Thursday, May 30, 2013

More on the Wacky-Acky

        I'm going to be accused of doing this Accutron nonsense way too much, but bear with me. This is kind-of interesting.

(Readers new to the whole topic can get a briefing here.)

        Hoagland has actually offered three separate versions of the Accutron trace he recorded at Coral Castle during the Venus transit on 8th June 2004. First, this one, in his original article Von Braun's Secret Part 2:



        Then there was this one, published much later in a document entitled A Most Hyperdimensional Eclipse... and final Venus Transit.



        Then finally there was this one, with a  much extended horizontal scale, showing 5.8 hours from before 3rd contact all the way to 12:15. That was also in the Von Braun article, down at the bitter end.


        Richard Hoagland was queried, some time back, about the fact that those first two didn't seem to be compatible. Astronomer Stuart Robbins also drew attention to this, in his recent podcast. "Maybe he mislabeled something. I’d prefer not to say that he faked his data," said Robbins, generously. Hoagland's response, at the time, was "Same data, different scale." Well IS IT? The horizontal scales -- representing the passage of time left to right -- on both traces are the same, so they're easy enough to compare as long as the image widths are made the same. Both cover a period of 1.4 hours, although not the same 1.4 hours. The vertical scales -- the tuning fork frequency -- are different, so some stretching is required to provide a fair comparison.

        Here are the two traces, with the moment of 3rd contact aligned and the vertical scale forced to be the same.



        ...and here are the two vertical scales side by side, to prove that I did an accurate job of stretching.


        Looking at the results, just one word comes to mind. That word is Busted!

29 comments:

Chris Lopes said...

May I kindly suggest that the graphs don't work because the stupid ass made them both up? Yes, a diligent fraud would have taken the time and effort to make them match. It's not exactly rocket science (another subject Hoagland knows less about than he pretends) after all. Hoagie though is just too damn lazy and thinks too little of his audience to bother with real work. So you get this obvious BS pretending to be science. What little fan base he has left couldn't tell the difference anyway.

Anonymous said...

As Vicky Pollard might say:

"Yeah, but no but, yeah, but, no but shaaadap"

Just because good ole' Rich might have fabricated (there I said it) his BS and make it appear (to the easily convinced) to be steeped in fact and scientific principles; deosn't make him a bad man (well okay, it does. When the non believers amongst us learn to understand his astonishing and astoundingly confirmed findings, all will be clear.

SB

jourget said...

To say nothing of the fact that the second trace shows nothing significant happening while Venus is transiting the Sun's disk and the third trace shows extreme activity after Venus has left the disk and is moving away, "proving" pretty much exactly the opposite of what he is claiming. Does he himself know what he's looking for, or did he just publish the third trace because it looked "sciencey" and he knew most of his audience wouldn't be able to tell the difference?

jourget said...

Whoop, never mind. Just found your post from 2012 talking about that very thing. Nice post!

expat said...

Yikes, on Coast to Coast AM last night there was a promise that RCH will get the entire 4-hr show some time soon. Oh well, blog-fodder!

Unknown said...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22686500

The Beeb just wrote a nice article on paradolia, including the Face on Mars. Pity there is no such thing (according to Professor Bara).

Mulvaney said...

"The Beeb just wrote a nice article on paradolia, including the Face on Mars. Pity there is no such thing (according to Professor Bara)."

Did either Hoagland or Bara pick up on the Mars Rat? Somehow I missed this one:

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-mars-rat-curiosity-rover-nasa-man-in-moon-20130603,0,4207121.story

Anonymous said...

This is all a load. Of old cobblers , the graphs are meaninglessness...what is Hoagland on?

expat said...

How very perceptive you are. Yes, the traces are utterly useless. What's he on? Drunk on his own arrogance, I think.

expat said...

No, they didn't go for the Mars rat. Mike Bara did like today's story about the direct observation of a large planet beside HD 95086. He wrote that it "Totally supports the fission model of planetary formation."

It does nothing of the kind.

Anonymous said...

First picture shows 36.6 secs/day gridline although you cannot see the grid itself. It's the sample resolution really.

The second picture shows 1.2 min/day which is a 2x less accurate sample rate showing.

All depending on averaging or smoothing applied one would expect to see differences in the exact shape and height of the spikes.

Also take into account the horizontal resolutions do not match up, the second one is clearly "squashed".

