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Coffee House => Coffee House Boards => CH / Science and Technology => Topic started by: falemagn on February 22, 2005, 05:30:58 PM
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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
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What have you been up to this time, Blobrana?
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Uh?
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Some interesting pictures:
(http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus/Iapetus-Color-High-Res-s.jpg)
(http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus2/Deathstar-16a.jpg)
(http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus2/Deathstar-23.jpg)
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@Falemagn
It's a jumptable you dufus!
Oops, wrong thread ;-)
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Walnut in Space :lol:
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How much chocolate would you need to make a walnut whip out of that beast?
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Hoagland is the prototype of a big crackpot with too much imagination and too little scientific background. His ideas are bogus, his reasoning unscientific: he postulates artificial constructs, and then 'finds' evidence to 'prove' that idea, instead of the other way around. The blowups are only impressive when you hve been preconditioned to think 'this could be artificial constructs', completely ignoring the fact we're looking at the utmost limit of magnification.
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.
Hoaglands generalising claim needs a lot of 'ifs and buts' to stick, and it certainly won't work to complete satisfaction for Iapetus. And that is characteristic for much of the entire story. Beautiful pictures, definitely. But lousy arguments.
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Karlos wrote:
How much chocolate would you need to make a walnut whip out of that beast?
more than I have in the kitchen. I just went out to get some supplies for a 3 layer checkerboard cake.
:-P
and, yes, the ideas in this article are, hmmmm, well, silly. which is why I'm talking about chocolate. :-)
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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.
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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.
(A large impact would partially melt the interior)
[ And before anyone says; the monolith was a rectangle... ]
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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.
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I've never seen enough examples of this phenomenon to know if nested hexagons are possible or not...
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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.
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this is like the "face" om mars. when you get closer, you see it's just an illusion (not that i was surprised, of course - i know how the human mind looks for patterns)
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what a load of bullcrap that site is
VERY vague suggestions of the planet being 'made of hexadiagonals' (that crater hexadiagonal? Hardly. Okay, tis not completely round like other craters but that can be caused by the previous craters, the substance/shape of the meteorite, and the substance of the moon, like Blob said).
Just picking one suggestive photo of a sunset of the moon? Come on! Put that plastic glue bag away!
Okay the moon has a extraordinary line on it's surface, and I'm eager to know the cause of that. But not by that 'factual' site.
It's just laughable.
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Perhaps the subject should be "is the author of this article certifiable?"
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falemagn wrote:
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.
Correction. There's no known / immediately obvious reason. That doesn't mean they are not natural.
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Hum,
your wish is my command...
"sometimes we all do mad things" - Sigmund Freud
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blobrana wrote:
Hum,
your wish is my command...
O_o
You'd better be careful who you say that two round these parts, pet :lol:
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@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.
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.
I suppose we`ll have to wait for the next flyby (sept 2007)
[color=ff00ff][/color]
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/ (http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/)
(er, for the amusement of those that arn`t aware)
[color=ff00ff][/color]
@PMC
Oh, i`ve been playing `sims2`....
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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.
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falemagn wrote:
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.
I expect the mission planners have more important things to worry about than appeasing Hoaglands paranoia :-)
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Re: "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."
Hum,
Well, we don’t know the exactly process that created those features.
But undoubtedly they are natural features, imho.
(perhaps it’s just my pagan upbringing, but i my reality must be quite different from yours. )
And ignore Hoagland; i would personally class him as a conman, who takes advantage of those who are scientifically disadvantaged...
My brain is too small to fit in all the wonderous ideas and facts out there, to bother with Hoagwash...
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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.
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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.
There is nothing wrong with speculation or even `thought experiments`, it’s human nature.
i watch star trek, and i can imagine travelling on a light beam, I’ve even read some `Von Danaken` books; they are mind food, but they don’t really tell us anything about the nature of the universe.
Hoagwash is dangerous.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v328/blobrana/wicker120.jpg)
We know how to deal with bad science here.
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falemagn wrote:
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.
OK.
Q1) Does it look artificial?
At best, I can say objectively that some of the features appear unnatural.
Q2) Does an artificial appearence prove artificial nature?
Certianly not. There are a virtually uncountable number of natural systes that appear artificial at all scales.
Q3) Is there any tangible evidence to suggest that the moon in question is artificial in nature other than its appearence.
Not yet.
Q4) Is there any evidence that is is a natural object, discounting its unusual appearence?
Yes, everything available other than the appearence seems to be well within the known boundaries for an ice moon.
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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?
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Just because the phenomena is unexplained doesn't make it artificial.
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, plus it will also have been subjected to gravitational distortion from Saturn.
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?
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Yes,
i believe nasa is working on the mechanism that would create the unusual features they have spotted.
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.
:-)
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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.
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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.
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falemagn wrote:
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.
And you're not questioning Hoaglands attitude and way of presenting his 'proof'? :-?
oh dear :lol: you want to believe him, right?
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This is just like the Intelligent Design argument...
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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?
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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?
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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? Mind, I am not a planetary geologist, just an ordinary chemical engineer. Can I just ask you what your background is?
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. Even my quickly scribbled calculations are likely to be off, since they assume that all energy to melt the objects interior comes from gravitational collapse. There is also tidal effects due to the proximity of larger bodies (think Io), heat of fusion (which is linked to composition), kinetic energy due to impacts with other bodies, and radioactive decay (which accounts for Earths still-molten interior). And then to top it all we have angular momentum to balance the attractive forces of gravity, and heat loss to space to determine the cooling time. 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.
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. Iapetus is a squashed ellipsoid. (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.) 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. 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.
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. There are plenty of quite normal mechanisms we understand at work (I've listed a few), and all we need to do now is put them in a very fast and very big computer to see what we end up with.
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? 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.
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.
And it is quite possible that we will not be able to explain the particular rock formation in complete detail until we land probes on Iapetus, or visit the moon in person. Scientific theories are only as good as their underlying data, and that quite often means: work in progress. It's galling for me to realise I will probably not live to see the discovery of feasible FTL drives, wormholes, time travel, or---less ambitious---commercial fusion plants or quantum computers, but we can't have it all, can we? :-)
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falemagn wrote:
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?
You did NOT propose an alternative scenario.
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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.
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falemagn wrote:
what are you afraid of? :-)
of crying maria statues
Seriously, give a read to what I write before replying.
I did.
Seriously.
Found only vague hints of you calling yourself 'open minded' towards other explanations, but until then you call this hoagland theory a fact.
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falemagn wrote:
Q1) Does it look artificial?
At best, I can say objectively that some of the features appear unnatural.
Err, artificial means exactly that, unnatural :-)
No, it does not. Something appearing "unnatural" does not imply artificial. Specifically, I use the term "artificial" as "intelligently designed/constructed".
"Unnatural" carries many connotations that allow something to appear unnatural without actually being artificial in the above strict definition.
Feck, look at the cell biochemistry threads for a flawless example of the above ;-)
Q2) Does an artificial appearence prove artificial nature?
If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck...
This is one of the worst arguments ever. Things are not always what they seem in the absence of sufficient information.
In short, all we know is that it has some of the familiar attributes of a Duck. So does a man masquerading in a duck outfit blowing a hunters duck-caller...
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?
No, it is not. Once again, you are applying a flawed reasoning that something "appearing to be X" must be "X". All I am saying is that there are plenty of things "appearing to be X" that are in fact "Y, Z etc". Appearences alone are insufficient to make an informed opinion.
The following natural things appear "artificial" as far as I am concerned:
Crystals (just about any variety), biological macromolecules, self-regulating reactions, biochemistry and life in general, quantum mechanical properties of the microscopic, the prime number series, etc.
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?
[/quote]
I am testing the assertation that 'do we have any evidence aside from the appearence, that it is artificial' ?
Again, without this, it simply "looks like a duck". Does it quack like one?
