Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The asteroid and the pseudo-scientist: Massive, Epic, FAIL

           Richard Hoagland's cult followers constantly praise him for "thinking outside the box." Sometimes they compare him to famous lateral thinkers of history such as Nikola Tesla, without quite understanding that a) Tesla was a trained physicist and authentic genius, and b) Tesla was not a habitual liar.

           Hoagland's thinking on asteroid 2005 YU55 was so far out of the box that it lost sight of not only the box but the table the box usually stands on, the house the table is in, and the city the house is in. Is it possible to be more wrong about anything than Hoagland was about  YU55? I don't see how. This was an almighty, world class clanger that will resound for quite a while.

Recap

           Back in June, at the problem-plagued Camelot teleconference (as this blog commented,) Hoagland introduced us to Elenin and YU55. He got the dates of perihelion and closest approach to Earth almost correct but, inexplicably, told us that the asteroid would do its close pass "while we're all distracted by Elenin." A simple glance at the JPL animation of Elenin showed that, by the time YU55 came by, Elenin would be outbound approaching the orbit of Mars, and not much of a distraction. He also noted that the FEMA national all-media alert exercise would take place on November 9th. Very true, but its connection to asteroids is non-existent.

           During July, August and September he droned on for hours and hours about Elenin (see this blog here here here here  and here. My goodness, I drone on almost as much as he does.) Not until October 21st did he turn his attention to  YU55. Here's an excerpt from Coast to Coast AM that night:
It's an object called YU55.It's supposedly an asteroid—we've got Arecibo radar images which show that it's a weird asteroid. It's only about 400 feet across. That sounds small, but it's really huge for something like this. It's coming within 200,000 miles—85% of the distance to the Moon—on the night of November 8th and 9th. And it will safely pass by, we're told. However, there's something really weird. For one thing, it's spherical. It should not be spherical, George. These things should be splinters that are bashed and battered by four and a half billion years of meteorite strikes. This thing is almost as spherical as a beach ball. And—sitting down?—it's rotating once every 19.5 hours.
           Some of that information was correct. However, it is not spherical. Its rotation period is 18 hours. He lied.

It's a spaceship -- of course!

           He was obviously developing a theory that  YU55 was another intelligently-guided spaceship—the latest member of his fanciful set of astronomical objects. Phobos, Tempel-1, Hartley-2, Vesta, Elenin.

           On November 5th he was on Internet radio with Francis Walsh, developing this theory, and he posted this to Facebollock the following day:
As promised on last night's radio interview with Francis Walsh, here (below) is the best Arecibo radar image I have been able to locate of YU55's LAST "fly-by" of Earth, in April, 2010 ... at ~1.5 MILLION miles .... The astonishing degree of "sphericity" (for a ~1300-foot-natural object) exhibited, the remarkable surface detail visible even in this low-resolution radar image, and low optical AND radar relfectivity of YU55 ... in addition to all the "numerical anomalies" associated with its currently PUBLISHED orbit -- all indicate that YU55 is NOT a "normal asteroid."
           (This time he at least got the size of the damned thing right.) I have no idea what he meant by "numerical anomalies"and I doubt that he did either. But it apparently gave him an idea. "Let's see, how can I get more attention to myself and put the bejeesus up my faithful followers? Earth impact? No, maybe that's a bit much. Lunar impact? Yes, that'll do. We need to invent a course change." Back to FB:
YU55 CAN'T jump "sideways" by ~50,000 miles. :) This YU55 "course change" we're discussing  ... happened back on September 11th ... when YU55 and Elenin were BOTH closest to the sun, on the SAME (crucial) day-- ~16 milliion miles apart, in direct alignment with the sun! The odds of that alone are over 48 MILLION to one ... AGAINST that being a simple "coincidence!! So, if the new trajectory (in our calculkations) is going to take YU55 as "close" as ~50,000 miles, it's STILL a TOTALLY safe trajectory ... in terms of an Earth impact.  ... if this is going to happen (an impact ...), it will be with the MOON!-- Creating the MOST amazing fireworks display the human race has EVER SEEN ... in modern history. :) So -- ENJOY!
           .....and he followed up by advising the faithful to stock up on food, water and cash. No word on his own bulk purchase of kool-aid. He added this:
And, in another strange "coincidence," the President of the united States -- and half the leaders of the Western Hemisphere --just "happen" to be beginning an "Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference" in Oahu, Hawaii ,on this SAME date-- November 9th!!
           Totally untrue. The Economic Leaders Meeting won't happen until the weekend. Piling lie upon lie, he told the faithful that President Obama would be using the FEMA all-media alert exercise to address the nation.