All in all this I think this time expat failed to demonstrate a bust. One has to have the original data or have them displayed at equal time resolution.

D.

expat said...

Thanks for your input. Here's my response.

The difference between 35.6 sec and 1.2 min is not a sampling difference. It simply tells what the steps are in the horizontal lines in each case. It is precisely that which I normalized by stretching the second trace vertically -- see my final image which demonstrates that after stretching the vertical scale is the same for both traces.

Yes, the two images are not the same pixel widths as Hoagland presented them. Image 1 is 790 x 557, image 2 is 1007 x 712. I normalized them both to width 790 in my image editor (Paint Shop Pro v.7) before matching the two traces. Perhaps I should have mentioned that.

expat said...

Just to put some figures to that -- in Image 1 the gridline steps are 0.148 Hz. In Image 2 they are 0.296 Hz.

Those numbers simply represent 36.6 secs/day and 1.2 min/day, respectively.

expat said...

Please also bear in mind that Hoagland has the time of third contact wrong. This table reports third contact at 07:07:33 EDT for Miami, which is on the same longitude as Homestead.

Anonymous said...

It's clear why Hoagland comes out with/makes up these things. Notice he does these experiments in places that make for great vacation getaways.

That's what it is all about imo. To claim he is making discoveries, with these experiments, and gaining more financial support and donations to fund these vacations. He's another marketer selling bunk...in this case, mostly pseudoscientific.

Unknown said...

Now we have STUNNING CONFIRMATION that...

"AREA 51" has a RAT INFESTATION

Stay Tuned......

Anonymous said...

Expat "The difference between 35.6 sec and 1.2 min is not a sampling difference. It simply tells what the steps are in the horizontal lines in each case"

Yes, this is how selecting "raw" samples out of a (stored) data stream works. But I'm just assuming the software works like that and doesn't apply some smoothing algorithm.

By "stretching the second trace vertically" it's actually you possibly applying the distortions here.

This is my opinion as engineer but hardly worthwhile to get to the bottom. Hoagland should always just release the raw data because otherwise what are we talking about? Conclusions pro/con drawn from screenshots? LOL.

D.

expat said...

A year ago I also compared Trace A with Trace B, and instead of doing a visual comparison I did it arithmetically.

This might suit you better.

Anonymous said...

Expat, from your last reference, where you wrote "The horizontal scales are the same" regarding trace A and B.

The scales might be the same but that doesn't mean you are looking at the same data when a given data resolution is chosen.

Not all the 90,000 samples are shown since that would need at least 90,000 horizontal pixels (or a few thousand at least if it was 90,000 for 24h). So when choosing a resolution some samples are picked (through resampling or downsampling). The resulting values might very well differ. This is normally called the quantization error or the rounding problem. And I think in the software being used this is not corrected for at all.

What this means is that reading the vertical frequency min/max values becomes meaningless to compare with the same min/max at other rates.

The problem lies exactly here "In Trace A, each grid line represents ... 35.6 sec/day. In Trace B, each grid line is ...1.2 min/day."

But these grid lines seem to influence also the horizontal resolution although it's not explicitly mentioned. But when counting visually the actual displayed values I think it's a similar rate (35s or 1.2m between samples which makes sense to me somewhat). So trace B skips half of the samples! And trace A can easily show different maximum values now since that data might just simply be not visible in trace B (each spike is just one sample of that peak, not necessarily the maximum of that peak).

Since I'm on it I also think your conclusion that the software indication of "current time" would mean that it has something to do with the time the data was actually recorded would be presumptuous.

Thanks for letting me comment this far. I might be wrong about my interpretations of these screenshots but I don't see a reason why Hoagland would be misrepresenting the data the way you are suggesting. The simplest explanation seems to be that the frequency of the accutron really fluctuates under certain circumstances. But one would need way better controlled environments to exclude all the possible factors involved. So in my opinion there's no need to doubt the data itself or a need for Hoagland to misrepresent it at all. So the evidence needed to prove wrong doing here is near impossible because of the lack of detail. As a result one starts reading to much into it, in my opinion.

D.

expat said...

Thanks again for your contribution -- wouldn't it be nice if Hoagland himself were interested enough in his own data to discuss it in this detail.

I totally follow you on the quantization problem, but it's too much of a stretch for me to imagine it's responsible for the gross mis-match of those spikeys between the two traces.

expat said...

