No power in ABQ

        Over the weekend, BOTH of Richard Hoagland's blogtalkradio shows were cancelled due to what he claims were power outages. The Big Picture with Georgia Lambert was replaced by a re-run of Kronos Rising with Max Hawthorne, and something-or-other was replaced by Trump's Secret War with Christopher Knowles, about which I commented a month ago.

        I've now lost count of the number of shows that have not gone ahead as advertised, but it's a lot. There are signs that he may be losing part of his fan base because of this. A "Club 19.5" member, Adam Prentice, posted this comment yesterday:

« Yet again. Getting beyond a joke, if Richard can't get the correct equipment in I suggest he hangs up his boots? Do you think I like getting up at 5am UK time on a Sunday morning.»

Another frustrated fan posted:

« I so agree. It’s beyond unprofessional. He could get a generator. »

        Unfortunately, although Power New Mexico has a fine web site giving information about current outages, there doesn't seem to be historical data such that somebody might check whether Hoagland is telling the truth, as opposed to just getting drunk and going to bed when he should be entertaining the members who pay for his service.

Update August 31st

Another replay last night. Hoagland posted:

« The power company continues with its repairs during the hours that most businesses are closed.   »

Update Sept. 5th
        A power outage for maintenance was announced for 11pm July 29th, affecting an area well south of Albuquerque. Nothing posted since then. 

Open letter to Richard Hoagland

Dear Mr. Hoagland,

        Your recent re-iteration of a claim to have originated the idea of oceanic life on Europa^{note 1} prompts me to remind you, and others who may be seeing this text, that this and several other claims you have made are false.

1. Ocean on Europa
In March 2004, in a message to Rob Roy Britt of space.com, you wrote:

"Clearly, I was NOT the first (nor have I ever claimed to be) to propose an original liquid ocean for Europa."

On 4 December 1997, on Coast to Coast AM, you said this:

"[W]hen I was covering the Voyager story out at JPL in the Summer of 1980, actually the Spring of 1979 and the Winter of 1980, we flew this extraordinary spacecraft, NASA did, by Jupiter for the first time and encountered the four moons, you know, Io, Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, and Jupiter itself, and it was as part of that observation that I began work on essentially what turned out to be the first scientific paper, which ultimately appeared in Star and Sky Magazine in the beginning of 1980, which was a prognostication, pulling all the data together, that there might be a global ocean under the ice cover that Voyager had revealed and that in that global ocean there actually might be some extant living life forms." (emphasis added)

        That looks very like a prior claim to me. It is certainly not justified--Lewis (1971)^{note 2} and Consolmagno (1976) were ahead of you, as were Cassen, Reynolds, and Peale (1979).^{note 3} I think you know this.

2. Life in Europa's ocean
        This is, of course, a separate question, and there is no doubt at all that you have  repeatedly claimed to have been the first to publish on this conjecture. However, as Greenberg notes:^{note 4}

"On June 19th and 20th, 1979, the conference  "Life in the Universe" took place at NASA's Ames Research Center. Benton Clark gave a lecture Sulfur: Fountainhead of Life in the Universe at that conference in which he discussed the biochemistry of those deep-sea vent communities discovered on Earth, pointing out that they do depend indirectly on sunlight: Photosynthesis near the surface of the oceans produces the oxygen that those communities require. Clark then explained how sulfur could play the role of oxygen, and that deep-sea volcanic emissions could potentially provide all the necessary ingredients for a self-sustained ecosystem. In the final part of his lecture, Clark raised the possibility that life might exist in undersurface oceans on the icy satellites in our Solar System, including Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto in particular." (emphasis added)

In the written version of his lecture, Clark wrote:

 "Consider H2O-rich bodies. In our Solar System, this includes not only Earth, but quite possibly Mars and Triton, and certainly Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.  Liquid water does not exist at the surface of any of these bodies, except Earth,  but we should not discount the existence of "buried" liquid water reservoirs.  ... Habitable zones include not only the surface ocean environment, but also the much more probable subsurface oceanic regions. Earth-like environments as abodes for life may be the exception rather than the rule. Occupation of the much more abundant buried zones is possible, and these should ultimately become an object of exploration. Whether such environments can support life long enough and at a sufficient level of activity to permit the evolution of highly encephalized forms (intelligent life) is conjectural." (emphasis added)

        Prof. Greenberg notes other prior work. You have characterized his comments as political, but in fact they are purely scientific. Claiming credit for other peoples' work is an unattractive trait in anybody, but for somebody who calls himself a scientist,^{note 5} it is particularly deplorable because of the importance of intellectual priority in that domain.

3. Creation of the Pioneer "message to the Universe"
        On your website you refer to yourself as "co-creator of the 'Pioneer plaque'." (scroll all the way to the bottom of the long page). On 13 July 1990 you said "Carl [Sagan] for many years has been taking public credit for the Pioneer plaque which, of course, Eric Burgess and I conceived." In fact you had no part in the design or creation of the plaque, which was done by Sagan, his then wife Linda, and Frank Drake. As for "conceiving" it (as distinct from "creating" it,) that was overwhelmingly to the credit of Eric Burgess.  In the epilogue to his 1982 book, By Jupiter: Odysseys to a Giant, Burgess wrote:

"I came up with the idea [that the craft carry a message from Earth]. And I mentioned it [at lunch that afternoon] to Hoagland [then a freelance writer] and Don Bane [Los Angeles Herald Examiner ]. . . . And I said that the right man to get this onboard would be Carl Sagan. So I went around to JPL [NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] -- Hoagland was in tow with me -- and found Sagan. . . . And I said, "Hey, Carl, I've got an idea for you." All Hoagland did was support me and say it's a good idea."

4. The "hammer and feather" stunt on Apollo 15
        On 2 July 2013, on Coast to Coast AM, you claimed that this was your original idea. The truth is that it was, in fact, dreamed up by Dave Scott, Jim Irwin, and Joe Allen.^{note 6}

5. The catchphrase "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog."
        On 11 November 2015, on your digital radio show, you claimed to have "coined" this bon mot. You repeated the claim much more recently, on Howard Hughes' radio show, 11 November last year. The original was a caption to a cartoon in New Yorker published on 5 July 1993. Credit for the phrase belongs to cartoonist Peter Steiner, not you.

         Would you kindly make an early opportunity to withdraw your claims and apologize to those whose work you have falsely taken credit for?

======================/ \=====================
[1]  The Other Side of Midnight (notice)
Partial text: Thirty-seven years ago, in December 1979 (published in January, 1980), I wrote a seminal article in “Star and Sky Magazine” — picked up and sent around the world by AP, lauded by Dr. Robert Jastrow (one of the founders of NASA), and Arthur C Clarke and (later) Ted Koppel — scientifically PREDICTING, decades BEFORE NASA: “The oceans of Europa [one of the four “Galilean Moons” of Jupiter] are the PERFECT habitat [beyond the Earth] for CURRENT non-terrestrial life! ... My article only dealt with the specifics of Europa’s habitability, but it foreshadowed the existence of an entirely new CLASS of habitable worlds, DECADES before scientists or NASA missions had discovered them — “Ice-covered moons … housing ‘world oceans’ … protected by a tens-of-miles-thick covering of ice!”

[2] Icarus, vol. 15

[3] Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 6

[4] An ocean on Europa? by Prof. Ralph Greenberg, 2002

[5] Dark Mission, 2nd edn, p. 224

[6] See this transcript, notes at 167:22:58

Zany pranksters!

