Review of Mike Bara on Coast-to-Coast AM, 1 February

        With Jimmy Church guest-hosting, Mike Bara was allowed out of the stable to frisk around the paddock for a couple of hours last night. An opportunity to pre-plug his next load of rubbishbook, Ancient Aliens and Secret Societies -- also to preen about what he thinks of as a successful prediction.

        It was quickly obvious that the new book will be another lame anti-NASA rant. Mike reiterated his false claim that Buzz Aldrin conducted a Masonic ritual on the Moon (it was a form of catholic mass, actually) and asserted that there was at least one freemason on each of the Apollo flights. I'd like to see his sources on that second claim^{note 1}, but even if the data is correct, I can't quite see what could be deduced from that. To Mike, it indicates that NASA had an astronaut selection bias toward people who could be trusted to keep secrets. Ergo, to him, this proves that there were secrets to be kept. Ergo, there are aliens on the Moon. Q.E.D. How very, very weak. How pathetic.

        Mike seems to have swallowed Zecharia Sitchen's Nibiru/Annunaki ideas hook, line and sinker — since he regurgitated them (without attribution) last night. I guess he thinks that's what the woo audience wants to hear. Any readers of this blog who don't know what I'm talking about could google Annunaki and settle in to read 861,000 pages of garbage. Alternatively, just pull up Mike Heiser's web site Sitchin Is Wrong.

Planet X, Planet Y
        The Planet X idea officially died last March, when the final results of the WISE infra-red survey were announced. There are no Saturn-sized objects out to 10,000 AU, and no Jupiter-sized objects out to 26,000 AU.^{note 2} A Scientific American podcast gave the news.

        But it seems the Planet X idea won't lie down. Just recently, astronomer Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of the Computense University of Madrid (with co-authors in Cambridge, UK) published^{note 3} findings on perturbations of the orbits of small extreme trans-Neptunian bodies which suggest the influence of one or two larger bodies out there.The survey is highly preliminary, and based on observations of only 13 small bodies, but that's good enough for Mike Bara the world-renowned planetary astronomer. The basis of his TOLDYA claim is that, in his book The Choice, he ripped off a Richard Hoagland notion that a relationship between angular momentum and luminosity could be seen as predicting trans-Neptunian planets. This blog dealt with that four years ago.

        So how come WISE missed these large bodies? "Oh," quoth the world-famous astronomer, "Maybe they detected them but decided to keep it quiet." As he said that, I felt the anger rising in me -- but then I thought it was better to just laugh it off. After all, when somebody has to posit something as ridiculous as that to make their story stand up, the weakness of the story becomes bloody obvious.

The Haters (that's us, I guess)
       Right at the end, we were treated to Mike's current thoughts about his many critics. Jimmy Church asked how he was coping with that — it went like this:

JIMMY CHURCH

“You know, Mike, you’ve been rolling that rock uphill in a lot... for a long time, for, uh, you know, twenty years.  And, what do you do, because— what do you do to fight uh, the, the wave that is going against you?  And, not only the skeptics, but the ones that just want to combat you at every step of the way? Because, you know, you choose... and like I said at the intro,  you’re steadfast in... in your research and your belief, and you don’t waver.  How do you keep up the good fight?”

MIKE BARA

“Well, you know, for me it’s that I know that we are all right about all this stuff.  I mean, there.. there may be certain issues that we’re wrong about.  There may be, you know, maybe some of the 9/11 stuff really isn’t all that serious. Not to bring up a sore subject, but, you know, there are going to be parts of what we believe in as a... as a unit, as a... what do you call them? ‘Fadernauts’ or the Coast to Coast AM audience, or anybody who’s interested in these kinds of TV shows and programs. We... we are gonna... Maybe there’s parts of the story that we’ve got wrong, but the VAST majority of it — 80% of it — we’ve got it right.  And it’s the truth.  And knowing that it’s the truth keeps pushing me forward.

