Small comet defeats pseudoscientist

        On Coast to Coast AM last night, the "science [sic] adviser" Richard Hoagland stated that the comet Tempel 1 is an alien spaceship, a proposition that even the infinitely gullible George Noory refused to swallow.

        With a breathtaking lapse of logic, Hoagland first alleged that NASA had deliberately delayed releasing the images acquired by Stardust-NExT for seven hours in order to substitute doctored-up fakes, and then declared that the 7-hour-late images themselves proved that this object was artificial. His argument was as follows:

Look closely into the crater. You can see layers. But you can't make layers in zero-g.

        Who said anything about zero-g? Tempel 1's mass is 7.5 x 10¹³ kg—enough to create a micro gravitational field. Although certainly very small, Tempel 1's gravity was sufficient that some of the debris thrown out by the Deep Impact experiment fell back into the crater.

        Just as our own planet periodically passes through dust clouds, creating seasonal meteor displays like the Perseids and Geminids, so any comet is bound to pass through similar clouds, and inevitably some will adhere even in the very small gravity of Tempel 1. It does not stretch my imagination that dust might accumulate in layers, although I personally can't see Hoagland's "layers" any more than I could see his rivits [sic] holding Phobos together.

        Tempel looks just like a battered rock that's been around for billions of years. Fans of RCH should ask themselves if Tempel is:

a) An alien spaceship cunningly disguised to look like a rock, or
b) A rock.

        They might also ask themselves: Is Richard Hoagland:

a) A scientist, or
b) A showman

Who's right? Mike Bara or every professional astronomer?

The Moon has an apogee of 405,696 km and a perigee of 384,399 km.
At apogee it has an angular diameter of 29.3 minutes — at perigee, 34.1'

Earth has an aphelion of 152,098,232 km and a perihelion of 147,098,290 km.
At aphelion, the Sun has an angular diameter of 31.6' — at perihelion, 32.7'.


Here's a sort of ASCII-graphics visual aid:
29         30         31         32         33         34 minutes of arc
       |-------------------Moon----------------------|
                                 |---Sun---|

(I realize that this could go seriously adrift for readers with non-standard browser settings, or who are reading this on their wristwatches.)

         For almost half its orbit, toward the apogee end, the Moon is apparently smaller than the Sun. For about a third of its orbit, toward the perigee, it appears larger. For the rest of the time the angular diameters of the two bodies are essentially identical. More competent people than you and me have found that rather amazing.

         So what does that mean for solar eclipses? Well, that depends on whether you are A) a trained astronomer or otherwise educated and sane person, or B) Mike Bara.

         If you're in Group A, you would say that when the Moon is in the apogee half of its orbit, a solar eclipse cannot ever reach totality because the apparent size of the Moon ain't enough to mask the Sun. Instead you have the rather spectacular effect of an annular eclipse.

         If you're in Group B, however, you would disagree. You'd say that an annular eclipse happens when the Moon is near perigee.

         Since Mike Bara's automatic response to any criticism of his writings and lectures is "I never said that," the question has to be, "Did Mike Bara write the following on page 214 of The Choice, or didn't he?

"An annular eclipse means that the Moon and Sun are in perfect alignment, but the Sun is not totally blotted out because the Moon is a little too close to the Earth."

Mike Bara takes ad hominem debating to new heights

This dialog is such an outstanding example of Mike Bara's debating tactics that it deserves to be preserved here, in case he decides to delete it. It's from his blog comments.

Expat
February 3rd, 2011 @ 00:37

The recent conclusion of the WISE infra-red survey looks like extremely bad news for hyperdimensional physics. The massive extrasolar planet(s) required by the theory simply don’t exist. Bummer!

http://dorkmission.blogspot.com/2011/02/hyperdimensional-fail.html

MikeBara
February 3rd, 2011 @ 04:59

Once again, you prove you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground. Nor do you understand anything about the theory.

What’s it like to go through life with so much fear, bile and hated [sic] in your heart? It must be a bummer to be you. I’d have more sympathy, but you’re too pathetic to even feel sorry for. Hopefully you didn’t reproduce.

Expat
February 3rd, 2011 @ 17:59

Well, Mike, the insults were terrific fun, as usual. Now that you’ve got them off your chest, how about responding in rational terms?

Note: You wrote that at least one massive undiscovered planet is REQUIRED BY THE THEORY. Now that we know there’s no such planet, the theory is falsified. That’s science, Mike.

MikeBara
February 4th, 2011 @ 14:50

Once again DouchePat, all you prove is how little you know about everything, even the things you claim to read. The only thing that’s completed is the NEO survey. The WISE search hasn’t really even begun, will take years, and won’t even release its 1st snippett of data until April.

Why must you continue to prove how dumb you are publically? Does it give you some sexual pleasure to look like a fool in front of people? Oh, wait, that can’t be it. Nobody pays any attention to you anyway.

Expat
February 4th, 2011 @ 18:40

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-031

Key quote: “In early October 2010, after completing its prime science mission, the spacecraft ran out of the frozen coolant that keeps its instrumentation cold.”