        This blog got a mention during Richard Hoagland's disastrous "open lines" digital radio show in the early hours of Wednesday 11 November. I say disastrous because his callers were by no means Hoagland sycophants, and several of them gave him a hard time. Some of the pranking was pretty juvenile, but in the end he was forced to apologize for having said, the previous night, that many of his listeners were "useless eaters" because they fell asleep leaving their devices connected. This, to Hoagland, is stealing his precious bandwidth -- bandwidth he now has to pay for to the tune of a grand a month. Personally I highly doubt that a largely sleeping audience makes a ha'p'orth of difference to his bandwidth bills, but it's a lovely thought.

        Anyway, this blog was mentioned by one of the early callers, and Hoagland jumped in immediately with this:

"That is not my book. That is a spoof run by a couple of really zany pranksters, one from Europe and one from the United States, who are pretending it's my book."

        Now look. I shouldn't have to write this, and I'm sure I don't for 99% of my readers, but I make no pretense that this is a book. It's a blog taking pseudoscientists like Hoagland to task for their manifest dishonesty. The title is a satirical reference to the fact that the likes of Hoagland & Bara have made some pretty nice coin, in their time, from telling lies about the planet Mars. I imagine all that money is long gone now, however. Hoagland is reduced to worrying about whether he can pay for bandwidth, with his audience nodding off all around.

Hoagland, we know you're a dog
        I'm not going to write a full review of the show, but a couple of items really stood out for me. One was a wonderful example of Hoagland's habit of taking credit for other people's creative work. He said this:

"Back when Art and I were doing shows, a long time ago, I actually said on the air, coined the phrase, On the internet nobody knows you're a dog."

        Well, he didn't. Cartoonist Peter Steiner did, in a famous New Yorker cartoon published on 5 July 1993.

source: wikimedia (fair use)

Some other examples of Hoagland's mental disorder:

* "The hammer and feather stunt on Apollo 15 was my idea." He said that on 2 July 2013, on C2C-AM. The stunt was, in fact, dreamed up by Dave Scott, Jim Irwin, and Joe Allen.

* "I was the co-creator of the Pioneer 10 message to extraterrestrial life." This claim is part of the welcome message on his terrifyingly bad web site (scroll all the way to the end.) On 13 July 1990 he said "Carl [Sagan] for many years has been taking public credit for the Pioneer plaque which, of course, Eric Burgess and I conceived." In fact he had no part in the design of the plaque, which was done by Sagan, his then wife Linda, and Frank Drake. Hoagland was merely present when Eric Burgess made the original suggestion to Sagan.

public domain

Pluto and mendacity
        The other Hoaglandism that was salient for me in Wednesday morning's show was his breathtaking statement about the results of the recent New Horizons survey of Pluto. "I'm the only guy who got it right," he said as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. So what did he get right? His vision was and still is of a previously-inhabited planet with moons that are not really moons but abandoned space stations. He got it WRONG, in other words. Stuart "astroguy" Robbins, who is actually on the New Horizons science team, commented "There are not words to describe the disgust when he says this."

Hoagland, you're a DOG.

Richard Hoagland contradicts himself, Mike Bara goes to Church

        It's been a fun week on internet radio, to be sure. First, Stuart Robbins (that's DOCTOR Stuart Robbins to you) got through on the call-in line to Richard Hoagland's new digital radio  show and scored some good points before being drowned by Hoagland's appallingly rude, overbearing, debating style. To nobody's surprise, Hoagland eventually cut him off with "You're just wrong."

        Robbins wrote the experience up at some length on his blog. Personally (although I wasn't listening live) I was delighted that he was able to bring up one of my favorite topics—the question of contamination on Hoagland's office scanner. I think that's exactly what Hoagland is looking at when he says he sees glass skyscrapers on the Moon.

        I mean, come on—which is more likely? Glass skyscrapers or shazz on the scanner? The exchange went like this:

SJR: "You have the Apollo images... I know that you completely disagree—some people have argued that what you're looking at is noise from your scanner. "

RCH: "They're idiots!"

SJR: "..."

RCH: "No no no. There are some things people—critics—say that are totally stupid. The idea..."

SJR: "..."

RCH: "Hang on, hang on. You asked the question. The idea that I would put negatives or prints on a scanner, and a) not clean the screen, and b) not make sure there was no dust on the negatives etc. etc.— is ludicrous. That is a straw man that people are putting out there—it's not true. These are real artifacts recorded by the Apollo astronauts, both in orbit and from the surface, and all we've done is take that data and subject it to modern technology, to bring it out and to present it in terms of web posts."

SJR: "But that's not what I'm asking. I'm saying 'Some people say that, that you're using these Apollo images, and that's one explanation that your critics make, and'...."

RCH: "But that doesn't mean it's right. They can claim anything... Look, you can hold these photographs up to the light and see it on the analog..."

SJR: "..."

RCH: "Hang on, hang on. You don't have to scan. I can't show you an analog print because you're not in the same room. So I have to scan it and put it on the web. But the originals show what we're showing. All you have to do in the dark room is basically bring out the low-level detail from the negative, and Bingo! There it is on an analog print."

        So he's saying the skyscrapers are there, not just on the digital scans but on Ken Johnston's 30-year-old 10x8 prints, as well. I wonder how he reconciles that with this passage from Dark Mission p. 226:

"In scanning Ken's priceless Apollo 14 C-prints, [I'd] discovered that the computer could "see" what the human eye could not—incredible geometric detail in the pitch black areas, like the lunar sky. The sensitivity of modern CCD imaging technology, in even commercially-available image scanners, coupled with the amazing enhancement capabilities of state-of-the-art commercial software—like Adobe's Photoshop—allowed the invisible detail [emph. added] buried in these supposedly black layers, of these thirty-year-old emulsions, to ultimately be revealed—a "democratization" of technology that no censor at NASA could have possibly foreseen over more than thirty years."

Go clean that scanner glass right now, Hoagland.

We're all Mundanes
        Mike Bara, meanwhile, was one of a gallimaufry of small-time guests on Jimmy Church's 300th Fade to Black internet radio show. They fell to discussing their sense of duty to all the true believers who feel isolated from society because they believe in rubbish like restaurants on Mars. Here's most of it:

Bara: "What we're doing is important ... it's really really important ..Without shows like Fade to Black they have no place to go, they have no sense of community, they have no sense of family. In many ways we have to replace the family members of the people that don't accept them and don't acknowledge them or recognize that they're different. And then the next thing, once we do that, is to turn it around and force all of the Mundanes out there to understand and to recognize that they're the ones that are weird, not us. They're the ones that live in fantasy land, because they simply do not see, or refuse to look at, all the amazing things that go on around us all the time. All the paranormal, supernatural, alien stuff that's happening."

[Church: "It's Us against Them"]

"And eventually Jimmy, what we have to do is create a forum where there is no "Them," there's only "Us" ... We're the normal ones, because we understand the way the universe really works. We appreciate it, we experience it. So that's what we're working toward, that's what I'm working toward anyway, and I think everyone else in their own way is doing the same."

Church: "Do you feel different about "Them"? ... Are they starting to take Mike Bara seriously?"

Bara: "No, and I don't think they ever will. I think the biggest thing we have to get away from is caring what they think of us, and caring whether we have their approval ... I guess I just do not care whether they recognize us or not. We've got to form our own thing, go our own way, and just let the truth be the truth."

        So just like Hoagland, Bara accuses us "mundanes" of refusing to look at the data. Excuse me while I shout something from the rooftops:

WE'VE LOOKED AT YOUR FUCKING DATA AND IT'S NO FUCKING GOOD.