Radio Days

           I think we may safely surmise that during the first week of November Hoagland was beating the phone lines to every Coast to Coast AM producer he could think of, begging to be put on the air to get a wider audience for this balderdash. Showing highly uncharacteristic wisdom, they demurred, booking instead the planetary astronomer and asteroid specialist Daniel Durda for the night before closest approach. However, they allowed Hoagland into the news segment to talk briefly about lunar tourism.

           Eyes must have been rolling in their sockets in the C2C studio as Hoagland said "Yes, but there's a breaking story I'd like to switch to..." and proceeded to tell the listening millions the biggest lie so far. He said that "two separate sources, one in Washington and the other in the intelligence community," had slipped him the news that an Atlas-Centaur was on the launch pad at Vandenburgh AFB, ready for a YU55 intercept mission. Misquoting Hillaire Belloc:
Hoagland told such dreadful lies
They made one gasp and stretch one's eyes
           It was the lie of a desperate man—desperate for attention and ready to spin any cock-and-bull story to get it. Totally, totally, untrue. Of course.

           If he thought he might be invited on C2C to give a blow-by-blow commentary as the asteroid passed, last night, he was disappointed again. He had to settle for Project Camelot livestream, chronically out of focus and clearly frustrated by Kerry Cassidy's sophomoric interview technique. "Anonymous" has provided a short summary of the content, as a comment to the previous post on this blog. Thanks a lot, anon. I couldn't stand it for more than five minutes so I didn't hear the full horrible story. I see signs that some of the faithful are not quite as faithful as they were on Monday.

The Final Outcome
The asteroid didn't hit the Moon.
There was no intercept mission.
The FEMA alert exercise lasted all of 3 sec.
The President was not in Hawaii and did not address the nation.
The lie is different every time he opens his mouth.


30 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought perhaps I could move my YU55 comments from the previous topic to this one (in the interests of relevancy, but I guess not!).

Painful is definitely one word I'd used to describe the broadcast - I had forgotten about the bit where he said the President might use the EAS to announce to the world he and the fellow leaders had been meeting with visitors from another world (at 19.5 degrees of course!)...

...but hey, let's not spend time "nit-picking" over the details/glaring inaccuracies - we should be spending our time looking into who stopped "the greatest light show in history" and why....... :-s

-M

expat said...

Yes, please do mirror your previous comment here. That'd be good.

Anonymous said...

I am still out of words. Unbelievable, what, in the name of freedom of speech, some subjects release from their unconscious mouth being linked to a brain filled with soap bubbles...
And obviously the show goes on, after a while of letting all settle down. As long as education is considered a heavy burden to the sinful human, as long as a poor guy called Jesus is misused as witness of an evil and unable mankind needing salvation from it, as long as humans believe their thinking abilities are from the devil - this long people like Hoagland and other "American heroes" will deceive people and screw their minds. I mean, everyone could have made simply an internet research and could have seen the truth about Elenin and Yu55. But math is not junk food and physics not a nutrition pill, I suppose...
Greetings from Germany!

expat said...

Danke-schön for your comment.

Trekker said...

Expat, you might also have mentioned how the ‘sphericity’ of the asteroid really went to Hoagland’s head. To have the gall to resize and rotate an image of a fictitious spaceship, probably flouting copyright law, and place it side by side with the radar image, as he did on his page, could have only one meaning – to reinforce the idea of artificiality. However, as has been noted, that ploy most definitely did NOT go down well with the followers, the ridicule was swift and cutting, and the analogy wasn’t continued after that.