This thing also looks like a moon, orbits like a moon, has the composition of a moon and possesses a wide array of moon like attributes.
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).
I said, "at best" it could be described as unnatural looking.
We can check its surface composition, mass etc (as inferred from its gravity), density, none of which are out of the ordinary for an ice moon.
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?
Look up information on this moon. You will find plenty of things tabulated about it other than a picture.
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@Karlos
I had a quick around the internet but there doesn’t seem to be any info on the mechanics of crater formation regarding the unusual shapes, and NASA says they are “impact-substrate related”.
Not my field, so I guess it’s like some chaotic geological/impact interaction.
i.e.
nice example of slow motion photography of a milkdrop (http://www.math.toronto.edu/~drorbn/Gallery/Misc/MilkDrops/Splash3_1280.jpg).
And I managed to find another impact crater, Albategnius, located in the Moons central highlands.
(http://www.astrosurf.com/cidadao/crater_albategnius_01.jpg)
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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:
(http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus2/Deathstar-23.jpg)
(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.
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I did.
Seriously.
Found only vague hints of you calling yourself 'open minded' towards other explanations, but until then you call this hoagland theory a fact.
Then you don't know how to read. Moreover, you're implicitely saying I'm so stupid as of claiming I did something it would be so easy to verify I haven't.
I give you one last chance before plastering the link to the message I'm referring to all around your face :-)
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Err, artificial means exactly that, unnatural :-)
No, it does not. Something appearing "unnatural" does not imply artificial. Specifically, I use the term "artificial" as "intelligently designed/constructed".
Karlos, I may have even understood what you mean by unnatural, but believe it or not, artificial and unnatural are synonims.
You belov make the example of a crystal, and say that it to you looks 'unnatural'. Heck, that's the thing that most looks natural to me! It's the very essence of the way nature speaks: chaos, fractals. Crystals, like trees, like mountains, like clouds, are nothing but an 'implentation' of a formula describing some subsets of a chaotic space.
in fact, as I've said in one of my previous messages, the only natural thing this thing comes close to is a giant carbonic crystal!
If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck...
This is one of the worst arguments ever. Things are not always what they seem in the absence of sufficient information.
I haven't said it proves anything. I just said that if it quacks like a duck, walks like duck, and does everything else like a duck, then it is a duck. I haven't said Iapetus actually does everything as a 'duck', so to speak. It does however at least look like one, which is an indication that it could be one.
I don't dismiss the possibility, you do.
In short, all we know is that it has some of the familiar attributes of a Duck. So does a man masquerading in a duck outfit blowing a hunters duck-caller...
Strawman again... can you find the place where I said it does?
Sorry, but why would you discount its unusual, unnatural (by your own words) appearance?
I am testing the assertation that 'do we have any evidence aside from the appearence, that it is artificial' ?
It's totally irrelevant, 'cause I'm not trying to prove it's artificial, on the other hand you are trying to disprove it is. And you can only do it if you go there and drill. Or if you can prove it's natural. You can't do either as of now, so you have to accept both possibilities.
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).
I said, "at best" it could be described as unnatural looking.
We can check its surface composition, mass etc (as inferred from its gravity), density, none of which are out of the ordinary for an ice moon.
None of which rule out the possibility it's artificial either.
Mind you, possibility.
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@Falemagn
Karlos, I may have even understood what you mean by unnatural, but believe it or not, artificial and unnatural are synonims.
Perhaps the individual words are, but the remark "appears unnatural" and "is artificial" are not.
It's totally irrelevant, 'cause I'm not trying to prove it's artificial, on the other hand you are trying to disprove it is.
Completely wrong there, I'm afraid - you are doing the strawman thing now ;-)
Can you point me to anywhere where I outright dismiss the idea that it possibly could be artificial?
My entire argument is as follows:
I don't believe the total available evidence to date supports the idea that it is of artificial origin.
How does that dismiss the possibility that it is?
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Perhaps the individual words are, but the remark "appears unnatural" and "is artificial" are not.
Very true. Who said they are? I haven't.
On the other hand, "appears unnatural" and "appears artificial" mean the same thing, because unnatural == artificial and, obviously, appears == appears :-)
Completely wrong there, I'm afraid - you are doing the strawman thing now
Can you point me to anywhere where I outright dismiss the idea that it possibly could be artificial?
Then what are we discussing about here? If you allow for the possibility it may be artificial, just as I do, I fear we're wasting our time here.
On the other hand, I feel that you're quite opposing to the idea that it may be artificial, at least by reading what you've written. Or am I mistaken?
My entire argument is as follows:
I don't believe the total available evidence to date supports the idea that it is of artificial origin.
I don't either, and I don't recall having ever implied it.
Thus, must I deduce your whole argument was a strawman attack? :-D
How does that dismiss the possibility that it is?
It doesn't, but then again, why are you arguing with me, if you agree with me?
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falemagn wrote:
I did.
Seriously.
Found only vague hints of you calling yourself 'open minded' towards other explanations, but until then you call this hoagland theory a fact.
Then you don't know how to read. Moreover, you're implicitely saying I'm so stupid as of claiming I did something it would be so easy to verify I haven't.
I give you one last chance before plastering the link to the message I'm referring to all around your face :-)
Leave it. I'm tired of your attitude.
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One mistery is naturally solved, it appears (http://tinyurl.com/5evmr) :-)
This doesn't quite explain nested hexagonal craters, however.
I'm less and less inclined to believe that thing is artificial, but you never know... ;-)
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Leave it. I'm tired of your attitude.
So am I of yours. Have a nice day :-)
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blobrana wrote:
(that gave the A C Clarke 2001 story line of the `eye of Iapetus` and the monolith at its centre.)
One of my favorite books.
A simpler explanation than an advanced civilisation painting one side of the moon black.
Presumably the result of having consumed far too much Romulan Ale? Those crazy, wacky aliens :-D
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falemagn wrote:
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.
I hadn't discarded that explaination, but in my humble experience the wildest hypothesis generally turn out to have a far more mundane explaination. I refuse to allow my emotion override my curiosity.
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?
My point was that it's entirely possible for such structures to exist in nature. I make no bold speculations as to their origin, I was merely pointing out the above observation
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.
A simple test as described in Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer is to take a large bowl of flour and drop a marble into it. You'll note that a circular crater forms. Throw the marble from an oblique angle and unless the marble rolls along the surface, the resulting crater will also be round. Throw in a non-sperical object and the crater will still be round.
I suppose the above debunks my own skepticism, but tectonic activity can throw up some pretty strange features.
Clarke too hypothesises that the interior of a large gas giant may well contain enough carbon under sufficient pressure and temperature to produce one pretty mean diamond... However, if Iapetus is indeed the impact site of such a substantial piece of carbon lodged in the surface then the body would "wobble" about it's rotation like a drunk swinging an axe?
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@Falemagn,
(me)At best, I can say objectively that some of the features appear unnatural.
(you)Err, artificial means exactly that, unnatural
Why did you feel the need to make this point if you were not inferring that "appear unnatural" impies "artificial"?
On the other hand, I feel that you're quite opposing to the idea that it may be artificial, at least by reading what you've written. Or am I mistaken?
To be clear about it, I'm not opposed to the idea that the item may be artificial.
I'm just not of the opinion, based on the available evidence, that it is artificial. If sufficient evidence to the contrary is produced, that opinion would change, but it is my considered view that currently, there is insufficent evidence to support the notion that it is artificial in origin.
Furthermore, I don't really feel the need to explore such possibilities until there is sufficient evidence to support the idea or that there is sufficient evidence against any more obvious explanation.
It doesn't, but then again, why are you arguing with me, if you agree with me?
Who said I am arguing with you? An argument implies a difference of opinion.
I am simply stating my opinion, at each instance of this, we have quibbled over semantics regarding the phrasing and logic in the respective language used.