Richard Hoagland: Rockets, lies, and e-mail

        I don't subscribe to Richard Hoagland's new chat-show on digital radio. I don't mind listening to arrogant pseudoscientists in the wee hours of the morning, but that's on the pocket radio tucked up in bed, and for free. I draw the line at getting out of bed and paying for it, no matter how little. So I won't be reviewing The Other Side of Midnight unless somebody pirates it to Youchoob.

        Binaryspellbook, being in a very different time zone, evidently does listen, and on his blog yesterday he wrote this:

"Then Hoagland mentioned Explorer I and his explanation of it on his website. He then quickly admitted that there were some errors in the calculation, but there was still an over-performance of the rocket. He then went on to state that if anyone had emailed him regarding this error he would email them back with corrections."

        Here's the complete collection of my e-mails to the pseudoscientist on this topic. He never replied to any of them.

1 July 2013
Subj: Your mathematical errors in 'Von Braun's Secret'

I believe it has been nearly two years since you admitted, on Facebook, that you had made serious mathematical errors in your web page, Von Braun's Secret part 1.

At about the same time, also on Facebook, you wrote of your "decades-long, demonstrated scientific competence." I am writing to express my surprise that a man who seems proud of his scientific rigor would allow these catastrophic errors to go uncorrected for so long.

Just in case you need reminding of the nature of the errors, you misapplied the Tsiolkovsky equation by using it on all three solid upper stages of the Juno rocket at once. You also failed to evaluate a natural logarithm which forms a well-known part of the equation. When the equation is applied and evaluated correctly it does not support the ideas that you wish to communicate. That is because those ideas are wrong.

May I know why you have allowed this travesty to survive so long (and any answer along the lines of "I've been busy" or "I haven't had time" will be greeted with derision)?

13 August 2013
Subj: Von Braun's Secret FALSIFIED

Well, I see the mendacious web page is still uncorrected. Still delta-V = 3520 ft/sec.

You can't correct it, can you Richard, because if you did work the math correctly you'd arrive at delta-V  = 14,189 ft/sec. The 600 ft/sec excess velocity at orbit injection would be an error of, not 17%, but just over 4% -- easily within the tolerance of the military polysulphide aluminum/ammonium perchlorate fuel.

Are you not JUST A LITTLE BIT ASHAMED to have a theory which has been mathematically falsified published under your name?

28 September 2013
Subj: Another reason to withdraw Von Braun's Secret

Not only is your math unforgivably wrong, but your map of the tracking stations is totally at variance with the actual truth.

The Microlock network consisted of:
Antigua (doppler)
RED - Earthquake Valley
GOLD - AFMTC Florida
BLACK - Ibadan, Nigeria
SILVER - Singapore


The Spheredrop network had stations at:
China Lake, CA
Temple City, CA
White Sands, NM
Cedar Rapids, IA
Huntsville, AL


PLEASE WITHDRAW.

30 September 2013
Subj: Another reason to withdraw Von Braun's Secret



By the time the second stage fired off the vehicle was traveling horizontally, therefore any so-called anti-gravity boost would be irrelevant.

Do you understand that?

Source: Technical report on Juno.

Richard Hoagland's incredible arrogance

        Richard Hoagland made a surprise appearance on Howard Hughes' The Unexplained web-radio show yesterday. I say "surprise" because he didn't promote it at all. Nothing on his Foolbook page^{note 1}(last updated May 2012), his twitter feed (taken over by his homeopathist woman) or even the awful Enterprisemission website (last updated six months or so ago.) In other words, his PR is non-existent these days. If I hadn't come across a reference to it on Coastgab I'd have missed this supreme example of arrogance.

        Hughes had obviously been getting e-mails from people urging him to get a little tougher with the Hoagland propaganda machine. Make him answer some of the many, many criticisms that have been flung at him (and not just on this blog, by any means.) Hughes tried hard, but Hoagland was having none of it.

10:57 Hughes: (after a brief discussion of social propaganda) There would be those who would say -- and I'm going to say it to you now -- that this is a very good backdrop for people to spread lies, disinformation, or just pure misguided falsehood.
Hoagland: Comes with the territory. 
Hughes: Those things of course are things which...
Hoagland: ...trolls and disinformers are spreading all manner of lies against those people that are trying to buck the tide, trying to actually... you know, sound a clarion call about truth, and standing up for what you believe and what you can verify in evidence, and the scientific process in the area that I have chosen. Yeah, we have quite a few enemies. And they're the same tired list. A lot of them are very nicely paid, so their job, 24/7, is to make sure that whatever ideas we put out, whatever papers we publish, whatever discussions we enter into in public media, are denigrated at every turn.
Hughes: OK, well I want to get into this quickly. You know what I'm going to say to you now. I get a lot of e-mails about you...
Hoagland: Who cares?
Hughes: A lot of good e-mails about you...
Hoagland: Look, it is one o'clock AM my time in Albuquerque. It is 8 o'clock -- 8:15 actually --  your time.  You know, I'm doing this because I care about your show, I care about your audience. I'm not going to waste time answering stupid ridiculous ask... accusations from known trolls. Trolls who have in the past tried to actually bribe me. Out of sedition and subterfuge.
Hughes: All right, I want to ask you....
Hoagland:    ...to provide them data, and did not have the guts to tell me that they wanted to subject it to independent test. They  actually went through this whole incredible chicanery to get access to information that we published freely on the Enterprise website.^{note 2}  These people have no character. They are certainly not any people that I would... would possibly want to answer to because they're not in the conversation. They are deliberate disinformation artists designed to submerge the truth. So let's move on to the substantive issues in the limited time we have.
Hughes: All right, let's do that, but let me just address one thing if I may, and then we move on, in 30 seconds.
Hoagland: I will not answer any of these stupid accusations. None, zero.
Hughes: All right, I tried. The person e-mailed me and asked me to make a point to you about Explorer 1 and what you said about Explorer 1,^{note 3} and how that may have been based on incorrect assumptions...
Hoagland: You're trying to do it anyway.
Hughes: Well, I'm trying to do it anyway because that's... that's my job, I'm a broadcaster...
Hoagland: It is a stupid, pointless discussion.

        Well, Mr. Hoagland may consider the discussion pointless, but I think there's every reason to discuss his failure to address what is unquestionably a gross mathematical error. He calls himself a scientist, he concedes that the error exists, but fails to correct it for five years and refuses to discuss the point. Shameful.

        At that point Hughes gave up and moved on, although some people might think he should have just put the phone down. So it was on to the usual performance. Comet 67P is an abandoned space station, Ceres is artificial, even Pluto may be found to be a spaceship when New Horizons arrives next month. On comet 67P, with wonderful imagery still coming in from the ESA's Rosetta mission, he insisted that the science involved was merely a front, a cover story. "Science can be done in an afternoon," he declared, revealing his gob-smacking ignorance of the realities. The real mission, he insisted, is learning about the extraterrestrials who used to live there. At this, Hughes had another valiant attempt to divert the conversation into some semblance of logic:

26:25 Hughes: If there was a secret agenda behind this mission, with all of these nations involved, does it strike you as strange or interesting in any way that so far, nobody has broken ranks and actually spoken about the real purpose of this mission?
Hoagland: Well, what would happen to them if they did? If they didn't have the evidence?
Hughes: People do disappear don't they?
Hoagland: I'm not thinking that, I'm talking about just professionally. They would be completely ostracized from all the other folks. They would be cut off from access to any more data, the good data. They would not be able to publish, they wouldn't have a job, because the job comes from one of the European governments or the private contractors who are getting their money from one of the European governments as part of this consortium called ESA, the European Space Agency. So they'd basically be reduced to driving a cab. Who in their right mind if the game is rigged, and even if they wound up on... on... you know, some... let's say the BBC. Who the hell would believe them if they were one voice in a chorus saying "You're nuts. You've cracked. You obviously have lost it, you need to go to a nice home. You know, take off for a few years."

