Is Iapetus artificial?

[falemagn]

If you don't like Hoagland, just give a glance at the pictures and see if you can find a "natural" explanation...

http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon1.htm

[falemagn]

Uh?

[falemagn]

Some interesting pictures:

[falemagn]

Whatever you think of Hoagland doesn't explain those pictures.

Try to explain why a large body such as Iapetus would be geodesical, and why would it have nested hexagonal craters, and why does it have an equatorial bend.

Not convinced? Well, where he makes a big slip is with the claim that 'any rocky body larger than a few hundred miles always turns into a sphere by the relentless force of gravity'. We can calculate that size pretty accurately. I found a reasonable approximation in the book Gravity From The Ground Up by Bernard Schutz, and works on the basis of the idea that the heat obtained from gravitational collapse onto a body of mass M is converted completely to thermal energy, kT. It disregards heat of fusion and the like, but for a first order estimate, it will do. When I plug in Iapetus' overall density and composition, I find that it lacks sufficient mass to melt completely and thus turn into a sphere. (2.7 * 10^22 kg required, Iapetus coming in at 1.7 * 10^22 kg.) However, it is a borderline case which accounts quite beautifully for the fact that Iapetus has such a 'squashed' appearance. It is big enough to melt part of its interior, but not big enough to pull itself into a spherical shape.

Well, I can't say anything about your numbers 'cause I haven't seen the calculations behind them, but I can point you to how things are in reality: Saturn's got many other moons, and many of them have a mass inferior to the one of Iapetus, yet they are perfectly spherical. I think you need to recheck your numbers ;-)

Also, consider that not just mass counts, but also the diameter.

Moreover, Iapetus doesn't appear to be just non spherical, it appeaars to be geodesic, which can't be explained by just saying that gravity wasn't strong enough to melt it.

Notice I'm not saying Iapetus is indeed artificial, I'm just saying that unless you can explain in detail how could Iapetus "naturally" have such singular characteristics, then the artificial hypothesis can't be discarded.

[falemagn]

 Hum,
Well the hexagonal craters are unusual, (nasa has noticed as well), though a crust cracking and shrinking will account for them, and the unusual ridge.

Sorry, but I can't buy that. I've never seen crust cracking and shrinking that ends up in nested hexagonal patterns, nor this can possibly explain the perfectly linear and equatorial ridge.

[falemagn]

I've never seen enough examples of this phenomenon to know if nested hexagons are possible or not...

There's no reason for which crust expanding and shrinking should produce hexagons, yet alone nested ones. And if you look at other pictures on the site, there are also examples of hexagonal craters being placed on a straight line, parallel to the ridge, at the same distance from one another.

Also, crust expanding/shrinking can't explan the facets the moon seems to be made of.

[falemagn]

blobrana wrote:
@Karlos

Hum,
>>Correction. There's no known / immediately obvious reason.


I suppose that hexagonal patterns are very common in nature;
 And when things go through a melt/freeze cycle they do seem to appear...
Examples would be things like basaltic lava pillars.

That's an entirely different process, and moreover at an entirely different scale! The pictures you've looked at are the ones of a moon with the diameter of 1496 kilometers, that one you see is an hexagon that spans hundred of kilometers! There are other hexagons on other parts of the moon that are of the same size, placed at the same distannce from each other on a line parallel to the ridge and to the equator.

We've never seen something like this in nature, and it's questionable whether it could ever happen.

"But we can't say for sure," I hear you. I'd say that if this were a natural phenomenon we should have plenty of examples around us to testify that. But we don't. It may still be a natural phenomenon, but then I'm eager to hear a plausible explanation. I mean, more plausible than that thing being an artificial object.

Because you can't just say "oh, I suppose if it freezes, if it resolidifies, if an asteroid hit the thing and split it in two and then it got back together and then ..." hey hey hey... stop your imagination, ever heard of Occam's Razor? What are the odds of all that happening? What are the odds that an asteroid hit the moon with a so big a force to split it perfectly evenly in two parts, dividing it right at the equator and yet the moon itself didn't break into billions of pieces? And then what kind of process, I mean for real, would have caused the ridge? And how do you explain the moon doesn't look spherical by any stretch of imagination and the fact it has straight edges?

Perhaps actually reading that site, to see which explanation s Hoagland tries to give to the phenomenon, and then counterargument them would be a better approach.