Does that sound like a search that hasn’t even really begun?

MikeBara
February 4th, 2011 @ 20:59

Thank you again for publically demonstrating how much you don’t know about science, how you haven’t read the information on the website, and what an idiot you are.

Update 1:

George Benkel
February 5th, 2011 @ 00:56

I pay attention to Expat.

If you can’t handle Science, you could try Science Fiction. You’re really just doing that anyways.

MikeBara
February 5th, 2011 @ 01:27

That’s too bad, he’s an idiot.

Expat
February 8th, 2011 (suppressed)
Let's try a different topic. Speaking at the Alien Event in November 2009, you said "NASA always seems to want to land or launch when the stars are in favorable positions, at least according to their mythology."

In "Dark Mission," you precisely identify the 5 stars and 5 elevations which you consider "favorable."

How many Shuttle launches and landings qualify as favorable by these criteria?

Update 2:

MikeBara
February 16th, 2011 @ 02:12
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/up-telescope-search-begins-for-giant-new-planet-2213119.html
Once again, I am vindicated and you look like the fool that you are

Expat
February 16th, 2011 (suppressed)
I guess some very slim possibility has been restored to your daft idea. But you have definitely not been vindicated in your assertion that WISE has not even begun.

...and, whaddya mean, "Once again"?

Expat
February 16th, 2011 @ 17:43 (suppressed)
“What Matese claims is that he sees an excess of comets coming from a particular place, which he attributes to the gravitational effects of a large planet in the Oort cloud. I have nothing against the idea, but I think the signal that he claims he sees is very subtle, and I’m not sure it’s statistically significant,”

–Dr Hal Levison, planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, COL

MikeBara
February 16th, 2011 @ 19:54
Yeah dumbass but what you claimed was that the study had been completed and no object had been found. All it took was a cursory reading of the article you cited to know that wasn’t true; all that had been done was that the images had been taken. The article you cited (but failed to understand) made it clear that SOME of the results would be available in April, not that all the results were “in,” as you claimed. If you knew anything about how these projects work you’d know it takes years and sometimes decades before all the results of the studies are known. Maybe if you had a clue about anything you would have known that and not made a fool of yourself yet again. But it seems to be the only thing you’re good at.

And of course, once I pointed that out by posting this new article, you do the usual debunker avoidance trick; instead of admitting you were just plain wrong (as I have proven you to be many times over) you change the subject and try to get me to defend something else. I’m sure you’d love it if I spent all my time responding to your idiocy, but I have better things to do with my energy than waste it on responding to a serial douchbag who can’t even be bothered to read a complete article before he starts attacking me. And please, before you go whining on your blog about how mean I am, you attacked me first. I was never anything but polite to you until you started accusing me and my associates of dishonesty.

“It’s no secret that a liar won’t believe anyone else” — Bono

Expat
February 18th, 2011 (suppressed)

02/16/11, Mike Bara: "I was never anything but polite to you until you started accusing me and my associates of dishonesty."

12/10/07, Mike Bara: "Face it, you lost. Go away."
12/21/07, Mike Bara: "bison breath ... ignoramus and\or liar"
01/03/08, Mike Bara: "a significant character disorder....I’d match wits with him, but he’s only half prepared."
01/07/08, Mike Bara: "You are irrational. Step away from the computer before you injure yourself. .... your continued demonstrations of your own stupidity ..."
02/23/08, Mike Bara: "your arrogance, stupidity and venality is quite obvious to everyone who reads anything you've already posted."
03/23/08, Mike Bara: "As if we needed more proof you are a complete idiot,"
04/20/08, Mike Bara: "More proof that you're an abject moron"
06/29/08, Mike Bara: "I'm not confused. You're a complete idiot."
07/26/08, Mike Bara: "all you prove here is what a fool you are "
12/21/08, Mike Bara: "how many more times must you be embarrassed in public before you give up?"
03/17/09, Mike Bara: "No, .... you blithering idiot, it wasn't a lie. You just never get tired of coming in here and revealing the depths of your idiocy, do you?"

etc. etc.
LOL

Expat
February 18th, 2011 (suppressed)
On Oct 15th, 2007 8:23 AM PDT Mike Bara: "Why is it those who are so frightened and threatened by the data we present never want to argue the data itself, but always try to attack us personally? Could it be because arguing the data is a losing proposition for you?"

I really don't think I've ever come across such an incompetent debater.

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?

More lousy math from Hoagland

Post withdrawn. I was wrong.

Ken Johnston gets another 15 minutes

        Ken is the former Grumman technician and former clerk in the Lunar Receiving Lab who was trotted out by Richard Hoagland at the notoriously underattended "press conference" at the National Press Club on 29th October 2007 (video).

        Ken's job at the LRL was to ship moonrocks to scientists who had successfully applied to conduct experiments on them, along with context photographs showing their original environment and exact orientation. As such he had in his file cabinets a collection of copies of photo prints from the main Apollo archive, which was in a separate building.