        That would be good advice for Richard Hoagland himself right now. He came across as a case of senile dementia, frankly.

        There's one other event to watch for in July, other than the Pluto encounter. Promise of a total redesign of Hoagland's Geocities-style website. Wonderful, if it ever happens.

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

[1] He actually has two FB pages. Nothing on the other one, either.

[2] I assume he's referring here to this brilliant high-risk gambit from Irene Gardner three years ago. It is not true that all the information was available on enterprisemission -- he published no baselines and no controls, and without those the data is useless. It is not true that Irene didn't "have the guts" to say that she wanted to subject the data to independent test. She specifically said that was the whole point.

[3] Here he's definitely referring to this. Although Explorer 1 is a hobby-horse I've ridden around a bit, here and elsewhere, it was not I who urged Howard Hughes to press that point.

Report on what Richard Hoagland has described as his "new book"

        During Richard Hoagland's"interview" last Friday night with Coast-to-Coast host Richard Syrett, I lost count of the number of times he plugged what he called "my new book", Pluto: New Horizons for a Lost Horizon. (I place "interview" in quotes because Hoagland's obnoxious arrogance was front and center, as he talked over Syrett and basically attempted to take over the whole show.^{note 1})

        Well, I don't usually blame C2C guests for plugging books—they get no other compensation for giving up most of a night's sleep (and by the way, it really works, as I have reported passim.) But in this case the plugging was strident and the problem is that IT'S NOT HOAGLAND'S BOOK. It's Richard Grossinger's book. Grossinger was the original publisher of The Monuments of Mars after Simon & Shuster reverted Hoagland's contract for non-performance. Grossinger wrote at some length about his pal Hoagland in 2010. Here's an excerpt:

"Hoagland is a unique mixture of amateur scientist, genius inventor, scam artist, and performer, blending true, legitimate speculative science with his own extrapolations, tall tales, and inflations. He is a brilliant and glorious myth-maker and a evidence-based scientist at the same time."

New Horizons for a procrastinating author
        The book is 300 pages long and contains 31 essays by a smörgåsbord of writers. None of the names ring a bell with me except Jason Martell and Grossinger himself, who contributes #2 in addition to a 44-page introduction (which is quite well-written, in fact.) Hoagland himself is #3 up, strutting around the book for 64 pages. His chapter title is New Horizon ... for a Lost Horizon, and it's recognizably Hoagland but ever so slightly toned down. We get lots of "extraordinary," "astonishing" and "stunning." There are the unmotivated italics and the bizarre ellipses, but no all-caps overemphasis and no exclamation points. Deo gratias.

        Well, here's a flavor of the sheer mendacity of this material, as Hoagland tries to substantiate his thesis that the solar system is replete with evidence of a now-dead advanced civilization:

"Our research has now revealed that this stunning, new solar system reality first became known to the U.S. Department of Defense under the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s—in part via a pioneering, top-secret JPL (U.S. Army) effort at a first unmanned circumlunar reconnaissance mission, "Project Red Socks." We believe the shocking results of this clandestine mission formed the real reason behind NASA's sudden public emergence after Sputnik, and the rapid congressional authorization, only one year later in 1958, of NASA as the loudly-proclaimed, lead "civilian space agency of the U.S.A."

"This was the perfect cover—in the 1950s world of perpetual Soviet pursuit of any and all technological supremacy over the West—for NASA's real, long-term covert mission:
To secretly ascertain ... from NASA's inception ... the full extent of (potential) military threats (or benefits) of these long-abandoned, ancient ET derelicts ... as well as those ancient surface installations still partially preserved on various planets and moons (Cydonia et al.); the surviving riches of an entire, astonishing Type II Civilization in our own backyard—whose extraordinary legacy and scientific potential was only fully accepted (even within NASA) when Apollo astronauts fulfilled their real Kennedy Mission and clandestinely returned, beginning in 1969, unquestionable intelligently-designed and manufactured ET artifacts to Earth—from the Moon."^note2

Ahem.

        He writes of "the shocking results" of Project Red Socks. The most shocking result was that the project never happened. It was way too ambitious for a group of people who would not even succeed in orbiting a tiny 14kg satellite for another three months. Red Socks was a panic reaction to the Soviet success with Sputnik 1, conceived as a series of nine lunar orbiters which would, at a minimum, return photographs of the far side. It was even suggested that they might deliver a nuclear weapon to the surface, then wait patiently for some of the debris to come flying back to Earth by sheer good luck (I almost added an exclamation point there, tsk tsk.) Some vestiges of Red Socks were folded into the Pioneer 4 mission in 1959, but basically, it was a non-starter.

        As for that utterly daft allegation that Apollo returned the technical artifacts of a lunar civilization—he made the same claim in the introduction to Dark Mission. He did not then, and does not now, produce one scintilla of evidence for that assertion. On the contrary, the evidence is all against him. We know what was brought back from the Moon. It was meticulously catalogued in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where Hoagland's pal Ken Johnston worked. Surely Ken could set the Hoaxster straight on that. It's all very well him saying "Ah well, that's what they want you to think"—without some evidence, he just looks like a buffoon. In Dark Mission he further alleged that the lunar goodies were then subjected to reverse engineering. Well, where are the results, Richard?

        I love the fact that Amazon categorizes this work as Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Folklore & Mythology. Yes indeed, Amazon.

Update 10th April:
        Oy veh, Coast to Coast saw fit to give Hoagland yet another two hours last night to mention "my book" a dozen times. He talked at some length about private enterprise Moon landings, then added:

"Another reason to buy the book is that part of the proceeds will go toward funding this enterprise."

        FACEPALM. There are 31 authors to pay. After publishing costs the book might generate as much as $50,000—probably less. How much use does Hoagland think the residuals would be to a manned lunar landing mission?

Liar.

======================================
[1]  Everything in the show is recycled Hoaglandiana, but it's worth following that Youtube link, just to enjoy the mocking comments.

[2] That second half is all one sentence. That's Hoagland for you.

Lies of the year, 2013

        Instead of an end-year blog index, here's a handy reference to the lies of Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara as this year comes to a close. The score is Hoagland 12, Bara 24.