This doesn't mean your opinion of the moon's nature is different to mine, rather we just implicitly like to nit-pick each other's points ;-)
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Karlos wrote:
To be clear about it, I'm not opposed to the idea that the item may be artificial.
Me neither...
BUT.. this very wild hypothesis brought agressively with very vague suggestions... I've seen that hocuspocus before :roll:
Thing that irritates me the most is the labelling of ppl criticizing this wild (and unproven) stuff as being close minded, or even comparing them to the ancient catholic church wich condemned the observations of Copernicus or Galilei :pissed:
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There is an obvious connection:
(http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus3/Deathstar-Comp2.1.jpg)(http://dev.amiga.com/grafx/de_boing.gif)
As for the arguments (http://socrates.berkeley.edu/%7Eloyhc/MontyPython/argument.wav), some interesting readings here (http://www.skepdic.com/tilogic.html). :-D
________
Avandia Settlements (http://classactionsettlements.org/)
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:lol:
"That's no moon..." - Kenobi
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Quick question...
When did "If you can't offer a better alternative than the solution offered by a man known to be consistently fraudulent, misleading, and obsessed with manipulating data to satiate his own ego than you obviously have no case for dismissing his claims..."
become a logically valid response to the people who keep
saying "I don't know why it is the way it is, but there are mountains of things to be analyzed and discussed before we even dare go so far as to propose a theory that suggests something as radical as the haughty, ill-educated conspiracy theorist of the astrophysics world has proposed."
You're trolling...go away.
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I dont care if it's a natural phenomenon or an artificial construct, what distrbs me is the part where
apparently, according to hoagland, nobody can confirm nor deny radar scanning of object.
I once worked for the us gov't , and not confirming or denying leads me to infer "plausible deniability" which makes me nervous.
(pls someone help me find something to debunk this issue)
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Hum,
The good old Arecibo Observatory comes to the rescue...
"We’re being scanned" (http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v34n3/dps2002/155.htm)
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I was referring to the supposed "close(r)-range" scan from the probe Hoagland said was to take place but didnt etc....
unless I misread something ; when he started alluding to iron-ball paint et-al I began to lose interest and started skimming
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falemagn wrote:
...
Try to explain why a large body such as Iapetus would be geodesical,
I could imagine a "slow" collision of two bodies beeing the reason. After the collision the two shattered bodies affiliated to the current shape. Could serve as explanation for the equatorial bend as well...
Or non-uniform gravity coud be an explanation for the unusual shpe as well - once saw an report on TV on the earth not beeing really sperical as a result of non-uniform gravity (but this would not explain the equatorial bend)...
falemagn wrote:
and why would it have nested hexagonal craters,
Because of the hexagonal shape of their nested impactors, perhaps?
falemagn wrote:
and why does it have an equatorial bend.
See above...
falemagn wrote:
...
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 strongly doubt that any "perfectly spherical", naturally originated celestial body exists, until you proove me wrong...
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falemagn wrote:
There's no reason for which crust expanding and shrinking should produce hexagons, ...
There's no reason for freezing water to produce hexagonal ice crystal structures either...
falemagn wrote:
... yet alone nested ones.
... yet alone snowflakes.
falemagn wrote:
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.
Ever heard of/seen the impact of Shoemaker-Levy-9 on Jove a few years ago?
What's so hard to understand here?
falemagn wrote:
Also, crust expanding/shrinking can't explan the facets the moon seems to be made of.
Well - have you ever seen a "ball" formed of lots of soap bubbles?
Guess what shape the single bubbles have - they're hexagonally shaped!
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falemagn wrote:
...
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 - you got me - I'm the one who left his spaceship in Saturn's orbit once the engine quit.
From there I went hitch-hiking across the galaxis...
Do I now have to await an ticket?
:-D
falemagn wrote:
...
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.
I prefer to see it as naturally originated, as long as no-one can come up with evidence of it beeing artificial...
It simply is more likely naturally originated than artificially made.
Period.
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I have some questions that need to be answered if you wish to entertain the artifical origin idea (with respect to building something that will be clearly artificial to other intelligences), that our author makes no effort to raise, let alone answer:
1) Why make it spherical (geodesic or not) - if your technology and resources allow you to construct an artifact on such a scale, then logic dictates that you could most probably build equally impressive structures (even if smaller) in other geometries. The sphere is nature's preferred geometry for large masses. Building something that looks like a moon save for a few unusual features isn't that great a signal. A toroid, on the other hand...
2) Why park it in a conventional orbit? You could use a polar orbit, retrograde etc.
3) Why park it around Saturn? There's a lot of loose crap in orbit that will ultimately devastate your artifacts surface over a long period of time, which coupled with (1) only serves to reduce any artificial appearence over time.
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Dandy wrote:
falemagn wrote:
There's no reason for which crust expanding and shrinking should produce hexagons, ...
There's no reason for freezing water to produce hexagonal ice crystal structures either...
falemagn wrote:
... yet alone nested ones.
... yet alone snowflakes.
falemagn wrote:
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.
Ever heard of/seen the impact of Shoemaker-Levy-9 on Jove a few years ago?
What's so hard to understand here?
falemagn wrote:
Also, crust expanding/shrinking can't explan the facets the moon seems to be made of.
Well - have you ever seen a "ball" formed of lots of soap bubbles?
Guess what shape the single bubbles have - they're hexagonally shaped!
Perhaps OT:
Hexagons are actually pretty common in nature.
The hexagonal geometry of ice and snowflakes is dictated by hydrogen bonding.
The hexagonal shape of a raft of soap bubbles arises from the fact that the hexagonal sheet gives you the most space efficient geometry (most bubbles per unit area). You can stack these hexagonally close packed sheets on top of each other (in 2 ways) to give two conformations known as HCP (hexagonally close packed) and CCP (cubic close packed). Sicne bubbles are not hard spheres, they will literally deform into an even denser arrangement that leaves no gaps and gives each bubble a tightlu defined geometry.
Take any number of equally sized hard spheres (eg marbles) and put them on a tray, shake it gently. You'll see them arrange themselves in the hexagonal pattern of a bubble raft (for exactly the same reason). Try to fill a volume with them and you will get either CCP or HCP overall. No other arrangement gives you the same packing efficiency (for hard spheres CCP/HCP is about 73 pecent or something).
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3) Why park it around Saturn? There's a lot of loose crap in orbit that will ultimately devastate your artifacts surface over a long period of time, which coupled with (1) only serves to reduce any artificial appearence over time.
Perhaps because of the threat of manuvering a large planitary body past Jupiter and the asteroid belt to reletively safe skys?
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Yeah but saturn orbit isn't safe, that's the point. Especially for an object that size.
Saturn's outermost ring basically has no outer boundary, the particle density simply falls off the further away you get.
For a small object, the chances of being hit by debris are fairly slim at Iapetus distance, but for an object the size of Iapetus itself, well, you are going to get pummelled over time.
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Karlos wrote:
...
Perhaps OT:
Hexagons are actually pretty common in nature.
The hexagonal geometry of ice and snowflakes is dictated by hydrogen bonding.
The hexagonal shape of a raft of soap bubbles arises from the fact that the hexagonal sheet gives you the most space efficient geometry (most bubbles per unit area). You can stack these hexagonally close packed sheets on top of each other (in 2 ways) to give two conformations known as HCP (hexagonally close packed) and CCP (cubic close packed). Sicne bubbles are not hard spheres, they will literally deform into an even denser arrangement that leaves no gaps and gives each bubble a tightlu defined geometry.
Take any number of equally sized hard spheres (eg marbles) and put them on a tray, shake it gently. You'll see them arrange themselves in the hexagonal pattern of a bubble raft (for exactly the same reason). Try to fill a volume with them and you will get either CCP or HCP overall. No other arrangement gives you the same packing efficiency (for hard spheres CCP/HCP is about 73 pecent or something).