Because right now, Hoagland's explanation sounds the most plausible one, if a bit stretched. You won't debunk Hoagland by criticizing his person, you'll do it by counterargumenting his points. And I don't mean you personally, but 'you' as in everyone who didn't even care to read the site or look at the picture with a critic eye.

But the crater shapes are intriguing; we haven’t seen anything like them, er, apart from the large crater of J. Herschel on our moon, which has hexagon shape.

It looks quite round to me, with the exception of the bottom-right part which is kind of straight.

For that crater it's easier to find a natural explanation.

I suppose we`ll have to wait for the next flyby (sept 2007)

Unfortunately, as you can read in part 3 of Hoagland's report, the next flyby will happen from a different perspective, basically excluding the possibility of confirming/denying the proposed theory about the observed objects on the moon. Hopefully, since it will be a lot closer than before, it will be spossible to spot other things more precisely.

[falemagn]

um,
Well, we don’t know the exactly process that created those features.
But undoubtedly they are natural features, imho.

Objectively speaking, what's better, a torough explanation of the reasoning behind a certain hypothesis, for how 'alternative' it may sound, or a dogmatic "undoubtly, it's as I say it is"?

I haven't seen you counterargumenting his points, probably because you're too convinced of your own opinions that can't even bother to check whether they're right or not.

(perhaps it’s just my pagan upbringing, but i my reality must be quit different from yours. )

My reality is the one I see with my own eyes, and with my own eyes I see something I can't explain as a natural process.

And I haven't seen you explaining it either.

And ignore Hoagland; i would personally class him as a conman, who takes advantage of those who are scientifically disadvantaged...

See, that's what I mean. You didn't even bother to read what he wrote, because it must be rubbish, must not it?

Sorry, but I'll take what anyone cares to argument and question, and seems even remotely plausible to me, over what someone else takes for granted.

That's what scientifically educated people should do. Dogmas are for religion, scientists ask themselves questions, and seek for plausible and replicable answers.

A moon splitting itself in two, right at equator, then rejoining, then melting/freezing who knows how many times, then producing for that reason hexagonal patterns large hundred of kilometers (I'd like you to explain the exact process of that), is as likely as the whole universe collapsing right now as I'm writing.


---- EDIT ----

Seriously, re-reading that hypothesis of yours, I wonder where you took it from and why does it somewhat sound more plausible to you than that moon being artificial.

The odds that another civilization was in this solar system before us are the same as the ones for us being here right now. Quite likely, I'd say. For what we all know, it could be us who placed that thing there, eons ago. Yes, this is pure science fiction, but consider the possibilities of this being true vs the ones of your scenario... We have tons of myths spread among the thousand of different cultures all around our globe which share the same fundations; We have references to Atlantis from Plato, we have mysterious artifacts found all around the globe which are still now unexplained and that official science seems to have forgotten.

You need to put all pieces together to complete the puzzle, and you can't cheat. You can't pretend some things don't exist just because they don't fit your model, you need to make a model that fits all things you've discovered.

Unfortunately science is a form of religion for many people. They often say they have no god, but their god is the science itself, and anything that doesn't fit the dogmatic view imposed to them by their predecessors is 'heretic'.

Science should be all about having open minds, evaluating all kind of possibilities, not forgetting any details and developing comphrensive models. Unfortunately, it's not like that.

Mind you, this rant is a general one, not geared torward the particular topic at hand. Coming back to the original topic, whether Iapetus is artificial or not I don't know, but as of now any proof that it's natural is lacking, and all clues point to it being artificial. In the end we may discover it's as natural as a {bleep}ball, but right now that's not the case.

[falemagn]

 lol,
The probability that six faults line up to form a hexagon and a meteorite collides directly into the centre of the configuration or a natural melt/freeze/remelt warping the crust seems far likelier to me, than an advanced civilization constructing the moon.

lol indeed. How come you always seem to forget all other details? What about the nested hexagons? What about the other hexagons linearly equidistantiated and parallel to the equator? What about the ridge? What about the moon non-spherical and geodesic shape?

See, you forget those 'details' because they don't fit your model. You need to make a model that fits all of them. Can you?

[falemagn]

 Just because the phenomena is unexplained doesn't make it artificial.

I don't recall having said that. However, it being artificial is a possible explanation and there's no reason to discard it as unfounded unless you can come right now with an alternative, natural explanation that can be proven.