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

HOAGLAND

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

There's a Nike sneaker on Mars. (Originally from the Conscious Life Expo, October 2012, popped up on Youtube in January)

During the Mayan Calendar Apocalypse, HAARP was used to prevent the planet from tipping over. (Coast-to-Coast, January)

The scary asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk was a weapon sent by a malevolent extraterrestrial force as a warning. (Coast-to-Coast, February)

I have successfully measured the torsion field. The predictions of the model are overwhelmingly confirmed. (Red Ice Radio, February)

William Shatner's appearance in the Oscar telecast on 24th February, with a "time travel" theme, was a deliberate hint that JPL would contrive a software failure on the Curiosity Mars rover a week later. (Coast-to-Coast, March)

Neil Armstrong likened himself to a parrot in his 25th anniversary speech at the White House. (Awake & Aware conference, Glendale)

The Accutron is a really robust portable field sensor that allows me to monitor the changes in the field strength in and around these sacred sites. (Coast-to-Coast, July)

Someone's living on the Moon.  (Coast-to-Coast, July)

I was the first to publish the hypothesis that Europa might have an ocean under its icy crust. (Coast-to-Coast, July)

The Apollo 15 "Hammer and feather" demo was my idea. (Coast-to-Coast, July)

An image from Surveyor 6 clearly shows a glass dome on the Lunar horizon. (Art Bell on Sirius XM, September) (additional link)

The Chinese Chang'e 3  spacecraft was deliberately landed at 19.5° longitude on the Moon as a message to extraterrestrial intelligence (Coast-to-Coast, December)

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

BARA 

(not including the additional lies in Ancient Aliens on Mars)

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

Seven astronauts were killed on the Columbia space shuttle because NASA switched to "green" insulating foam on the external fuel tank. The original foam never broke off.  (January, FB)

There's an obvious red stripe on the Moonrock we call 'Data's Head.' (Youtube, January and Higherside Chats, March)

Dark Mission and The Choice were both international best sellers. (Notes for Conscious Life, January)

When you're in the middle of a meteor shower, they come at you from all directions. (FB, February)

The lunar craters Asada and Proclus A are satellite dishes. They don't look like it on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images (which are far, far, better than the ones Bara shows) because NASA has "sanitized" them. (Fringe Radio Network, February)

Historical flooding on Mars confirms Hoagland's "Tidal Model". (FB, February)

James Webb was the first NASA Administrator. (Dark Matters Radio, March)

It's been 53 years since the invention of the rocket, and we've made no advance since then. (Dark Matters Radio, March)

All the energy in the universe comes from higher dimensions. (Dark Matters Radio, March)

The landing site & time of Apollo 16 were contrived so that the constellation Orion would be at an elevation of 33°. (Dark Matters Radio, March and Higherside Chats, March)

Apollo 13 required an unusual number of mid-course corrections on the return journey because it was not benefiting from the spinning gyros. (Dark Matters Radio, March)

The Moon regulates the Earth's magnetic field. This is not accepted by conventional astronomy but is well explained by hyperdimensional physics. (Higherside Chats, March)

Mars has a really elliptical orbit. (Higherside Chats, March)

Lunar glass is twice as strong as steel. (Higherside Chats, March and Inception Radio, June)

Apollo astronauts brought back technology. (Higherside Chats, March)

During the Apollo missions, 'Santa Claus' was a code word for UFOs. (Higherside Chats, March)

Isis Avenue and 33rd St intersect. Right there is a pyramid and an occult symbol. (Originally from a CEF Research conference, 2008, revived on Bara's blog)

Direct imaging of a large planet 56 AU from HD 95086 "Totally supports the fission model of planetary formation." (FB, June)

There are unmistakable glass towers at Sinus Medii. (Inception Radio, June)

Terry James, a.k.a. kksamurai, was not the originator of the Lunar ziggurat image. (Inception Radio, June)

A newly-discovered exoplanet of star GJ 504 "fits the solar fission theory perfectly." (Bara blog, August)

There is no such thing as pareidolia. (Bara blog, October)

My critics (and I assume he includes me) have been sexually harassing my FBgfs. (Coast-to-Coast, October and also in print, in the foreword to AAoM)

There are gobs of alien bases on the Moon, many of which I document in my recent book. (Bara blog, November)

An engineer accuses Hoagland & Bara

        Derek Eunson Ph.D., who comments here as binaryspellbook, believes in calling a spade a spade. Better still, a fucking spade, if the adjective seems appropriate. Derek totally shares my contempt for Hoagland's faulty mathematics and Bara's "insult as a substitute for rebuttal," and he laid into those two fawlty boys by e-mail this week. Nothing back from Bara or his sweetly passive manager, but a little fantasy back from Hoagland. Since both of them are keen to see this material disseminated as widely as possible, it's my pleasure to republish here, unedited except for one teensy copy-edit.

==========^^^===========

Subj: Lunar anomalies, lies, and disgraceful mendacity.
To: RCH, Mike Bara
Cc: Henrik Palmgren, Richard Dolan, Mike Bara Mgmt
From: derek james eunson 8/21/13

Dear Richard and Mike,

This is an open letter which will be plastered all over every piece of social media myself my colleagues, and our children can find. Isn't it truly amazing how many people you can reach on social media when you get teenagers and young adults involved. Don't you find it astonishing how our children have taken to such things.

Now on to the truth. I realize that this is something that both of you are unfamiliar with. Nevertheless, shall we press on regardless.

To document the bare faced lies you two bandits have been perpetrating over the years would require a ridiculous amount of time. However, since I actually have a real job as a real engineer I will have to cherry pick. And oh my, how big the cherry tree is.

Hoagland's preposterous lies about Von Braun and Explorer1 have been exposed because he couldn't even fill in the numbers and crank the handle on one of the most well known (and simple) rocket equations. I refer of course to the equation derived by K.Tsiolkovsky. Yet this utter garbage is still on his utterly shambolic 1990's style webpage after all these years. Even after multiple instances of Hoagland's atrocious mathematical skills being pointed out. The man has no shame. You couldn't even paint a red nose on this clown. His hubris knows no bounds.

The torsion waves Hoagland pretends to measure with a 40 year old wristwatch and a laptop computer don't exist. Even if they did exist Hoagland has done nothing to prove it. In fact his method is so far short of the scientific method that it is simply laughable. No baselines, no controls, no calibration and no fucking data. Hoagland even refuses to share his data with what he calls "complete strangers." This is what we real engineers and scientists do all the time you dimwit. It is called peer review.

Hoagland told us that comet Elenin was a spacecraft with a hyperdimensional shield generator on board. He attempted to prove this by faking yet another image. First by legitimately stacking frames and then using photoshop to manipulate the final image. True to form Hoagland refuses to tell anyone what frames and in what order he used them.

 He also told us that Elenin had a message for humanity sent from 13,000 years ago by our highly advanced ancestors the Shem Su Hor (the followers of Horus) who apparently had something important to tell us. I must have missed it. Although Hoagland tried to tell the world that the Arab spring was due to Elenin's influence.Yes he really did say all that stuff, and he calls himself a scientist. Stop laughing, he really did say that.

 Comet Elenin disintegrated, everyone with an interest in comets saw it. Hoagland lied about this too, and tried to show an earlier picture as "proof" that Elenin was still intact. He milked that one big time, before being caught rotten on Facebook by many critics. He was caught so rotten that he had to abandon his facebook account (although it still exists he hasn't posted there in well over a year) as he was being made a laughing stock. Not that he already wasn't.

The whole disgrace is catalogued in a wiki page dedicated to Hoagland's spunk-trumpetry.

Hoagland insists that the wiki page is invalid because NASA edits it and are out to get him. Yes he really did say that too. Fucking clownhat.

Mikey boy Bara is simply a thoroughly disagreeable little man. He has no flair for mathematics, lies uncontrollably, and likes to refer to his critics as homosexuals or douchebags. Unless you are female in which case he will ask you not to reproduce because you are too ugly.
I will simply refer you to this rational-wiki page dedicated to the one and only Mike 'Homophobe' Bara.

DJE

 ==========^^^===========

From: RCH
Date: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 10:49 PM
Subject: Re: Lunar anomalies, lies, and disgraceful mendacity.
To: ....


Derek,

Now, now ... temper ... temper ....             :)

And please ... DO post this as far and wide as possible -- gratuitous obscenities included (of course)!

It will ONLY drive more folks to read what you (literally) are "raving about" ... and, to find out what we ACTUALLY have said (and written) ....

And, thanks to YOU, to finally "open their eyes."