That's precisely what I intended to say - I just hadn't the time to word it in English.
Clearly shows that a naturally reason for all these so called "abnormalities" is much more likely.
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1) Why make it spherical (geodesic or not) - if your technology and resources allow you to construct an artifact on such a scale, then logic dictates that you could most probably build equally impressive structures (even if smaller) in other geometries. The sphere is nature's preferred geometry for large masses. Building something that looks like a moon save for a few unusual features isn't that great a signal. A toroid, on the other hand...
;-) The spherical shape lends structural strength. At that scale, its mass is tremendous compared to structures with which we are familiar. A flatter shape would collapse under its own weight. This is why stadium domes aren't flat. On a planetary scale, think of the spherical shape as an arch that has no end points.
Also, the sphere has the greatest interior volume for its surface area, and thus is the greatest structure for a given amount of building material. Alternately, if they started with a given size in mind, this design would accomodate their given size with the smallest amount of material, labor, or expence. Even aliens need to save money.
2) Why park it in a conventional orbit? You could use a polar orbit, retrograde etc.
It's not in a conventional orbit; its plane of movement is tilted ~15º out of its ecleptic, far more so than any of its neighbors in Saturn's system.
Further, even at that distance, its eccentricity is less than the others, though usually it would be the other way around. This, too, is unconventional.
3) Why park it around Saturn? There's a lot of loose crap in orbit that will ultimately devastate your artifacts surface over a long period of time, which coupled with (1) only serves to reduce any artificial appearence over time.
Being furthest out reduces that a lot. Maybe they were confident of their ability to repair damage from micro-meteorites faster than it could appear. Then one day something came along bigger than they could accomodate. Nothing's going to protect you from that, except for an atmosphere, or moving out of the way.
Also, from the site, Hoagland cites Van Flanderen's Exploding Planet Model. If the folk who build Iapetus did so in reaction to a predicted planetary explosion, they would want to put it as far out as they could and still collect enough sunlight to keep warm.
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Quixote wrote:
...
Even aliens need to save money.
If they really still use "money", they cannot be much more advanced than we are...
Quixote wrote:
...the folk who build Iapetus...
:roll:
Really - is there one?
Evidences?
Quixote wrote:
...did so in reaction to a predicted planetary explosion, ...
:-? :-? :-?
Where are your facts?
Quixote wrote:
...and still collect enough sunlight to keep warm.
Oha.
Okay - since Albert Einstein we all know everything is relative.
;-)
But I would not think that the collected sunlight in an Saturn orbit is enough to keep Iaphetus what mankind calls "warm"...
:-D
(I rather think you'd freeze your ass off)
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:-? The alternative to the existance of money as an institution is for each individual to do everything for himself: grow his own food, weave his own cloth to sew into his own clothes, cobble his own shoes from leather he tanned from the hide of a calf/cow he butchered after raising it himself....
In short, any economic system that divides the categories of labor among the people so that each citizen isn't doing everything requires an accounting system to track how much of the work you did is worth how much of the work I did and so on. Otherwise there could be no coordination of the individual efforts into a cohesive whole.
The medium of currency is unimportant, only the institution of money as an abstract concept.
Another way of looking at it is man-hours. (Or alien-hours, if you will) Greater efficiency produces better results for the same effort. Remember that the laws of physics are the same for everyone, regardless whether another species may understand them better.
;-) The Van Flanderen model would take longer to explain than I have time for right now.
IIRC, basically, Tom Van Flanderen was once doing research into killer satellites for the military. He created mathematical models to predict the paths that would be taken by the bits of sharpnel from an exploding sattelite orbiting around the Earth. The Idea was to find safe spots in the orbit where another satellite would be safe from the shrapnel produced, while other sattelites would not. If the concept proved workable, the government could then place a series of killer sattelites in orbit, with different orbital distances from the Earth. At any given moment, one of them would be in just the right position to destroy a particular enemy sattelite, without harming ours. Minutes or hours later, it would be in the wrong position to do that, but another of our killers would have moved to a position from which it could safely do that.
While running the calculations for the paths the shrapnel would take, Tom noticed that the very eliptical paths produced resembled the paths taken by comets around our own sun. Out of curiosity, he ran his calculations in reverse, and tracked the positions of the known major comets back through time. He learned that within the accuracy of our best data, they all seem to have once occupied the same position, at about the same distance from the sun as is our asteroid belt, millions of years ago.
This model is in contrast to the conventional model, which holds that comets form in the "oort clouds," orbiting the sun far beyond any known planets. That model sounds good too, except that to my knowledge, we've never been able to photograph the oort clouds around other stars, so they may not be very reflective, and our own oort clouds never seem to occlude our vision of the stars beyond them. In sum, the conventional model requires clouds we've never seen, while the van Flanderen model does not.
Further, Mars shows strong evidence of once having been a moon orbiting a world larger than itself. The Tharsis and Arabia bulges are exactly opposite from each other, just as one would expect from a moon tidally locked in its orbit.
There is also evidence that water once flowed across the Martian surface in a violent fashion, scouring the landscape in a flood of Biblical porportions. This is what we would expect if its mother planet exploded, with debris bombarding Mars (and nearly every other body in the system) very quickly.
The only trouble is that the conventional model of physics doesn't allow for explosiong like that. The hyperdimensional model, however, does.
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Ah, the old exploding planet idea. The principal problem with that is, where is the mass now? If you add up the total known asteroidal mass in the solar system (that includes the asteroid belt, trojan clusters etc) there isn't enough to make a planetary body with the mass of our moon.
That would make it a moon of mars, not the other way around ;-)
Furthermore, there's not a great deal of iron floating loose out there, which you'd expect had any reasonably big (read earth sized or larger) planet violently tore apart.
One would also expect several stable belts of asteroidal debris (depending how long ago it happened), either side of where Mars is now.
Mars is also in a perfectly boring orbit, not particularly indicitave of an escaped moon (contrast to Pluto, for example). also, one would also expect a great deal of captured mass in orbit around it - phobos and deimos hardly constitute that.
IMHO the evidence for Mars being the surviving moon of a planetary catastrophe on this scale is completely inadequate.
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;-) True, there isn't enough left, but remember that depending upon how long ago the explosion took place, much of the debris has collided with other worlds in the system, making each of them slightly bigger. There would be less and less leftover mass every year.
We get a number of asteroids striking us every year. A few every year even make it all the way to ground.
Iron, well a number of the asteroids in the belt are mostly iron, while others have very little. is there a better explanation for that?
Mars' orbit is rather tame(r) now, but it's still pretty elliptical. Remember that over time, the influence of other worlds tends to smooth out a planet's orbit, making it more circular.
As for two belts, one further in than Mars and one further out, you've missed it a bit: Mars isn't in its original orbit; collisions with that much debris moving that quickly knocked it out of its orbit into a lower one. The belt is at the original distance. The asteroids are the bits that weren't moving quickly enough to shift orbit significantly, except over the eons.
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Quixote wrote:
Iron, well a number of the asteroids in the belt are mostly iron, while others have very little. is there a better explanation for that?
Show me some large (as in comparable to Ceres, for example), near perfectly spherical iron-nickel asteroids that are more than 99.99% free metal and I'll take the idea of a planetary explosion more seriously. A planet large enough to have a moon the size of mars tidally locked in orbit would likely have a lot of free metal in the inner core that would be molten following such an event.
Large amounts of molten iron would adopt a spherical configuration pretty readily. Also, being the densest (therefore exerting the greatest gravitational field) part of the parent planet, I'd expect it to mop up a lot of the immediate debris too, so they'd be pretty damn large and hard to miss.
I can't think of a single known asteroid that fits the bill. The mass and inertia of such a body would preclude it being thrown in some wildly eccentric orbit never to be seen again.