"And, again, I don’t care about convincing those other guys.  I’ve  gotten to the point now where I’ve completely blocked out the people that attack me.  I... you know, I responded for a long time, it takes a lot of energy.  I basically set up a page where I said, ‘If you believe what these people say, here’s my counter-argument,’ uh... a dozen of them or so, and that’s it!  That’s... I’m just gonna let that stand.^{note 4}

"Ummmm, and now I only wanna talk to the people that are actually interested in listening, and knowing that there are people out there that wanna listen, knowing that there are people out there that are gonna make their own discoveries because they’ll be inspired by me, or you, or George Noory, or listening to these programs, or some of the other guests you have on, just... That’s what fuels me — that’s what gets me up every day saying, you know, ‘Hey! We... we need to move forward with this.’

"And the other thing that’s really important, I think, that fires me up, is we are not the weird ones.  They are.  The people that look at us like we’re black sheep — like we’re crazy because we believe this weird stuff, they’re the ones who aren’t awake.  They’re the ones that aren’t paying attention, they’re the ones that are living with their heads in the sand.  So, I really have... feel like I’m on a quest to make people feel comfortable with who they are and with their fascination with this whole realm of stuff that’s out there: All these different issues that we talk about on shows like this."

        So Praise the Lord, Mike admits he might be wrong some of the time. On the other hand, Curse the Lord, Mike has a new policy. It's known as LAAAA LAAAA LAAAA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.


======================================
[1] According to this list, only Apollos 7 (Eisele,) 10 (Stafford,) 11 (Aldrin,) 14 (Mitchell)  and 15 (Irwin) qualify. When the book came out, it did not contain that claim.

[2] For comparative  reference, the Kuiper Belt, of icy asteroids, extends to 50 AU. The Oort cloud, containing millions of comets, is at roughly 30,000 AU (80% of a light-year).

[3] C. de la Fuente Marcos, R. de la Fuente Marcos. "Extreme trans-Neptunian objects and the Kozai mechanism: signalling the presence of trans-Plutonian planets? Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters 443(1): L59-L63, 2014. Here's a summary.

[4] This is the page he means. Note the barefaced lie: "As you will see, I never said that orbital eccentricity was measured from the Earth, that centrifugal force makes you heavier..." (See Ancient Aliens on Mars, p.42, and The Choice, p.32.)

Proposal for an experiment to test "hyperdimensional physics"

Open letter to Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara, cc: Derek Eunson

Greetings...

        As I wrote to you on 13th March, the theory of what you have called "hyperdimensional physics" is now falsified because of the definitive failure of the WISE mission to find the large trans-Neptunian solar system bodies that you have written^{note 1} are an essential prediction of the theory.

        I commiserate. It must be hard to be so comprehensively proved wrong—especially in light of the fact that I have also falsified Von Braun's Secret and The Table of Coincidence. You boys don't really have a whole lot left to pontificate about, do you?

Proposal for an experiment
        Let us, however, be optimistic. It is still possible that some truth may be sifted from the ashes of your work over the years. I hereby propose a test of your (MB's) expository statement^{note 2} about the theory:

"There is overwhelming proof of a new, little understood theory of physics, Hyperdimensional physics ... [I]f you take a sphere—like ... a planet—and you rotate it, then you will pull energy from the higher state of the planet (the hyper-sphere) and that energy will preferentially upwell from inside the planet according to the geometry of a tetrahedron encased in a sphere, and appear at or around 19.5 degrees."

Equipment:
Solid aluminum sphere, diameter 50cm. Mounted on robust bearings and capable of being rotated at up to 1,000 rpm about a vertical axis by a rheostat-controlled electric motor.

volume 4/3 π x 25³ = 65,449 cm³
density of Al 2.70 g cm^-3
mass 176.7 kg

NOTE: This equipment will need very careful balancing, lest it become a missile.

360 sensitive thermocouples are to be embedded in this sphere at intervals of 0.5° latitude between its poles, the signals from these to be led to a display/recording rack via a commutator. A tachometer continuously records the rotation rate.

Protocol:
Ambient temperature of the laboratory to be controlled at 20°C ± 1°.
Baseline recording to be obtained for a period of two hours without rotation.
Active recordings to be obtained as the equipment is spun up in steps of 200rpm, n minutes at each step.
Experiment to be repeated 24h later.