I also found it puzzling why he tried to imply that the asteroid could easily be seen with a small pair of binoculars, although it was a very faint magnitude 11 object, or even with the naked eye, as he suggested at one point, claiming that from clear desert skies, the flash of impact on the moon would provide a spectacular fireworks show at magnitude 8. He seems unaware that the human eye, under the best of conditions, cannot see anything fainter than magnitude 6. I wonder how many followers turned their eyes or their binoculars skywards, and saw…..precisely nothing?

Anonymous said...

I really feel sorry for RCH..I think he is lost in his own delusions...I could not listen to him, it was just too much to bear...

Dale

Chris Lopes said...

Trekker,
You're right, that image was definitely a mind numbingly stupid thing to do. I'm not sure what has gotten into Hoagland lately, but I wish those close to him would stop enabling the madness. He made a fool of himself with the Borg Sphere, didn't fare too well with Noory the other night, and now he's seeing decoy asteroids. All this in the same week.

He's still got followers of course. There are always people who need someone to simplify the big bad world for them. And he's also got the Kerri Cassidy's of the world, follow leaches who want to cash in on the gullible. But he's lost more than a few who only had a passing interest in this stuff. Even the folks at C2C will have to think hard about giving him a platform.

jourget said...

I don't know if it's been long enough to be called a trend yet, but Noory has seemed to be acting less effusive about RCH lately. Back in 2004-08 or so, he was practically washing the guy's feet whenever he was on, talking about all his theories that have been "proven to be true" or that he had mooted first (oceans under Europa, the "sabotage" of Mars Observer, etc.).

Lately, though, he's been more subdued. On the August 29 show, where RCH first laid out in detail his thoughts about Elenin, George was just chuckling. He hasn't been hanging on his every word lately, like he was for so many years.

Chris, you're absolutely right about the Borg Sphere. He hasn't even tried to draw 19.5 angles all over the image to prove his point as was once the case. He's devolved into squinting at the thing and labeling it the USS Pareidolia.

Chris Lopes said...

jourget,
I'm sure Noory himself has probably had his fill of the guy. Hoagland does though, have a way of keeping an audience tuned in long enough for the sponsors to sell their useless crap. That's all he really needs to do.

So I'm sure they'll keep him around for those 3 minute updates (he's easier to control when you limit his time) and when they have a guest who bails at the last minute. I just don't think they'll give him the star treatment any more.

Biological_Unit said...

Keep us informed. Successful troll is successful.

Anonymous said...

RCH and MB and all their devotees are very silent all of a sudden :-) goofball guru's :-)

Adrian

Cantra said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Cantra said...

Brilliantly put mate. Really well summarised. Excellent job, let's keep the pressure up on this money grubbing buffoon.

I guess you can add those points to the ever growing list of unfulfilled predictions. I would have suggested compiling a database of his outright and demonstrable lies. But I fear that is a task for a team not one person. And would take perhaps a year or more to collate.

I am genuinely astonished at his diehard lemming congregation. They don't read the facts about this chumpmonkey. They impersonate the three monkeys, only to bare their fangs and attack when Captain Hoagwash is yet again exposed as a liar.

Chris Lopes said...

Cantra,
Cataloging Hoagland's mistakes/lies would certainly require a scalable database system. :)

Anonymous said...

And in keeping with my post above, just to make sure Hoagland doesn't get caught out again, he's making sure to use the words MIGHT DO in nice big capital letters - he's right if it happens, and not wrong if it doesn't.

http://i42.tinypic.com/21niikw.png

I'm sure his 27000 sheep will proclaim him or defend him, either way.

-M

Anonymous said...

Amidst all the growing number of people who are starting to call Hoagland out on his predictions, he has YET AGAIN stated he does NOT make predictions....... (and then almost in the same breath, make a prediction - but nothing too specific this time)

http://i44.tinypic.com/wcoiog.jpg

-M

expat said...

He's pretty cunning like that. On FB I've even seen him scatter several predictions around, covering the most likely possible outcomes. Then one of them is pretty well bound to come good.

I literally do remember him saying to someone pointing out an erroneous prediction "Why don't you look at my OTHER post.... [the one that worked out]."

Anonymous said...

Someone pointed out an incorrect prediction? In public? On his facebook page? - How dare they question King Richard! That sort of stuff will get you banned from being one of his page "fans"!!...