 RCH

==========^^^===========

Subj: Lunar anomalies, lies, and disgraceful mendacity.
To: RCH, Mike Bara
Cc: Henrik Palmgren, Richard Dolan, Mike Bara Mgmt
From: derek james eunson
Date: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 11:46 PM 

Hi Richard 

Obscenities are a favourite of your former co-author. I have the screenshots to prove it. Mikey boy likes to call female critics "cunts."

Both you and I know this is unacceptable as a man. We may have our differences Richard, but you will agree that speaking to a lassie in such terms is not the actions of a man. Bara would do well to stick with the rudimentary grunts and gestures he was obviously taught as a fledgling.

Moving on. Please respond to specifics. For example Von Braun's secret. You can't, can you. Because you have been proved wrong. Big time. 

Yes the teenagers have been unleashed. Bad for you mate,  good for the sheeple rednecks you plan to fleece.

Please delete the thoroughly discredited Von Braun's secret. It makes a respected scientist like yourself look like a tit.

Oh and can you please state what units torsion waves are measured in. And hows about some data for we real engineers to discredit. 

You know, baselines and stuff like that. Bring it on man, you v me on C2C. You can make it happen. But Noory must not be allowed to moderate since he is under your spell, and therefore biased as well as a dunce.

Kindest Regards
DJE.

==========^^^===========

Editorial comment:
        I can't imagine what Hoagland means by "what we ACTUALLY have said (and written)". Does he think there's SOME OTHER VERSION of Von Braun's Secret that does not contain unpardonable errors? Does he think all his writings about the Inaccutron will magically yield some actual science, if you just look hard enough? I don't think that's how it works, Richard. I join with Dr. Eunson in asking you to retract. Demanding it, actually.

Hoagland confused about everything, including his own copyright

        Richard Hoagland's latest attempt to write something coherent, a miniature web-essay titled NASA Goes Apartment Hunting, displays his utter confusion, even about his own copyright claims. At the head of the piece it's declared to be © 2012 The Enterprise Mission — at the foot it's Copyright © 1996 - 2013 Richard C. Hoagland, All Rights Reserved. Well, Richard dear, which is it? It can't be both (and I don't think you can claim copyright for a year that hasn't yet arrived, either.)

        Fearlessly defying Hoagland's ferocious team of crack copyright attorneys, I quote the first sentence:

"At the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting, held in San Francisco, Monday, December 3, 2012, NASA quietly announced a “new target” for its Curiosity rover in the next few days..."

        He really loves to insert that word "quietly." It conveys a subtle atmosphere of intrigue and conspiracy but it means absolutely nothing at all. On page 58 of Dark Mission we find that...

"The Space Agency was quietly founded as a direct adjunct to the Department of Defense..."

        I wasn't present as President Eisenhower signed the Space Act into law, but I really doubt there was anything quiet about it. Plus, it almost goes without saying, Hoagland's interpretation of Sec. 305 (i) is totally wrong, as I pointed out some time ago.

Hoag-perbole

        We only have to wait for line 8 of the latest piece to read the expected Hoagland hyperbole:

...those results will ultimately alter the lives of every human being on Earth. [RCH's emphasis]

        He means the result of Curiosity's investigation of the place they've called Shaler, which is exactly the place Hoagland has claimed to be the ruins of motels and apartment blocks. The significance of the nickname—indicating that the formation is of shale, not drywall and stucco—really seems to have escaped him.

image credit: JPL

In late July 2011, on the Howard Hughes internet radio show, Hoagland said

o This is going to change EVERYTHING
o These images are MIND-BOGGLING
o This will CHANGE OUR LIVES FOR EVER

        On that occasion, he was talking about images of the asteroid Vesta. So even the diehard Branch Hoaglandians must by now have got the message that everything the Master says and writes will change our lives for ever. And therefore, obviously, none of it will.

        Later, he ascribes JPL's decision to have a look-see at Shaler to his appearance on Coast to Coast AM last Saturday -- a likely story, I don't think -- and quite wrongly writes that the label on Dr Grotzinger's laptop lid is the one word BUILDING (it isn't, it's the motto BUILDING CURIOSITY).

        Most hilarious of all, he ends with an invitation to JOIN THE ENTERPRISE CONFERENCE in order to discuss all this false information with "other members of the Enterprise Crew". Anybody who has not already seen that page really should click through and read. This rubbish was written ten years ago, and describes a $3.95/month subscription forum that ceased to exist less than a year later, leaving more than a few subscribers feeling cheated. The moderator is supposed to be Keith Rowland, who severed all connection with Enterprise Mission around that same time.

        Thus, Richard C. Hoagland achieves new heights of fraudulent inducement and sheer misinformation. Confused, dangerously confused....

Spaced out

        Meanwhile, Mike Bara's in London (Shoreditch, actually--not the nicest part by any means.) Since he's with Maureen Elsberry we may deduce that he'll shortly be featured on the Internet TV weekly Spacing Out! The production company is Open Minds, by which we may possibly deduce that the brains of the organization fell out long ago. Further confirmation is had by inspecting their list of past interviewees, and sampling the show. In an ep I happened across at random, Maureen and her nerdy partner were arranged in front of a stack of Ampex 2" Quad videotape spools. Since the Quad format has been obsolete since 1976, it gave me the creeps, slightly.

        Mike has posted a jpg of him holding an Emmy statuette. I didn't know there was a category "most factual errors in a 30-min documentary." We live and we learn.

Update:
        Curiosity has now arrived at Shaler. Do I see a discarded sign saying CHECKOUT TIME 11 AM. NO EXCEPTIONS? No, guess not. Richard Hoagland must be mistaken.

photo credit: JPL

        This frame provides a very useful scale reference, because of the shadow of the masthead. The shadow would be the same width as the masthead itself, comparable with the width of an adult human head. So Hoagland's apartments & motels are miniature indeed.

The Zombie Ziggy, Day 3

        First and most important, everyone should see Stuart Robbins' update of the video destroying Richard Hoagland's claims. He's really taken pains over this and done a first-class job.

        Second, as noted in comments to yesterday's post, Hoagland is unapologetic about his lies (oh what a surprise) and comments "I find it fascinating the amount of vitriol my posting this simple image on "Coast" seems to have caused" That's not vitriol, Richard, it's scientific review and criticism. "Vitriol" would be, for example, telling a (male) critic that he would qualify as John Travolta's masseuse.  Or simply writing "You're a fucking moron." Like Mike Bara does.

        But the plum of the day (so far, Wednesday still has a long way to go in my time zone) is Mike Bara's own blog post.  It's absolutely hilarious.

"...this isn't even the most interesting thing on the image. Can you find the tank? Can you find the gun emplacement? Can you find the flying saucer in a hanger[sic] recessed inside a mountain?"

        Oh, read it for yourself and please comment to Mike, if you can get through the captchas that are reminiscent of junkyard dogs. This was my own comment, which I reproduce here in the certainty that it'll never appear there:

 "Mike, the people who have been "attacking" RCH over the ziggy fiasco are not haters or morons. The principal critics are a) A Ph.D. and trained astronomer who has published on lunar cratering in peer-reviewed journals, and b) Another Ph.D. who works as a design engineer.

I absolutely _knew_ you would claim that the online version had been altered. I predicted it in yesterday's 'Emoluments of Mars' blog. YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY SUSTAIN that lame idea. The amount of noise on your faked up version is at least five times what it is on the original.

As to your further claim that "it's my Ziggurat" -- were you the source of the version that was posted on Holloworbs in (I believe) 2003?