Prediction:
Per your written text, we expect to detect a significant rise in temperature over bands of latitude centered on 19.5° N and S, as the hyperdimensional energy dissipates as heat.

NOTE: In your other writings on this topic you have cited Olympus Mons (18.5°N) and the Giant Red Spot on Jupiter (22°S) as manifestations of hyperdimensional energy upwelling, therefore we should presumably anticipate bands of energy spreading over at least 3.5°.

Questions for you:
1] Is this a fair test of your theory?
2] What should the value of n be? How long do you estimate we need to wait for hyperdimensional energy to appear?
3] Please provide an equation, using Maxwell's quaternions^{note 3}, describing the mathematical relationship between speed of rotation  and energy access from the "higher state".

Funding:
I will happily participate in such an experiment but I regret that I am unable to contribute to its (considerable) cost. Perhaps you might allocate some portion of the royalties from your published works promoting this idea to the public?

I have copied this to Dr Derek Eunson, a systems engineer in Scotland. Not only would his comments on the protocol be obviously welcome, but he is also in touch with Irene Gardner who may possibly agree to sponsor all or part of the cost. As you will recall, in May 2012 Ms. Gardner made a generous offer to sponsor Hoagland & Falkov's proposed expedition to Egypt for the Venus transit that year.^{note 4}

Please respond.

=====================================

1] Dark Mission chapter 2
2] The Choice chapter 3
3] You have written (Dark Mission chapter 2) that Maxwell's quaternions are the basis of "hyperdimensional physics".
4] An offer you (RCH) surprisingly refused, on the grounds that it would require handing over  "totally unreasonable quantities of raw, propriority [sic] data to turned over to TOTAL styrangers [sic], and far ahead of its planned formal publication." By the way, when will that data be published?

No, this blog is not hosted by NASA

        ...neither am I a NASA shill. The closest I've ever been to NASA has been as accredited media, exactly as Richard Hoagland was many times (until he pissed them off so badly he was blackballed.)

Peter Uwira, who is certainly no fool, posted this on the Final Frontier FB page last Saturday:

[Y]ou know what's funny? Someone recommended a program to me with which you can check out, if sites that you visit attempt to collect data from you (as most commercial sites do). I gave it a try with Expat's blog and guess who showed up as the source of a hidden info-request to my computer: NASA! So NASA servers host Expat's private anti-Hoagland blog?

       No, that's not what it means. Here's the page content, as listed by Firefox 'View Page Info > Media':

http://dorkmission.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/wise/20120314/pia15481-640.jpg
http://img2.blogblog.com/img/icon18_edit_allbkg.gif
http://www.blogger.com/img/share_buttons_20_2.png
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_2RckHB2KIlci52VSA6FcsoC9Mh69R8CDVtZw922XO8o9lnGZnbAfH4WFegfRH8hoMrlT6riKMRl9XvYBk94IMeUhPCeToI0wJ9yFjtRA-x9TiAK9A4ibGUjEMrHt0FmEWJ4JZ45WWzjX/s220/paris99palcrop.jpg
http://img1.blogblog.com/img/icon18_wrench_allbkg.png
http://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/favicon.ico
http://img1.blogblog.com/img/navbar/icons_orange.png
https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/stars/po/Publisher/sprite4-a67f741843ffc4220554c34bd01bb0bb.png
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-kDhNC3dooRA/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAAA/MBIhbK1J32c/photo.jpg?sz=20

       See that second item? It's the image of the WISE infra-red survey—currently the very first in-line image in the page. Certainly, Peter Uwira and anyone else who visits the page enters into a transaction with a NASA server. If they didn't, they couldn't see the image.

The WISE and wherefores of dark planets

Remember this?

Once again, you prove you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.

I’d have more sympathy, but you’re too pathetic to even feel sorry for. Hopefully you didn’t reproduce.

Once again DouchePat, all you prove is how little you know about everything...