Don't forget that Iapetus's distance from the warming sun means that it's icy crust will retain the scars of it's early meteoric bombardment,

And why wouldn't the non icy crust retain such scars as well? Moreover, I've never seen hexagonal scars, have you?

plus it will also have been subjected to gravitational distortion from Saturn.

Like any other body around it. So?

An example of a naturally occurring hexidecimal shape can be found inside any Amythist bearing geode stone, no-one would suggest that is anything other than naturally occurring?

But you do notice the huge difference in magnitude, don't you?

The only thing that I can think of is a huge crystal, perhaps a carbon one. A diamond, that is. Might it be a piece of the core of a... dead star somehow entrapped by the gravitational force of Saturn in an orbit around it? This would be coherent with the evidence that the black part is made of organic material, it would be coherent with the somewhat singular orbit around saturn, both for shape and inclination, and it would be coherent with the geodesic shape.

It could have been  a comet! Which would also explain the icy crust.

This wouldn't explain, however, the ridge.

Now, except for the ridge, I believe that yes, that is a more plausible scenario than a spaceship of some sort.

[falemagn]

 Yes,
i believe nasa is working on the mechanism that would create the unusual features they have spotted.

Probably, but so far you've not even tried to counterargument Hoagland's hypothesis, labelling it as impossible right away, and proposing even more unlikely scenarios. It's this attitude I'm questioning.

it reminds me of the unusual properties found when Iapetus was first observed in detail; that one face was as white as snow and the other face was back as tar.
(that gave the A C Clarke 2001 story line of the `eye of Iapetus` and the monolith at its centre.)
it was found that the spectra of the dark side matched the asteroids and that the moons rotation is phase-locked with its revolution, so that it swept up the debris of the impacts on the other moons...

A simpler explanation than an advanced civilisation painting one side of the moon black.

Resorting to strawman attacks won't help your cause. Did you see me or anyone else, by any chance, considering the hypothesis that someone painted the moon? I don't think so.

[falemagn]

And you're not questioning Hoaglands attitude and way of presenting his 'proof'?

oh dear you want to believe him, right?

Have you missed the message where I proposed an alternative scenario?

[falemagn]

Q1) Does it look artificial?

At best, I can say objectively that some of the features appear unnatural.

Err, artificial means exactly that, unnatural :-)

Q2) Does an artificial appearence prove artificial nature?

If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck...

Certianly not. There are a virtually uncountable number of natural systes that appear artificial at all scales.

That's a contraddiction in terms. Can you make any examples of what you have in mind?

Q3) Is there any tangible evidence to suggest that the moon in question is artificial in nature other than its appearence.

Not yet.

True.

Q4) Is there any evidence that is is a natural object, discounting its unusual appearence?

Sorry, but why would you discount its unusual, unnatural (by your own words) appearance?

The appearance is the only thing we can check for now, and that clearly leans torwards artificiality, as you yourself said (ok, you said unnatural, but they're synonims).

Yes, everything available other than the appearence seems to be well within the known boundaries for an ice moon.

We have nothing else than appearance! What is this everything other than appearance you talk about?

[falemagn]

You did NOT propose an alternative scenario.

Ok, you missed it. Just say it, what are you afraid of? :-)

Seriously, give a read to what I write before replying.

[falemagn]

Cymric wrote:

falemagn wrote:
Whatever you think of Hoagland doesn't explain those pictures.

So we can leave Hoagland completely out of the equation, and just focus on what we observe about Iapetus. Are we in agreement there?

We don't just can, we must leave out of the equation whatever personal opinions you can have about Hoagland.

That doesn't mean we need to leave out of the equation what Hoagland said.

Mind, I am not a planetary geologist, just an ordinary chemical engineer. Can I just ask you what your background is?

Red Herring. I don't feel the need to answer to this question, It's completely irrelevant. Just stick to the discussion.

Well, I can't say anything about your numbers 'cause I haven't seen the calculations behind them, but I can point you to how things are in reality: Saturn's got many other moons, and many of them have a mass inferior to the one of Iapetus, yet they are perfectly spherical. I think you need to recheck your numbers ;-) Also, consider that not just mass counts, but also the diameter.

I was arguing against Hoagland's ridiculous claim that any body larger than a few hundred miles should be perfectly spherical due to gravitational self-attraction. That is not true: it depends on a number of parameters.

It indeed does, but so what? I haven't said you have to take anything Hoagland says as it were divine truth.