Mars' orbit is rather tame(r) now, but it's still pretty elliptical. Remember that over time, the influence of other worlds tends to smooth out a planet's orbit, making it more circular.
Tell that to Mercury and Pluto ;-)
As for two belts, one further in than Mars and one further out, you've missed it a bit: Mars isn't in its original orbit; collisions with that much debris moving that quickly knocked it out of its orbit into a lower one. The belt is at the original distance. The asteroids are the bits that weren't moving quickly enough to shift orbit significantly, except over the eons.
The physics don't add up. The most massive parts of the planet would be near the core; these would be the ones hardest to move and also the ones with the most obvious compositional make up.
Unless of course, the force of the planetary explosion was so vast that it disintegrated it completely into small (no larger than say 100km) fast moving pieces.
Of course, the energy sufficient to do this would also obliterate any satellites. And I don't mean scarring them and ripping away their atmospheres. I mean total obliteration on the same scale as the parent planet.
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Quixote wrote:
The alternative to the existance of money as an institution is for each individual to do everything for himself: grow his own food, weave his own cloth to sew into his own clothes, cobble his own shoes from leather he tanned from the hide of a calf/cow he butchered after raising it himself....
In short, any economic system that divides the categories of labor among the people so that each citizen isn't doing everything requires an accounting system to track how much of the work you did is worth how much of the work I did and so on. Otherwise there could be no coordination of the individual efforts into a cohesive whole.
The medium of currency is unimportant, only the institution of money as an abstract concept.
Another way of looking at it is man-hours. (Or alien-hours, if you will) Greater efficiency produces better results for the same effort. Remember that the laws of physics are the same for everyone, regardless whether another species may understand them better.
Well - you can find loads of examples for alternatives within the SciFi literature...
-
;-) Another matter I'd like to address it the notion that the ridge along Iapetus' equator can be dismissed as the resurt of two lesser bodies colliding, and settling into a single moon.
Since the ridge divides Iapetus exactly in half, it would have been necessary for both lesser bodies to be exactly the same size, which would have been remarkably unlikely. It also seems that the composition of Iapetus' northern and southern hemispheres is uniform, which would require that the two lesser bodies had been identical in composition as well as size. Another unlikely coincidence.
Finally, consider two ice skaters zipping towards each other, on a near-collision course. As they pass, each reaches out, and they clasp hands. The result is that they spin together about their mutual center of gravity. Notice how they are positioned side by side, instead of one above the other? If the ridge girdering Iapetus were the result of two bodies colliding together, the "smush seam," as it were, it would run through Iapetus' poles, instead of exactly ninety degrees from that.
That, and it wouldn't be so even, all along it's length.
-
Iceskaters are a poor analogy as the circling is quasi-two dimensional and not fully three-dimensional, and there is another force involved: friction between ice and skates.
In addition, I am sure you have the FEM calculations at your disposal to indicate why the smush seam would not be so even. If you don't, I suggest you ask Sandia Labs to perform simulations akin to these (http://sherpa.sandia.gov/planet-impact/asteroid/) and see what turns up. I am not condemning the end result of such studies in advance; what I am saying is that you are glossing over a lot of important details which are bound to have an influence given the non-linearity of the problem.
-
Quixote wrote:
...
Since the ridge divides Iapetus exactly in half,
...
As long as you can't provide exact figures to proove your theorie I would prefer to say: appearently divides Iapetus exactly in half...
Quixote wrote:
it would have been necessary for both lesser bodies to be exactly the same size, which would have been remarkably unlikely.
Why do you assume it to be "remarkably unlikely"?
It's remarkaby unlikely that your parents found each other to procreate you - and yet it happened - you are the living evidence!
;-)
Quixote wrote:
...the composition of Iapetus' northern and southern hemispheres is uniform,...
The same with earth, moon, ...
Quixote wrote:
...which would require that the two lesser bodies had been identical in composition as well as size. Another unlikely coincidence.
That doesn' mean anything.
Look at the evolution: It's a whole "chain" of unlikely coincidences...
Quixote wrote:
Finally, consider two ice skaters zipping towards each other, on a near-collision course. As they pass, each reaches out, and they clasp hands. The result is that they spin together about their mutual center of gravity.
No - I wouldn't call it "center of gravity" - it's rather the "centre of centrifugal force" and the centre of the "orbit" they're spinning on...
Quixote wrote:
Notice how they are positioned side by side, instead of one above the other?
I would say this is depending on your point of view...
If you laid down on your side, it would pretty well look for you as if they were one above the other...
Quixote wrote:
If the ridge girdering Iapetus were the result of two bodies colliding together, the "smush seam," as it were, it would run through Iapetus' poles, ...
If the collision path of these two bodies was vertical to Iapetus' axis, you would be right.
But what if the collision path of these hypothetical two bodies was somehow identical with Iapetus' axis?
Wouldn't then the result be exactly what we see?
Quixote wrote:
instead of exactly ninety degrees from that.
From what our eyes can see, you might be right, but our eyes are not really precise.
What we consider to be exactly ninety degrees, could as well be 89 degrees or 91 degrees.
So - if you use the term "exactly", I would expect precise figures - not just your subjective estimation...
Quixote wrote:
That, and it wouldn't be so even, all along it's length.
Is it really even, all along it's length?
Or was that just again one of your estimations, based on what your eyes pretend to see?
-
OK, ok, I admit it. It is artificial. I made it with an ACME Deathstar Construction Kit, but couldn't be arsed to finish it after cracking open the mold and realising I hadn't sealed it properly, causing some of the ice to bulge out around the join between the two halves.
-
Screw-up!
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whabang wrote:
Screw-up!
That's why I left it around Saturn; I was hoping nobody would notice...
Frickin' Cassini Huygens :-x
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@Karlos
Karlos wrote:
That's why I left it around Saturn; I was hoping nobody would notice...
:-o
Hey - I was the first!
;-)
Posted on: 2005/2/28 10:42
Dandy wrote:
...
Yes - you got me - I'm the one who left his spaceship in Saturn's orbit once the engine quit.
From there I went hitch-hiking across the galaxis...
Do I now have to await an ticket?
:-D
But as you are begging me that nicely to pay the ticket for wrong parking on my behalf - then be it!
:-D :lol:
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Dandy wrote:
Quixote wrote:
Finally, consider two ice skaters zipping towards each other, on a near-collision course. As they pass, each reaches out, and they clasp hands. The result is that they spin together about their mutual center of gravity.
No - I wouldn't call it "center of gravity" - it's rather the "centre of centrifugal force" and the centre of the "orbit" they're spinning on...
;-) Let's not be pendantic. It is their shared center of mass, or the center of their shared mass. That, and the center of gravity are usually so close as to be indistinguishible. Smushing two bodies together would alter the spin of the two. The new body would have an axis of rotation that would usually bisect the demarkation where the two joined, or nearly so.
Quixote wrote:
If the ridge girdering Iapetus were the result of two bodies colliding together, the "smush seam," as it were, it would run through Iapetus' poles, ...
If the collision path of these two bodies was vertical to Iapetus' axis, you would be right.
But what if the collision path of these hypothetical two bodies was somehow identical with Iapetus' axis?
Wouldn't then the result be exactly what we see?
:-? You mean both bodies settling together, one moving towards its North, while the other moves towards its South? Touching pole to pole? Ooookayyyy...
Quixote wrote:
instead of exactly ninety degrees from that.
From what our eyes can see, you might be right, but our eyes are not really precise.
What we consider to be exactly ninety degrees, could as well be 89 degrees or 91 degrees.
So - if you use the term "exactly", I would expect precise figures - not just your subjective estimation...
;-) By definition of the term, the equator is exactly ninety degrees from the poles. And our best data to date has that ridge exactly along Iapetus' equator.
Quixote wrote:
That, and it wouldn't be so even, all along it's length.
Is it really even, all along it's length?