Mike, you have chosen to write on scientific topics without having the education or knowledge to do so accurately. The predictable result is that you have made absolutely unforgivable factual errors. It does no good whatsoever for you to then insult your critics and accuse them of being homosexual as though that were an insult. When you make gross errors in science, your errors are going to be pointed out. It's not a question of hate, and I assure you none of your critics is afraid of you, or "scared of the truth" as you often claim. Facts are what they are, and I for one intend to continue pointing that out. Any way I can."

Update:

Mike Bara just facebooked: "I found it on the web but I don't know who did the original enhancement." So now we know—Both Hoagland & Bara are claiming some other person's work as their own. Business as usual.

The seismic ignorance of Richard C. Hoagland

James Concannon writes:

        Believe it or not, folks, next Sunday will be the first anniversary of the Fukushima earthquake/tsunami—formally known as the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, although not many of us round-eyes would recognize it under that name. The epicenter of the main shock was 38° 19' N, 142° 22' E.

        Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind when remembering that tragedy is the suffering of the local population—almost 20,000 dead, 6,000 injured, 100,000 children made homeless, 200,000 buildings destroyed. But the second thing that comes to my mind is the shameless and despicable way in which Richard Hoagland sought to exploit the event to promote his utterly baseless theories involving occult influences, nazis in space, and "hyperdimensional" geography. This blog noted his performance on C2C-AM at the time.

        On his Facebook page, Hoagland declared that the earthquake was deliberately triggered by "someone." In support of that ridiculous statement, he flat-out lied, stating that the latitude was twice 19.5, and the longitude was 120° East of the Great Pyramid. I posted as follows:

Hoagland: I notice you want to force the Sendai earthquake into confirming your nonsensical theories by falsifying its longitude, just as you falsified the latitude of the Port-au-Prince event. FYI, 120° east of the Great Pyramid is the 151° 08' longitude -- a full 8° 46' out into the Pacific Ocean away from the epicenter.

I also notice that you attach significance to the 38° 19' latitude of the Sendai earthquake as double 19.5. Your theory as published predicts energy upwelling at 19.5°, NOT twice that or three times that or any other multiple of it. 

Hoagland's rejoinder was particularly weak, I thought:

mar 25 04:30
Remember, we are NOT talking about precise longitude and latitude "lines" ... but "bands of activity" -- as with any physical process ....

        But the best was yet to come. After the additional 7.1 magnitude tremor at 38° 15' N, 141° 38' E on 7th April, Hoagland posted this gob-smackingly ignorant piece of poppycock:

That "Fukushima" was a Planned Event -- by "someone" -- is almost a certainty now; I mean, what are the odds of ANOTHER major quake (the 7.1 a couple days ago) -- complete with similar tsunami warnings -- with an epicenter (and depth!) only a few miles different from the earlier, devestating [sic] 9.0 quake ... and all, by "acident?!"

        What are the odds? Almost 100% certain, Richard. It's called an aftershock. Duhhhh...

--James Concannon

More false claims by Hoagland

          At the conclusion of last night's Coast-to-Coast AM news segment, featuring "science adviser" Richard Hoagland, George Noory said "Richard C. Hoagland predicted this 30 years ago  ... and he was right."

          He was referring to this announcement about Europa, the icy-smooth moon of Jupiter. Earlier, on Faceboodle, Hoagland himself had said the same:

I will be on "Coast" tonight ... discussing NASA's latest announcement re "the apparent existence of LAKES, just under the surface ice of Europa, Jupiter's second major moon" -- and how this new data could impact the search for life in the much larger, still unconfirmed, "global oceans of Europa."

Thirty-two years ago, I scientifically predicted the existence of such a "global ocean" under the ice fields of Europa, and examined the possibilities for advanced biology.

           This is far from being the first time Hoagland has boasted that he predicted, in a long, long article in Star and Sky Magazine in January 1980, not only the sub-surface oceans but also the possibility that they might harbor alien life-forms. He's mentioned it countless times on C2C and written about it on his amazingly retro web site.

          So what's the truth? The truth is that George Noory was dead wrong. Hoagland did not predict what was announced yesterday in Nature online by Britney Schmidt, Wes Patterson, Don Blankenship, and Paul Schenk. Hoagland himself, in his FB post, managed not to be exactly wrong by means of very careful choice of language, but he was certainly, and intentionally, misleading.

Oceans and lakes

          In fact, Schmidt et al's new model is not about the oceans Hoagland described in 1980. Technically, he was correct in writing that the ocean is "still unconfirmed," although it would be hard to find a planetary astronomer to dissent from this widely-accepted idea. The recent controversy has been over the thickness of the surface ice on Europa. A kilometer or so, or 30 km?¹ The answer matters a lot for exobiology, because under the thick-ice model it's hard to see how nutrients and energy could circulate. The new idea posits thick ice, but lakes inside the ice crust. And it's in those lakes, not the main ocean below, that the scientists now suggest life is a possibility.

Image Credit: Britney Schmidt/Dead Pixel FX/University of Texas at Austin

So Hoagland was adrift in writing about the search for life in the oceans.

What did he actually write back in 1980? Well, this, for example:

Primeval Jupiter, with a magnetic field significantly weaker than at present ... would have interacted with Europa in a manner highly reminiscent of the present Io situation: an intense several-million-ampere current, under high voltage, set up between both Europan poles and the conductive Jovian "photosphere" below. The result staggers the imagination.

Beyond heating the atmosphere above the poles this massive current would have led inexorably to a set of side effects unparalleled on Earth -- like brilliant night and day aurorae constantly aflame across the polar skies, potential discharge processes between the upper atmosphere and the surface of Europa, massive "superbolts" of lightning, even in clear air. And one more thing: An inescapable set of organic synthesis reactions between the major and minor constituents within this atmosphere!²

          The million-amp current is a fiction. It doesn't exist, and it doesn't need to exist for biogenesis to have credibility. Sufficient energy to keep the ocean liquid is provided by tidal heating.

          Hoagland recognized that fact when it came to the heart of the matter—his actual prediction of the global ocean and the possible life it might contain:

There, in the tidal calculations, was the provocative potential that beneath a thin, outer shell of ice, the bulk of Europa's planetary ocean was still ocean. It may not have frozen solid as Jupiter grew dim. The ever-present tidal forces from that immense planetary object, even at the distance of Europa, are capable of adding energy to the massive, frozen crust -- energy which, disspiated in the crust, maintain the bulk of that satellite-wide sea as liquid water!

If true, the continued existence of the solar system's deepest planetary ocean ... presents us with a staggering set of possibilities, including the independent evolution beyond those pre-organic chemicals and acids into the object of our centuries-long quest: the solar system's second world with life.³

          Fine. Yes, he predicted it. What he didn't do, and still doesn't, and did not do last night on the radio, is to credit the numerous planetary scientists who had predicted it well before January 1980. The literature on Europa includes a paper by John S. Lewis from 1971⁴ making the same suggestion, and one by Cassen, Peale and Reynolds actually entitled "Is There Liquid Water on Europa?" from September 1979⁵. Hoagland's critics have pointed to the latter paper, which used closely similar language to the Star and Sky article, as a highly likely direct source. Hoagland acknowledged Cassen, Peale and Reynolds in his piece but made it seem as though only he, Richard C. Hoagland, had had the insight to interpret their work as meaning probable oceans and possible biology. That was not true.

          As we know, Richard Hoagland, not actually being the scientist he claims to be, very seldom answers his critics. He prefers to ignore them and hope his know-it-all manner will get him by. Specifically on the question of precedence on Europa's ocean, the critics have included Gary Posner and Ralph Greenberg, and Hoagland has made an exception, answering that he never claimed to have been the first to make the prediction. Another critic, Phil Plait, has investigated that proposition and found it to be false.

