lunar water? It was a Science Express article by Erik H. Hauri et al. titled "High Pre-Eruptive Water Contents Preserved in Lunar Melt Inclusions." The discovery was microscopic melt inclusions in some Apollo 17 samples which originated from volcanic eruptions, and so came from deep down. The proportion of water was from 615 to 1410 ppm (cf. lunar volcanic glasses <= 50 ppm.) This is comparable with upper mantle rocks on Earth, and the point is that these inclusions are tightly sealed so that water would not escape even at volcanic temperatures (and, perhaps more to the point, the kind of temperature that would be generated by the impact theory of the Moon's origin.) Note the word microscopic in the above explanation. It does not mean that waves are crashing on beaches in the Sea of Tranquility. Hoagland is utterly, totally, spectacularly, WRONG.

Mars as an embryo

        The second story he got wrong was a report in the May 26th Nature by Nicolas Dauphas at the University of Chicago and Ali Pourmand at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science, "Hf–W–Th evidence for rapid growth of Mars and its status as a planetary embryo." This was a highly sophisticated isotope ratio analysis of martian meteorites, showing that Mars probably accreted from proto-planetary dust in as little as two to four million years, as compared with 50 to 100 million for the other terrestrial planets. That would explain its small size, and would class it as a so-called embryo planet (I'm more used to the term planetismal.) Science Daily has a good summary here.

        Hoagland somehow managed to force this news to confirm one of his hobby-horse theories, borrowed from Tom Van Flandern (with acknowledgement)—that Mars was once the moon of Planet X. It goes without saying that absolutely nothing in the work of Dauphas and Pourmand supports this or even so much as mentions it in passing.

        Two more colossal boo-boos by Coast to Coast. And they don't give a shit, of course.

Update:
        Hoagland turned up on C2C again last night, 15th June, and clarified his wet dream — somewhat. He said Moon and Earth have the same amount of water but "pound for pound. That's what got some people confused." Maybe he was thinking of his former co-author as one of the confused.

        He went on to say that he estimated the total quantity as "about the size of a lake like the Caspian Sea." Well, I don't know where he got that from, but we have to applaud the steady climb-down from "as much as all the oceans" to "the Caribbean Sea" to "the Caspian." He still thinks it's all accessible to future lunar colonists, though, and that's still WRONG WRONG WRONG.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, you are wrong. He admitted that he likes to generalize.

In order to keep an audience you must generalize, exaggerate and tell stories.

Lets get excited about space.

We need to recruit interest anyway possible.

Why don't you tell us the future then?

You sir, are a buzz kill.

Biological_Unit said...

You should really take drugs, by that logic.

hifff, (cough, cough)

Anonymous said...

I wonder when Hoagland is going to use this story as evidence of his "Town Square" theory? Some of the lost pyramids look remarkably like the ones on Mars.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13522957

Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images

expat said...

Thanks for the comments, anon.

>>In order to keep an audience you must generalize, exaggerate and tell stories. <<

Not necessarily. And certainly not if you call yourself a scientist and are paid a fee to act as SCIENCE adviser to the media.

The truth does matter, y'know.

Chris Lopes said...

Anon, if Hoagland were actually interested in real space exploration, you might have a point. He doesn't though. He's more interested in telling stories about space Nazis with death rays, break away civilizations, and magic super science machines that Hugo Gernsback would have trouble buying.

Any attempt to engage Hoagland on what is actually going on in the world of space flight and NASA is ALWAYS shoe-horned into "stunning confirmation" of one of his numerous idiotic theories. The topic of the new space movement for instance, is of no interest what so ever to him. If he can't fit it into his mythology, he doesn't care about it.

As to generating an interest in space, the Hoagland of 20 years ago might have been able to do that, but this version can't. How does trying to decipher the "secret" messages in a Presidential press conference help get people excited about space? How does talking endlessly about "secret space wars" help get people interested in the real space program? I mean why would anyone care what the current NASA budget is, if the HD tech Hoagland is constantly talking about really exists? No, Hoagland isn't getting people interested in space, he's distracting them with pseudo-science.