Here's what I think the 90,000 samples means. It's a count of the total available in the current file -- not all of which are displayed on screen at the time.

Now look at the horizontal scroll bar. The width of the solid bar is identical in both traces (when allowance is made for picture resolution). However the position of the solid is different. What that says is that we're supposedly looking at the same data but shifted horizontally. It's really hard to see how that could legitimately give rise to different spikes.

Anonymous said...

Expat: "it's too much of a stretch for me to imagine it's responsible for the gross mismatch of those "spikeys" between the two traces."

The problem seems to be created by the way the software draws lines between what actually would be point values. This way it's very hard to see the actual sample resolution being displayed.

Those spikes are just too short lived to show the same unless all samples would be displayed every time (or the same samples which is exactly what I see reason for to doubt).

One other piece of evidence for my way of looking at it would be the "blocky" nature of the 1.2 min/day graphic starting at 7:03. The peaks are just way defined which is actually what one could expect with different sample resolutions (like bit resolution on A/D and D/D conversions).

There's in my view not an easy way to be sure though unless someone would replicate the software set-up to see what it does with similar data.

In the mean time I'll just keep enjoying being in such rare position of actually "defending" Hoagland here. :-)

D.

Anonymous said...

Expat, I completely forgot to mention all that time!

Your overlay image "accu-overlay2.png" seems completely in error. The starting time "6.03" of image B is not even in the picture in image A (which starts at 6:34). You are I guess overlaying purely based on the similarity of the narrower peaks. But my case was that the single peaks you are looking at are not what you think they are! So you do not really know how they overlay based only on that.

If you'd try to estimate the timestamps and correct it, the graphics do match now hardly at all at the first narrower peaks but the possible reason for that I already tried to explain: different display rates also for the horizontal axle, creating meaningless differences for any short duration spikes as the sample resolution used is not granular enough to display them all correctly or at all.

D.

expat said...

>>Your overlay image "accu-overlay2.png" seems completely in error. The starting time "6.03" of image B is not even in the picture in image A....<<

That's correct. As mentioned, Hoagland shifted the traces horizontally in relation to each other. It is not for us mere mortals to know why he did that, we can only do our best to compensate in a good-faith attempt to interpret what he amusingly calls his "data."

I draw your attention again to the positions of the horizontal scroll bar. In both images we are seeing 18% of the total time on record, but a different 18%.

>>You are I guess overlaying purely based on the similarity of the narrower peaks.<<

No, I aligned the two traces so as to synchronize the stated time of third contact, which Hoagland says was at 7:03:53 although it was actually at 7:07:33 per NASA Goddard.

Yesterday I e-mailed Hoagland asking the simplest question I could imagine, to make it easy for him. WHAT WAS THE MAXIMUM INTENSITY OF THE TORSION FIELD AT CORAL CASTLE?

He is unable to answer that.

expat said...

UPDATE: Hoagland replied. He characterized my questions (and those of binaryspellbook) as "inane," and said that of course he NEVER claimed to have measured the amplitude of the torsion field, just its frequency.

*sigh*

I am seeking further clarification. How inane of me.

Ricky Poole said...

If Hoagland's "experiment" was incorrectly designed and carried out then what relevance could the data have to anything at all? Can any conclusions be drawn from them about anything? If there was no baseline established, no calibration of the equipment, and most importantly no control, then what would make any of the data he allegedly captured interesting to someone other than pseudoscientific fanboys who think Hoagland may be onto something with the "NASA is run by NAZIs who arrange space missions to conform to occult rituals" idea? I mean, other than the obvious comedic value of course. The main thought that goes through my mind when I look at this latest Hoagie business is, "This is really embarrassing. How can you call yourself a science advisor?" Did people actually donate money to him for this project?

expat said...

Well, you're absolutely right, it is an embarrassment. Particularly now that we know for sure that he never even pretended to record any measurement of the intensity of the so-called torsion field.

For the Egypt-expedition-that-never-was, he asked for $80,000 and collected, I believe, $1,200.

If you want a chuckle, re-read the details of the brilliant exposé of Hoagland contrived by Irene Gardner a year ago.

Jax said...

Hoagland is going to be on Coast tonight with "curiosity rover update" or some other such nonsense. Will you be doing a post about it?

expat said...

Count on it -- but it may not be tomorrow. I'm on deadline for a paying project right now.