          In light of Hoagland's recent prevarications about Deepwater Horizon, Phobos, Vesta, Elenin, and YU55 (see numerous postings on this blog passim) nobody could honestly be surprised that this is another case of Hoagland preening in utter disregard for the truth.

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

Update:

           Last night (17th November) Hoagland removed all doubt that he is still making false claims, posting in Facelandia:

[M]y late friend, Arthur C. Clark, graciously acknowledged in "2010" that the initial idea for "life in Europa's oceans"--

Came from ME. :)

Arthur C. Clarke (note correct spelling) was mistaken, as Ralph Greenberg noted ten years ago:

On June 19th and 20th, 1979, the conference "Life in the Universe" took place at NASA's Ames Research Center. Benton Clark gave a lecture [titled] Sulfur: Fountainhead of Life in the Universe...

Clark then explained how sulfur could play the role of oxygen, and that deep-sea volcanic emissions could potentially provide all the necessary ingredients for a self-sustained ecosystem. In the final part of his lecture, Clark raised the possibility that life might exist in undersurface oceans on the icy satellites in our Solar System, including Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto in particular. 

There's more at the Greenberg and Plait links above.

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

1.Billings, Sandra E.; and Kattenhorn, Simon A. (2005). "The great thickness debate: Ice shell thickness models for Europa and comparisons with estimates based on flexure at ridges". Icarus 177 (2): 397–412. Bibcode 2005Icar..177..397B. doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2005.03.013

2.  Star and Sky Magazine, January 1980, p.23

3.  Star and Sky Magazine, January 1980, p.28

4.  "Satellites of the Outer Planets: Their Physical and Chemical Nature." Icarus,  vol.15, 1971.

5. Geophysical Research Letters,  Vol. 6, September 1979

Acronyms of the day: NASA, ALSEP, RTG & RCH

        Say what you like about the science in the Apollo Program (and, let's face it, who doesn't?) but at least they tried. Dave Scott, CDR of Apollo 15, actually made his fingernails bleed with the effort of drilling a deep enough hole for the heat probe.

        The majority of the time of EVA-1 (Apollos 12-17 -- there really was no science on 11) was devoted to setting out an array of science instruments near the landing point. The instruments included seismometers, atmosphere and solar wind analysis, and a gravimeter, as well as the more famous laser retro-reflectors that are still being used today (albeit degraded by dust.) The kit and caboodle was known collectively as the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package—ALSEP. Electrical power that most of the instruments required was provided by a Pu₂₃₈-loaded Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator—RTG.

        Right out of the box, the RTG provided nearly 80 watts of power, but its oomph fell off quite steeply over time. The figure below is from page 4-47 of the official ALSEP Termination Report. It shows that after 63 lunations—five years— the Apollo 17 RTG had faded to 61% output and three instruments had already ceased to function. The Apollo 12 ALSEP, planted three years earlier, had declined to just 20 watts. Its design life was only a year (ref. p.2-16 of the same report.)


        In late 1977 the decision was taken to stop monitoring the telemetry. To turn ALSEP off, basically, except for passive experiments like the reflectors. Scientists Frank Press and Gary Latham protested, but were overruled. Not only was the ultimate life of the RTGs obviously in its terminal phase, but the room in Houston used for ALSEP data reception was badly needed for Skylab Ops. The cost of running the operation may also have been a consideration.

Turning off the Moon
        On 30th September 1977 ALSEP was switched off. It so happens that I was personally present on that occasion, covering it for television. The engineers invited Frank Press to poke the button that would complete the power-down sequence. He looked for a moment as if he'd refuse, but he finally steeled himself, stabbed at the button and turned away with a look of disgust.

A Pseudoscientist speaks
        Imagine my surprise, therefore, when on 6th October 2009—a full 32 years later!—I heard Richard Hoagland say on Coast to Coast AM that ALSEP seismometers would record the forthcoming impact of the LCROSS Centaur rocket. The notion that ALSEP was turned off in 1977 was, he announced, "another NASA lie."

        Editors at wikipedia noticed this too, and made a point of it on Hoagland's page. Yesterday the topic of lunar science came up in Facebooklandia, and Neville Parchemin asked Hoagland whether he had personally seen any ALSEP data since 1977. Hoagland replied quickly:

No, I said "in all likelihood [based on NASA's proven OTHER lies -- as documented in "Dark Mission"...] the ALSEP network -- especially the critical seismometers -- was NOT actually shut down on that highly publicised date in 1977"; if that is, indeed, the case, then why would there be ANY evidence in "the public domain" to contradict the official NASA statement re ALSEP's "budget termination" ...?

Incidentally, that Wikipedia entry has been TOTALLY edited (and re-edited) by NASA -- many times -- thus, it is full of outright lies about me ... AND my work. :)

        It's safe to decode that first part as "Actually I don't have any evidence whatsoever to support that ignorant and malicious allegation."

More paranoia
        As for the second part, the edit history of that wikipage is available for anyone to inspect, and it shows no official action by NASA at all. One editor works at NASA Goddard but specifically states that his wiki-activities are not wiki-official.

Out of power
        Bet you didn't think it could get any more ridiculous, didya? Well, stand by. Parchemin followed up by asking specifically what were the chances of the RTGs providing any useful power after the elapse of 40-odd years. Here's what RCH said about RTGs:

I looked into this (briefly), back in 2009, as LCROSS was approaching its impact with the Moon; I was wondering if "a still working ALSEP seismic network" could, secretly, provide unique data from the coming LCROSS impact (as well as the planned impacts of the two Japenese and Chinese lunar orbiting probes ...).

The case, in 2009 (if I remember the numbers correctly) was "marginal."But, of course, that's NOT counting on the capabilities of the "secret space program" to quietly REFUEL those ALSEP SNAP power systems, or even to emplace an entire new generation of sesimic (and other) sensors on the moon ... in the decades SINCE Apollo ....

SO MUCH is being hidden re the REAL space program, it's almost impossible to have a rational discussion on these points -- as Mike Bara and I point out repeatedly, with evidence, in "Dark Mission."

        If you read that travesty of a book, Dark Mission, you'll discover that what he calls evidence is what most of us would call idle and paranoid conjecture. As for the RTG power being described as "marginal" 35 years after its design life had expired, that's just poppycock as usual.

SECRET

        Secret! Richard Hoagland's second favorite word, after "stunning" (usually followed by "...confirmation of my brilliant ideas".)

        It's definitely a high-value word for him. First because it allows his disciples to get the thrill of believing that they're "in on" something that was not intended to be known. Even more important, it forestalls any critical review—any attempt at analysis can be answered with "of course you can't confirm this. THEY have made it impossible to find the information!"

        Accordingly, we've had "Von Braun's Secret" which, as we've seen, is utter balderdash. While Hoagland's web site has been lying idle and un-updated all these many months, it's been stuck on promo for his DVD of a Secrets Conference. Next week the Big Man[1] himself will be appearing at an international conference on "The Secret Space Program and Breakaway Civilization."

        It's been a while since he pontificated about the Secret Space Program. If I recall right, the gist of it is that there's a space program run by the supra-national SECRET government. Its capabilities are very impressive, including the ability to destroy a comet. However, it has no manufacturing facilities, no personnel and no launch sites. Cute, huh? NO OF COURSE THERE'S NO EVIDENCE!! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?? IT'S SECRET!!!!

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[1] Hoagland actually referred to himself in those words, on his FB page last weekend. The man's arrogance is .... STUNNING.