[...] All these factors have to be taken into account before one can say whether an object is likely to be spherical or not. Hoagland did not do this, and that was what I was trying to demonstrate.

Strawman attack. It's you that didn't consider all elements, in fact you've tried to counterargument Hoagland's claim by showing that Iapetus cannot possibly be spherical for solely naturaly reasons. But you yourself now admitted that you don't know for sure, that your calculations may be off, and so on and so forth.

What Hoagland said is that any object bigger than a certain size will always be spherical. This is true, you confirmed it in the previous message. and in fact you even tried to disprove that the particular Iapetus case isn't one of the cases where the object becomes spherical. And, as you've said yourself, you made up your numbers.

Moreover, Iapetus doesn't appear to be just non spherical, it appeaars to be geodesic, which can't be explained by just saying that gravity wasn't strong enough to melt it.

My response would be 'so what?'. First of all, nowhere on that site is that claim made.

It's now clear you've not read even 1/3 of that report. Look better, the moon2.htm page is totally centered on that argument.

Iapetus is a squashed ellipsoid.

Then, please, explain this picture:

 (Hoagland seems to suggest that because Iapetus' day is 79 Earth days long, it has always been that long, because the moon is still so squashed. He needs that line of reasoning to discredit natural phenomena. Out go tidal locking with Saturn, fast cooling and whatever else you can throw at it. Tsktsk.)

Now that is a claim I can't find anywhere on the site. I may have as well missed it, can you provide a link, please?

Second, any body with materials which cannot cope with high tensile stresses will turn into a geodesic shape under its own gravity---that's what a geodesic means.

Uh?! Geodesic means that since when? Do you know what a geode is, by any chance? you know what a geodesic dome is? You're building a whole argument on top of fallacious presumptions.

The Earth is not a perfect ellipsoid, it is a geodesic because of its molten interior: angular momentum and gravitational self-attraction balance out at that particular shape. Third, I really wonder how one could measure the geodesic shape of Iapetus given the relatively crude instruments on Cassini. On Earth, the deviation from the ellipsoid is measured in meters.

You have a totally bogus idea of what 'geodesic' means. You might want to look at a dictionary. Sorry, but I can't be more polite than that.

That is in itself not an explanation for Iapetus' unusual shape, since I lack information about the various processes and their relevance. We'd need a geologist for that. What I am saying is that you shouldn't be jumping to conclusions either.

Did I jump to conclusions? I recall having made perfectly clear that I don't know whether it's artificial or not. I've even proposed a natural explanation that tries to fit all evidence we have.

Notice I'm not saying Iapetus is indeed artificial, I'm just saying that unless you can explain in detail how could Iapetus "naturally" have such singular characteristics, then the artificial hypothesis can't be discarded.

Which is of course a complete and utterly bogus hypothesis, because you can't scientifically falsify that one.
 How would you determine it is constructed?

Uh... How else if not by digging and trying to find what's in it? If it's indeed been constructed, it must have a purpose. Hoagland is even suggesting it's a spaceship, how more testifiable than that can it get?!

Tsk tsk..

Okay, I would call the presence of lorries, bulldozers and workers' huts a pretty good indication of artificiality. But other than that we have no idea what non-human constructs look like (other than evolved ones, like trees or birds) so we chose to  anthropomorphisize the entire thing. And that is certainly  not scientific.

Oh, please... how more silly can it get?

First of all, no one said it's non-human. For what we know it could have been us ourselves that put that thing there, eons ago. This wouldn't be in contraddiction with anything we know about ourselves and our world, and would instead corroborate some of the old myths that pervade our cultures.

Secondly, I'm sure that you'd be able to recognize a manufact produced by intelligent beings if you had the opportunity to look at it with your own eyes and 'play' with it. Unless the manufact were deliberately made to not look like an artificial object, which is an extreme case we can avoid considering.

Suppose that we see nothing indicating lorries on the new flyby in 2007, provided even that Cassini passes by so close that such devices can be seen with its cameras. If you then still cling to the artificial hypothesis, claiming some unknown way of construction, you chose to remain ignorant and not look at it in further detail. I would much rather prefer to keep on looking, improving my knowledge of geology and large-scale rock formations.

Uh... of course I'd want to look at it in further detail. If it were up to me I'd land on that moon right away and do all examinations that would be required. It's not me here that isn't prepared to all possible scenarios.