The WISE search hasn’t really even begun, will take years, and won’t even release its 1st snippett [sic] of data until April.

         That was Mike Bara, early February 2011, giving us his version of a scientific debate about the results of the WISE infra-red sky survey. Recall that the entire tottering edifice of hyperdimensional physics absolutely depends on a very large new planet being discovered in the outer reaches of the solar system.

        Well, in my opinion nothing could excuse Bara's junior high school playground debating style, but he may have had a point that it was premature, at that time, to declare that all hope of finding the missing planet was lost. John Matese and Daniel Whitmire—actual scientists instead of wannabees like Hoagland & Bara—were still betting on Tyche at that time. It took until just over a month ago for the WISE catalog to be released. NOT years, as Mike Bara confidently declared.

Image credit: JPL

     
 You can't prove a negative, but if that survey missed a huge planet out there in Oortville I'll eat my keyboard. Key quotes:

"The WISE catalog of the entire sky meets the mission's fundamental objective. The individual WISE exposures have been combined into an atlas of more than 18,000 images covering the sky and a catalog listing the infrared properties of more than 560 million individual objects found in the images." --NASA office

"Today, WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical community." --Edward Wright, WISE principal investigator.

        Case closed. Hyperdimensional physics is a myth. I assume Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara will now admit they were wrong, apologize for the naughty-schoolboy language, and shut up about it. They're honest scientists—right?

Hyperdimensional FAIL

This just in: WISE is all done.

        The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission ran out of LH2 last October, but was given a short non-cryogenic life-extension called NEOWISE. That, too, has now ended.

        Launched into polar orbit from Vandenburgh in December 2009, the telescope discovered 20 comets, more than 33,000 asteroids, and 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs.)

        It's the NEOs that interested—or at least, should have interested—Richard Hoagland, because the NEO that WISE didn't find is a specific requirement of his pet theory, Hyperdimensional Physics.

        Writing in chapter 2 of Dark Mission, Hoagland congratulated himself on spotting what he said was a linear relationship between the infrared emission of a planet (exactly the kind of emission WISE was looking for) and its angular momentum. He wrote:

When one graphs the total angular momentum of a set of objects, such as the radiating outer planets of this solar system (plus Earth and the sun) against the total amount of internal energy each object radiates to space, the results are striking [Fig 2.7].

        Well, figure 2.7 is reproduced below and it doesn't show what he says it shows. The y-axis is not the total energy each object radiates, but its specific luminosity—in other words, luminosity per unit mass. Likewise the x-axis is not total angular momentum but also angular momentum per unit mass.

The diagram is taken from The New Solar System by Sky Publishing. Undeterred as ever by copyright ownership, Hoagland slaps a © 1998 The Enterprise Mission on it. In fact, the diagram was created as long ago as 1990. Some 30 additional moons have been discovered since then, rendering the whole exercise moot.

        Hoagland apparently doesn't notice that his diagram doesn't show what he says it does, as he blunders on worrying about why the Sun isn't on the same straight line as the five planets. If the hyperdimensional model is correct, he writes, it ought to be. He continues:

The obvious answer to this dilemma is that that the hyperdimensional model is simply wrong. The less obvious conclusion is that we're missing something—like additional planets.
::
So the first implicit prediction of the hyperdimensional model was that eventually, observatories would find one massive planet in a prograde orbit, or two smaller solar system members in retrograde orbits.

        Well, "eventually" means RIGHT NOW, because if these massive planets existed at all, WISE would have found them. According to its wikipedia page, WISE could have detected a Jupiter-sized planet up to a light-year from the Sun. The 134 NEOs it did detect were assuredly not candidates for bashing Hoagland's Fig. 2.7 into line. They were all classified as asteroids or comets; Pluto-sized or smaller. So we're left with what he called "the obvious answer"—the hyperdimensional model is simply wrong.

        Take this together with the fact that none of the things Hoagland says are at 19.5° latitude actually are at that latitude, and it sure looks like thumbs down for HD physics.

        OH NO!!! First the so-called Ritual Alignment Model is falsified, and now this. Where next for Hoagland & Bara?