Or was that just again one of your estimations, based on what your eyes pretend to see?
:-? I'm stunned by the "Eyes pretend to see" remark. What does it look like to you?
(http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus5/Denk-The-Wall2.jpg)
;-) For what it's worth, Mr. Hoagland has added a page five (http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon5.htm)
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For what it's worth, Mr. Hoagland has added a page five
My god, he so needs to get laid or something :lol:
I've never seen such desperation.
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Karlos kibitzed:
For what it's worth, Mr. Hoagland has added a page five
My god, he so needs to get laid or something :lol:
I've never seen such desperation.
:roll: Dude, that's an Ad Hominum Abusive, and you knew it. If you want to go that route, I can wrestle with the best of them:
8-) Ahem. "How's about you takes the color crayons out of your nose and listens to the evidence before spouting off like that, junior? Or maybe you're just not bright enough to understand it?"
:-? See what I mean? Nothing gets resolved if we do that, so let's don't.
Personally, the evidence I've read on Amiga.org seems to amount to the thought that any data suggesting artificiality can be dismissed on the basis that the human eye tends to see patterns in everything, while any evidence too strong for that can be dismissed on the basis that it must be a hoax, because any genuine relic from that long ago would have deteriorated enough that we could have dismissed it with the argument that the human eye tends to see patterns in everything.
:roll: There's no middle ground there.
Another road block here is that some folk refuse to treat seriously the possibility that Iapetus is artificial unless it is the only remaining hypothesis after all others have been eliminated, no matter how unlikely or far-fetched they are. (And then we drag in increasingly unlikely alternative hypotheses by the heels, kicking and screaming, fetching them from as far as we can.)
It seems that some have begun with their conclusions, and are seeking data to support them, instead of the other way around.
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@Quixote
Aw come on matey, lighten up. Surely you can tell when I'm having a wee laugh :-)
Seriously, I confess I find the guys leaps of logic flawed.
If you ever watched Red Dwarf, you'll see Rimmer's total obsession with aliens. Anything even slightly strange happens, it's the work of aliens.
This is exactly how Hoagland behaves.
Consider the photographs he touts as proof of Iapetus' geodesic shape.
Every close photograph you see of it shows a perfectly normal limb against space, with the sole exception of the bulge in the middle. Only lighting seems to give any hint of a flat, geodesic structure, yet that flatness is not visible in any close range photographs at all.
Furthermore, this ridge would could not be the seemingly uniform profile we see if the overall shape were geodesic. The height at any point above the 'surface' would vary as you cross the vertices from one plane to another.
-
It seems that some have begun with their conclusions, and are seeking data to support them, instead of the other way around.
This is *exactly* what Hoagland does every single time he sees something slightly strange.
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Karlos:
Every close photograph you see of it shows a perfectly normal limb against space, with the sole exception of the bulge in the middle. Only lighting seems to give any hint of a flat, geodesic structure, yet that flatness is not visible in any close range photographs at all.
;-) Just as the roundness of a tree isn't noticed by ants on its surface, so too is the flatness of what remains of each facet is only apparant at a distance; get too close and the local topology is distorted by endless craters left by millions of years of bombardment by meteroites.
Karlos:
Furthermore, this ridge would could not be the seemingly uniform profile we see if the overall shape were geodesic. The height at any point above the 'surface' would vary as you cross the vertices from one plane to another.
That's assuming that the equatorial ridge was perfeclty circular, which we haven't established. In fact, in this picture, I notice that it seems not to be quite circular, but more of a decagon. I also notice other lines that aren't highlighted in the inset to the left. Can you? To me it looks like a soccer ball. (Or football, over there.)
(http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus5/Deathstar-16a.jpg)
Karlos:
This is *exactly* what Hoagland does every single time he sees something slightly strange.
;-) You know, even as I typed it in, I knew that you were going to say that.
I've been following Hoadland's work for decades, and it is sound. I understand the material well enough to spot hokum, and believe me, Richard knows his stuff.
Far from starting with his conclusion, Hoagland starts with his model, and when evidence supports his model, he notices it. When data comes in that contradicts his model, he revises it. That's just what every other reputable scientist does.
Many (most?) of his detractors can't be bothered to read through his body of work, preferring to dismiss it out of hand. That's not good journalism, let alone science.
I'll agree that some of the things he does with numbers smack of coincidence, so I usually take that part more lightly, but the rest still stacks up to examination.
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@Quixote
Quixote wrote:
Let's not be pendantic. It is their shared center of mass, or the center of their shared mass. That, and the center of gravity are usually so close as to be indistinguishible. Smushing two bodies together would alter the spin of the two. The new body would have an axis of rotation that would usually bisect the demarkation where the two joined, or nearly so.
I just wanted to point out that "gravity" and
"centrifugal force" are two different things and must not be mixed up, as "gravity" is effective just to the opposit direstion as "centrifugal force".
In your example there is no "gravitational force" aside from the one that keeps your spinning skaters on the ground.
The force trying to disperse your couple is the "centrifugal force" - not "gravity".
In cosmos "gravity" is the couterforce to the "centrifugal force" - in your example "gravity" is replaced by the couple holding each other by the hands.
Sorry - but:
No gravity -> no centre of it!
Quixote wrote:
By definition of the term, the equator is exactly ninety degrees from the poles.
Yes - by definition of the term!
Quixote wrote:
And our best data to date has that ridge exactly along Iapetus' equator.
All hoagland is showing on those pages are pictures.
And from what I can see from those pics the ridge could be exactly ninety degrees from the poles.
But it could as well be 89 or 91 degrees...
As long as no precise measurements/figures can be provided, no serious scientist or engineer would risk his reputation by insisting on the angle between that "equatorial ridge" and the axis through the poles being exactly 90 degrees, just by looking at pictures...
Quixote wrote:
I'm stunned by the "Eyes pretend to see" remark. What does it look like to you?
To me it looks rather rough than even...
BTW:
Hoaxland (or was it Hoagland? :-D) frequently is referring to impacts on Iaphetus.
If Iaphetus really would be hollow, I would expect the impacting bodies to go through Iaphetus (at least those who caused the big craters) - leaving "tunnel-like" holes, where you would be able to see parts of the "inner structure" of an arteficial body.
Iaphetus then would look more like a ball of swiss cheese - rather than like just any moon littered with relativly flat craters!
Ahh - annother BTW:
After having looked long enough at Hoaxlands face (I think this way of spelling the name fits better), I seem to know where his obsession with hexagonal shapes derives from (please, don`t take this more serious than I take Hoagland):
Sorry - I can`t figure out how to upload the pic - the "image" button seems not to work.
As soon as I know how to do it, I will upload the image - promised!
-
;-) Bear in mind that I'm posting from work, and thus have less time to frame and polish my arguments then I would prefer.
In my ice skating analogy, I sought to draw parallels between celestial mechanics and a more well known situation, to make the physics more intuitive for the casual reader who knew little of the physics involved. In the comparison, the gravity holding two bodies together was analogized to the strength of the skaters' arms; the gravity holding them to the ice has no parallel in space, and to attempts to draw one would stretch the analogy too far.
The principle which I sought to illustrate was that any two bodies merging in space would assume a new axis of rotation, and that that axis would be perpendicular to their original directions of movement, despite whatever their original axis of rotation had been.
(Granted, it varies with the relative porportionate sizes of the bodies in question; a volkswagen sized body striking the Earth would alter its axis, but not enough to measure, let alone to notice. -But we were postulating that the two bodies were of sizes near enough to equal to create the ridge seen around Iapetus' equator. At those porportions, the new axis would be perpendicular to their relative directions of movement, while the "smush seam" would be similarly perpendicular to that direction, thus running through the new poles, instead of along the new equator.)
:roll: Next, it really must be repeated that such word play as "Hoaxland," while creative, still constitutes an Ad Hominum Abusive, and is not a valid argument.