Anonymous said...

I think he may be protecting himself. By telling potential truths and wild stories he may be keeping the heat off so to say. Cause as we all know, the truth speakers usually get murdered.

His intention is to get people interested in asking questions.

Obviously he knows that people enjoy his stories. He made me think of the moon in other ways rather then dead and cold. And that alone is deserving of thanks.

I'm sure if he went into hardcore dry science he'd loose allot of his audience.

If people want to pay, let them pay.

Chris Lopes said...

Anon, I have no problem at all with people paying to read Hoagland's words or see him in person. As I have said a number of times, people buying his books and DVDs are getting exactly what they pay for; the wit and "wisdom" of Richard Hoagland. There is nothing wrong with that at all.

The issue here is that Hoagland insists that what he does (and the folks at C2C back him up) is science. It's clearly not. Yet he gets down right angry if you call it anything else. So as long as HE insists on taking what he does seriously, people like Expat are doing a service by pointing out just how far from that ideal he has strayed.

Chris Lopes said...

A slight problem has come up with regards to this "oceans on the Moon" thing. It was George Noory who mentioned as much water as the oceans, not Hoagland. Hoagie didn't disagree with him, or attempt to correct him in any way, but he didn't actually say what the C2C summary says he says.

expat said...

Chris, that may be true. I've only spot-checked... the amount of prevarication was making me feel a bit nauseated.

Not only did Hoagland fail to pick Noory up on the oceans line, he immediately painted a picture of this meaning that lunar colonists would find plentiful available water. This, of course, is completely wrong. Water in melt inclusions miles below the surface is neither plentiful nor available.

Chris Lopes said...

Oh there is no doubt he over sold the whole thing by a wide margin, and certainly left the impression that there is lots and lots of water (the space Nazis have to be using SOMETHING to make their beer with) available. It was a close enough declaration for the C2C staff member who wrote the summary to get that impression. He wasn't really talking about subsurface moisture that's for sure.

James Concannon said...

The following night Noory said "As RCH reported last night, there's as much water on the Moon as in the Caribbean Sea." Maybe a lame attempt to save face?

Chris Lopes said...

It would certainly point to an unspoken acknowledgment that what was promised in the previous evening's program wasn't really delivered. Hoagland's big moment turned into more hype than fact, as usual.

Anonymous said...

Regarding Chris Lopes comment on May 30, 2011 1:17 PM...quoted directly from the C2C show (as I am listening and typing):

Hoaglan: "Tomorrow, NASA is gonna announce, and this date has been embargoed until tomorrow afternoon, so I'm basically telling tales out of school, but we have good sources. NASA is going to announce that the moon, may have, are you sitting down George? I know you like to pace..."

George: "I do love to stand but I'll sit down for this one."

Hoaglan: "Thank You, you better. They are gonna announce tomorrow the moon seems to have as much water inside it, as the earth!"

George: "Nooo?"

Hoaglan: "Yes!"

George: "Oceans and oceans underneath the surface?"

Hoaglan:"...of water under the surface. Now they can't, they are, they, frankly admit in this paper, they haven't a clue what's going on...because the previous model of the moon we have been living with since apollo, since the first moon rocks were brought back by Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins in 1969, and they had the first so called Rock Conference in houston to basically discuss moon rocks and the chemistry, you know, how did this impact the origin of the moon and all that...they have been thinking the moon was formed by some big Mars type planet....."

He goes on about the embryo thoery. Also, it's nice to here that Hoaglan admits that he likes to "tell tales out of school",..his words not mine.

Chris Lopes said...

There you have it then. Clearly Hoagland was giving the very strong impression of lots and lots of water on the Moon. While he didn't use the word oceans, that was definitely George's take. In any case, they have both stepped back a bit from that assertion.

Anonymous said...

Both Lopes and JC suck cock profusely

expat said...

Thanks for the comment, anon.

Biological_Unit said...

How could you know that, Anon?

Biological_Unit said...

Anonymous, Why did you NOT pursue Hoagland?