        Somehow Johnston's role in Apollo became inflated in the tiny minds of Hoagland & Bara to "Director of Apollo Photo Archives" and the reason he was introduced (to almost nobody) at the 2007 press conference was that Hoagland was convinced that Johnston was the sole possessor of incriminating Apollo photography which showed unequivocal evidence of a lunar civilization. As it turned out, the so-called evidence was not merely equivocal but downright unconvincing (compare the actual file images AS14-66-9301 and AS14-66-9279.)

        Nor was that all. James Oberg found time to look into the curriculum vitae ascribed to Johnston by Hoagland & Bara and found it largely fictional. Mike Bara made a valiant attempt at defending it on the Dark Mission blog, but Hoagland, Bara, and their ignorant publisher Adam Parfrey all had to climb down and amend the text of Dark Mission's second edition. Pity they didn't correct more of the errors while they were at it.

        Just over a week ago, somebody using the pseudonym LiveForever8 posted two Youtube videos (originally from Sacred Mysteries Productions) of Ken Johnston on Above Top Secret, and the controversy gained a second life. The thread makes a good read, with Oberg in fine form giving us all a lesson in how to stick to the topic in the face of many attempts to derail the discussion into irrelevance.

What do you do when....

        ....one of your most persistent and confident predictions for 2010 crashes and burns? If you're Richard Hoagland, you just declare that it happened anyway, but nobody noticed.

        That was the official Hoagland line on Coast to Coast AM last night, confronted with the undeniable fact that "The Year We Make Contact" just ended with a distinct lack of contact unless you count the contact of Lindsay Lohan's hand on a Betty Ford Center technician in December. In a discursive three-hour chat with George Noory, Hoagland said several times that "contact has happened. You just have to look."

        The announced topic for last night was astrobiology, but as it turned out arsenic-tolerant bacteria weren't on the menu—Hoagland having perhaps realized that it's not a topic upon which he can hope to shine. Instead we got about an hour of what jolly good buddies Arthur C. Clarke and Richard C. Hoagland once were, then a tour of his favorite bits of nonsense including the robot head on the Moon and the Nazis in space. "Somebody," he said, is preparing us for "something," by coming up with all these science fiction movies (Transformers et al.) This was perhaps a bit of a slip-up, since if contact has already happened what need is there for preparation?

        It was a sleep-inducing three hours, ending with guess what? Oh yes, the 800 number.

        Of course.

NASA's Egyptian God-worship examined, Part II

        Hoagland & Bara's so-called Table of Coincidence—the raw data on which they base their ridiculous theory—doesn't stop at Apollo. It continues with a hilarious claim that the Orion belt star Alnitak was at +19.5° over the Martian horizon as it would have been seen from the so-called 'face' in Cydonia, at the exact moment when the feature was first imaged by the Viking 1 orbiter on July 25th 1976.

        You have to think about that for a bit to understand how truly ludicrous this claim is. In order for the hypothetical Egyptian God-worshiping NASA clique to have contrived this feat of astrology, they first of all had to have known of the existence and exact latitude/longitude of this feature. That in itself is impossible. THEN they had to have calculated the arrival overhead of the orbiter to the nearest fifteen seconds or so. To do that, they'd have to have worked backwards to the arrival of Viking 1 in orbit, then to the trans-Mars trajectory, then to the exact time and azimuth of the launch. In short, the entire mission profile would have to have been contingent on that one astrological imperative. And if any part of that profile did not coincide with what was being planned anyway, by engineers who didn't care about Egyptian Gods, the clique would have had some explaining to do.

Ridiculous!!

        The table of coincidence concludes with a mixed bag of 43 data points, of which 35 relate to the Shuttle and/or ISS—launches of Zarya and STS-88 for example. Then a couple of events related to the solar observatory SOHO. Finally, the world premiere of the Hollywood movie Armageddon—as if the NASA clique had any control over that.

        Of these 43 data points, 14 are disqualified because they involve celestial objects that are not any of the five specified in the book "Dark Mission," and four are disqualified because their viewpoints do not persuasively relate to the mission (Phoenix AZ, the Egyptian pyramids.)

        Considering that Hoagland & Bara allow themselves to search Apollo landing sites for star elevation data that have nothing to do with Apollo (Sirius at -33° as seen from the Apollo 11 landing site at the moment of the first STS-88 EVA,) it's quite surprising that they didn't find more "coincidences."

        But really, as a piece of data-gathering this is beyond pathetic. Mike Bara says "NASA always seems to want to land or launch when the stars are in favorable positions" (Video, at 04:07.) What he should do, now that the Shuttle program is almost at an end, is to do the analysis and find out whether what he said was true. He should restrict himself to shuttle launches/landings, to the five named stars and to viewpoints from KSC (the Cape) or JSC (Houston.) There were also several landings at Edwards AFB, and one at White Sands.

        I don't believe Mike Bara will do this. I think he knows he'd finally be proved wrong.