;-) On to the thought that sustained meteorotic bombardment would eventually punch holes through the shell of Iapetus. The obvious follow-up question is "what size?" Under Hoagland's model, some of the meteorites HAVE penetrated the roof, or shell, of Iapetus, allowing its interior atmosphere (or more properly, its biosphere) to escape, eventually to freeze on the surface. Thus, the white layer of ice and organic compounds on the leading face, where meteorites land more frequently, while the relatively less damaged trailing face still shows the original carbon black face.
This model explains WHY one face is white; to my knowlrdge the conventional model does not.
Further, one specualation regarding the ridge is that it is a support structure, built with greater strength than most of the surrounding regions. At one time, the surrounding surface was as high as the ridge, and since then the majority of the surface has been smashed in, collapsing to the irregular depths we see now. If this is the case, then closeup photos of the dark side would show no ridge, or the ridge at a much reduced altitude relative to the surrounding surface.
More later....
-
Ok,
If you are going to take the scientific approach, you need to be able to argue both sides of the coin.
Iapeteus is natural. Discuss.
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@Quixote
Quixote wrote:
Bear in mind that I'm posting from work, and thus have less time to frame and polish my arguments then I would prefer.
Ahhh - so you are one of those bad guys, who causes damage to his employer by using his equipement for private purposes and so risking their job (like me?)?
Quixote wrote:
In my ice skating analogy, I sought to draw parallels between celestial mechanics and a more well known situation, to make the physics more intuitive for the casual reader who knew little of the physics involved. In the comparison, the gravity holding two bodies together was analogized to the strength of the skaters' arms; the gravity holding them to the ice has no parallel in space, and to attempts to draw one would stretch the analogy too far.
The principle which I sought to illustrate was that any two bodies merging in space would assume a new axis of rotation, and that that axis would be perpendicular to their original directions of movement, despite whatever their original axis of rotation had been.
Now I understand what you mean - it was just that the wording was choosen a little bit unlucky (due to your employer looking over your shoulder? :-D)...
Quixote wrote:
(Granted, it varies with the relative porportionate sizes of the bodies in question;
Fully agreed so far...
Quixote wrote:
a volkswagen sized body striking the Earth would alter its axis, but not enough to measure, let alone to notice. -But we were postulating that the two bodies were of sizes near enough to equal to create the ridge seen around Iapetus' equator. At those porportions, the new axis would be perpendicular to their relative directions of movement, while the "smush seam" would be similarly perpendicular to that direction, thus running through the new poles, instead of along the new equator.)
Yes.
But as I pointed out in a previous post, there is a special case which can explain an natural origin for the EQUATORIAL ridge.
Admittedly such a special case would be the exception - but it is certainly *NOT* impossibel.
On the other hand - Iapetus being arteficial would be such an exception as well, although not impossibel as well - don`t you agree?
Quixote wrote:
Next, it really must be repeated that such word play as "Hoaxland," while creative, still constitutes an Ad Hominum Abusive, and is not a valid argument.
Yes - I know.
But I wrote this last night at 3.30 a.m. and was desperately looking for something funny to keep me awake until I finished my post.
:-)
Too sad that I cant upload that (slightly edited) image of Mr. Hoagland - that provided the fun that actiually kept me awake...
How did you upload your Images? I tried the "Image" button, but it does not work with AWeb II v3.4 on my A4k with CSPPC and OS 3.9...
Edit:
Hummm - last night the .gifs for the buttons weren`t displayed - I just could see the the "placeholder" field including the word "Image". So I assumed this to be the button to upload images.
Today the images for the buttons were displayed - and now that button is named "Manager", but also doesn`t work if I click it.
Now the mystery even deepens - how did you upload your pics?
Any suggestions?
Quixote wrote:
On to the thought that sustained meteorotic bombardment would eventually punch holes through the shell of Iapetus. The obvious follow-up question is "what size?"
Well - if we look at the biggest crater (which is approximately half as big as Iapetus' diameter) - I would assume that the body which caused it must have had a diameter of - lets say 10 km.
If a *MASSIVE* body of *THAT* size impacts an hollow body with the speed that we think to be "normal" for impacts, then it would certainly have passed trough Iapetus.
Okay - delta v (the relative difference of speed) could bell less fast as we assume - but it still would have "drilled" a deep hole - much deeper than the visible crater.
And if the impact speed was very low, then I would expect to see half of the size of the impactor mountain-like in the middle of the crater - but there`s nothing!
Quixote wrote:
Under Hoagland's model, some of the meteorites HAVE penetrated the roof, or shell, of Iapetus, allowing its interior atmosphere (or more properly, its biosphere) to escape, eventually to freeze on the surface.
valid argument.
No - as I stated above, the deep hole is missing. All that`s there is a standard crater.
So sorry - I can`t accept this as an valid argument.
Quixote wrote:
Thus, the white layer of ice and organic compounds on the leading face, where meteorites land more frequently, while the relatively less damaged trailing face still shows the original carbon black face.
This model explains WHY one face is white;
Could we agree on the term "This model *COULD* *BE* *ONE* *POSSIBEL* *EXPLANATION* why one face is white."?
Quixote wrote:
to my knowlrdge the conventional model does not.
What "conventional model" are you referring to?
Quixote wrote:
Further, one specualation regarding the ridge is that it is a support structure, built with greater strength than most of the surrounding regions.
The question is: Why?
Why should an artificial body - constructed of hexagonal planes and so having sufficiant stability - need an equatorial "support frame"?
If we are aleady speculating - it more reminds me of the spaceships mentioned in the Perry Rhodan SciFi novels (SOL-Class ships).
They were spherical as well, also had an equatorial beading, inside which the "jet outlets" of the engines were located...
Quixote wrote:
At one time, the surrounding surface was as high as the ridge, and since then the majority of the surface has been smashed in, collapsing to the irregular depths we see now. If this is the case, then closeup photos of the dark side would show no ridge, or the ridge at a much reduced altitude relative to the surrounding surface.
As I stated above - I don`t think so.
The deep holes from the impacts are missing. All that`s there are standard craters.
So sorry - I can`t accept this as an valid argument.
Quixote wrote:
More later..
You`re welcome - it`s a pleasure discussing with you!
I would like to contact you via PM on behalf something else - would that be O.K.?
-
Basically you`re right - but I don`t mind him representing the "pro"-side, while I represent
the "con"-side, as long as the discussion stays reasonable...
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:-? Dang. My perfectly good rebuttal isn't here. It seems that I'd hit the "preview" button instead of "submit."
@Dandy: Images are posted as follows, except that one uses square brackets instead of curly ones:
{img}URL to image{/img}
As for holes in Iapetus, check out this one:
(http://www.enterprisemission.com/images_v2/Iapetus/Iapetus-Voyager1.jpg)
;-) As for surfing at work, as long as I'm on break it's okay.
@Karlos: requiring the other fellow to prove your position is another Ad Hominum argument, though I don't remember the Latin for it. It amounts to "proof by assignment."
More later....
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Hummmmm - that`s a pity!
I prepared some pics taken from that Hoagland site to show
a possible explanation for the appearently hexagonal craters
(one meant as a joke and some meant to be serious).
Unfortunately I don`t have a website yet - so I can`t share
them with you.
Really sad!
:-(
I will try this evening to send you the images via PM -
perhaps you can put them on your webspace and give me the
link and I edit my post(s) then and add the links - given
your agreement.
-
8-) Well, actually, I've cross-linked them from Enterprise Mission (http://www.enterprisemission.com), myself. That's probably bad form, but nicking their copyrighted images to host myself is probably worse. Besides, I haven't set up a site of my own. I suppose I should; there are a few details I could point out if I took the liberty of drawing on the images, and I couldn't post them here without my own hosting.
It would probably be all right if I made sure to acknowledge their copyright. Especially if I wrote and asked, first.