(It's sheep only, don't you know!)

-M

Chris Lopes said...

Expat, that's why I came to the conclusion (a long time ago) that he isn't just a deluded fool (though he might also be that), he's a deliberate conman. He plays the rhetorical game too well not to know he's pushing BS. In this case, he had to know YU55 would be exactly where the people who study such things said it would be. Yet he went on and on for weeks about NASA lying, and how this was a game changer. Sure he said it was only a possibility (based on his "calculations" and "inside information"), but he led his followers to believe it was a near certainty. I bet he's been working on his excuses the entire time he was pushing this one. The sliminess of the thing is pathetic.

Anonymous said...

Ok, I'm not sure if I can stand for tricky dicky Hoagland's wiggling out of his statements anymore...

First he says he doesn't make predictions (but then makes them), and now he says he doesn't give SPECIFIC predictions (except for those times when he does), and now it is even JUVENILE to question him on his contradictions and inaccuracies!!!...

http://i41.tinypic.com/1zn5w6d.png

Seriously?!?!?...

-M

expat said...

"now it is even JUVENILE to question him on his contradictions and inaccuracies!!!..."

Yes, Mike Bara plays that game too. "You're just playing GOTCHA YOU S.O.B." is one of his standard answers to a challenge.

Both of them fail to understand, or perhaps pretend to fail to understand, that responding to challenging questions is one of the obligations of a scientist.

Anonymous said...

Well I suppose Richard is too busy to explain it to the people who "simply just don't get it" (let alone those of us who are clearly hell-bent on denial of "the truth") - after all, he's got to edit and process and upload good images of the "structures" on YU55 (an object that was spherical at first, before it became pancake shaped, and then eventually an elongated shape...)

...one can only do so much in 19.5 hours a day!

expat said...

I think those "artificial rectangular structures" are what most people call "pixels," aren't they?

Chris Lopes said...

Yeah, the interesting thing to me about that thread (where he posted the "processed" radar image, last night) is the skepticism it was met with. Sure the usual suspects were out in force to protect their fearless leader, but there were also more than a few folks who didn't buy it. Those folks were also (judging from the number of "likes" they got) being supported by more than a few people who agreed with them but were afraid to say so openly. Some of the residence of Emerald City are beginning to suspect the Wizard is a fraud.

Anonymous said...

Well I'm by no means a photography expert, but I do believe I've heard of those darn pixel-things being mentioned many, many times before when dealing with images [over-lays/composites?!] of small objects a long way off in space........

And I'm sure that in the "sensationalized" BBC article he was referring to, that the a scientist who used the word "structures" could not possibly mean anything geological or natural, and quite obviously meant constructed buildings at right angles and straight lines (which are probably at 19.5 degrees angle to Elenin or the sun or the moon or Hawaii or the White House when they were "discovered and leaked").

'Stay tuned' - I'm sure he'll have even more snazzy images sometime soon?!

-M

Anonymous said...

[EDIT: "MIGHT" have some more snazzy images soon - I'm not in the business of making predictions after all!] :-p

-M

Chris Lopes said...

Anon,
The problem here is that he's trying to treat radar images as if they are photographs. They aren't, so you really can't "enhance" them. What he's really doing is using a blurring tool to make it look more natural, then using good old fashioned pareidolia (and those pixels that are still there) to create "structures". It's pure hokum.

Anonymous said...

Jokes aside, even though I'm not an imaging expert, I know enough to know they are radar images and not typical photographs - of course, to the majority of "average joe" facebook followers, there is no need to question these "photographs": they seem genuine enough to the untrained-eye (they'll be set on their own meaning of the word 'structures') and you'll either accept for yourself the "overwhelming evidence" of intelligent design right before your eyes, or your brain will simply chose to reject the obvious...

Thanks Chris.

-M

Chris Lopes said...

Anon,
I wasn't suggesting you didn't know the difference, just that Hoagland is pretending not to. His followers only know what he tells them.

Anonymous said...

I know Chris, apologies if I came across wrong or implied you were suggesting I didn't understand the difference - I didn't take it as such! :)

I think we are in agreement about Hoagland and what he feeds his sheep (only, more of his sheep are starting to notice too).

-M