-
Quixote wrote:
@Karlos: requiring the other fellow to prove your position is another Ad Hominum argument, though I don't remember the Latin for it. It amounts to "proof by assignment."
More later....
Not really, but I would expect it from someone unwilling to challenge their own viewpoint.
By attempting to prove the alternate argument you learn a lot about the validity of both.
This was standard practice during what would have been my doctorate.
During post experimental disscussion, whenever I had to propose a rationalisation for any observed result that had strong alternative rationalisation, I was required to try and prove both. If it didn't have a strong alternative rationalisation, I had to look for one (apart from the really obvious cases where it is totally evident what had occured).
This process keeps you objective and prevents you from becoming bogged down in any explanation that may seem to be appropriate early on in an investigation, only to run into fundamental stumbling block later.
You'd be surprised how many times this process leads you to the correct interpretation (that can later be verified), even if it seems like more work.
Ad hominium, indeed :-)
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Had to jump in here; I've been tracking this particular bit of kookery. : )
There are (I'm ashamed to say) things I agree with Hoagland about, and (many more) things I don't agree with him about.
Agreed: Iapetus is weird. Perhaps the weirdest thing in the Solar System.
Agreed: Some of its features do not appear to have formed by any known natural process.
Agreed: It isn't normal.
This is where I get off Hoagland's train.
He wants to go from there to "therefore, aliens built it."
I don't see why we have to immediately jump to an anthropomorphized "someone" building it on purpose for mysterious reasons of their own. That's a good cop-out theory, one that can be used to explain just about anything (just say that the hypothetical builders have really *weird* architectural tastes), but it isn't a productive scientific theory. It isn't *interesting.*
If aliens sat in their spaceships and controlled all the Earth's weather according to their own weird alien whims, there would be no science of meteorology.
If plants and animals were all custom-made robots built, controlled and maintained by aliens for their own strange ideas of fun, there would be no science of biology.
When you say "omnipotent and inexplicable aliens did it", you effectively cut off any interesting science or speculation that might be done about whatever-it-is. At most, you can speculate about *why* the aliens would have done such a thing in such a way, but that all too often comes down to "I'm sure they had their reasons."
And the "omnipotent aliens did it according to their own whims" idea can't really be disproved, either. If the supposedly alien-built item has no concievable purpose, has a concievable purpose but a much more efficient substitute would have been far easier to build, or otherwise violates the logic of architecture, well, you can just say that the aliens were *weird* aliens and build weird things for weird reasons. The only thing that can really disprove the "aliens did it" idea is discovering that the structure in question was formed by some known natural process-- which leaves one up the creek if the structure was formed *neither* by a known natural process *nor* by aliens. The alien hypothesis has to have a way of being ruled out independently of other theories; there has to be something that can make you say "I don't know what this is or how it got here, but it's not an alien artifact, that I know."
And then there's the fact that the "aliens built it" idea cheapens the wonder of discovery. It seems so mundane, so *familiar.* Instead of a new and strange phenomenon, suddenly we have a structure built by "people" in much the same way as we build cities and things. Much like the ancients who imagined lightning to be sent down by a personified god, instead of considering the far stranger workings of electromagnetism, it resorts to anthropomorphization and familiarization to take away the alien wonder from alien wonders.
I think, or at least I *hope*, that Iapetus's strange features were formed not by the local Civic Planning board, but by some phenomenon that we've never seen before. Life, intelligence, building construction, etc. all occur on Earth right in front of us every day-- they aren't new. I want a *new* discovery.
On the other hand, if aliens *did* build Iapetus (or something else), that could at least open up some interesting questions in biology, sociology, economics (how did they PAY for all this?), psychology, and various other odd aspects of the Aliens Who Did It. But only if it's possible to study those aliens somehow and gain some insight into their nature and motives. Otherwise, science ends up hitting a frustrating dead end, and what could have been a fascinating phenomenon to investigate becomes permanently inexplicable.
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@Quixote:
Quixote wrote:
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It would probably be all right if...
I was able to access your PM, but I`m not able to reply (button is not working) or to create new PM (button not working as well).
It appears tha you are rather limited in this amiga forum when browsing with an *REAL* classic Amiga and with Amiga software!
The "Quote"-button here as well isn`t working...
It`s a shame!
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;-) There is now more from Enterprise Mission. Check out page six. (http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon6.htm)
Fascinating stuff.
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Quixote wrote:
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Fascinating stuff.
What I found most fascinating were the links to the "Nazi-Bell", "Rhine valley experiment", "Philadelphia experiment" and Einsteins Antigravitational Theories...
While following the links I came to a page where "lifters" were shown, and there also was an report about an weired looking canadian (forgot his name), who did many experiments in that direction.
There were photos/videos how he managed to melt metal just with these magnetic fields at room temperature.
There also were reports about the so called "spokes" in the rings of Saturn and an scientific explanation of them.
Somewhere there it was said, that these hyper-energetic forces can leave amazing traces on bodies that were exposed to them - like hexagonal shapes.
Maybe this could be the explanation for Hoaglands hexagonal craters on Iaphetus and other strange shapes there?
From my point of view that would make a lot of more sense than to say those strange shapes are the proof for extra-terrestical life and that Iaphetus was made arteficially by them as a kind of spaceship to bring life to Earth and then being "parked" in an Saturn orbit.
:inquisitive:
It would not require such a big object to spread life in form of some microbes around the cosmos...
Remember the Mars-meteorite found by the scientsts in the ice of the south pole. They say there are traces of ancient microbes on/in it...
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Bizarre boulders at Enceladus' surface:
From New Scientist:
On 14 July, Cassini swooped in for an unprecedented close-up view of the wrinkled moon. Its Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) camera has since returned pictures of a boulder-strewn landscape that is currently beyond explanation. The "boulders" appear to range between 10 and 20 metres in diameter in the highest-resolution images, which can resolve features just 4 m across.
“That’s a surface texture I have never seen anywhere else in the solar system,” says David Rothery, a planetary geologist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK.
Cracks crisscross Enceladus's surface - possibly as a result of the moon being repeatedly squeezed and stretched by the gravity of Saturn and other moons nearby. But Rothery points out the boulders avoid - rather than fill - the cracks. This might indicate that the fracturing took place after the boulders had already formed.
Alien landscape
John Spencer, a Cassini team member at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, US, agrees that the images are puzzling. “You would expect to see small craters or a smooth, snow-covered landscape at this resolution," he told New Scientist. "This is just strange. In fact, I have a really hard time understanding what I’m seeing.”
NASA scientists have been locked in discussions since 15 July and are expected to pass judgment on what they think this peculiar surface might be later on Tuesday.
But Elizabeth Turtle, a Cassini imaging team member at the University of Arizona in Tucson, US, warns there will be no quick answers. “Trying to figure out what is going on is going to take a lot longer than a weekend of swapped emails,” she says.
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Hum,
Ice boulders...
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Quixote wrote:
;-) There is now more from Enterprise Mission. Check out page six. (http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon6.htm)
Fascinating stuff.
Wow, I take it all back :-o Hoagland truly has sussed it out this time! I'm convinced.
Yeah, whatever.
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:lol:
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:-P
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note to Speel: Oh yes they are.
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@Quixote:
Quixote wrote:
There is now more from Enterprise Mission. Check out page six.
Fascinating stuff.
Well - I checked out and commented.
How about you - are you on holiday?
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;-) Not quite on holiday. I haven't been on Amiga.org as often as I might, mostly because there isn't much news on the Amiga frontier. I've been busy elsewhere.
As for Iapetus, there won't be more news on it until/unless our spacecraft approaches it again in a few years, or unless NASA releases more existing photographs. I've given my assessment of the existing data; I find it compelling. (And disturbing.)
Until more evidence is presented, there isn't more for me to say; I'd just be repeating myself.