Iapetus: Debunked

Why Iapetus Is Not Artificial
August 18 2005
By: GoldEagle

The Story:
It’s been a few months since those Cassini pictures of Saturn’s moon Iapetus came in. It revealed some striking surface features. Then, there are rumors all over the Internet about how this moon may have been made by a superior extra-terrestrial race. Richard C. Hoagland seems to be once again behind this lunacy. He hasn’t gotten much attention ever since scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and astronomers alike debunked his precious Cydonia into the stratosphere. Hoagland even appeared on Coast-to-Coast AM a few times to further post his “evidence” and other rubbish that aliens built the moon. To him [Hoagland] Iapetus is as natural as Michael Jackson’s nose.

The Situation:
New close up pictures of the surface of a moon of Saturn named Iapetus came in. Reveals some very extraordinary surface features.

The Problem:
Psudoscience is the main problem here. We have a moon of a distant planet [Saturn] that NASA doesn’t know much about. Richard C. Hoagland is losing “followers” and needs some fresh material ever since his Cydonia ideas have been debunked to a paste.

The Very Short Bio of Hoagland:
Richard C. Hoagland is not a scientist. He never worked for NASA as he claimed. He has no degree in physics, math, or any science. He never graduated from collage and he became a museum curator. He did win an award but “under conditions”. No scientists were present at the judging for the award. He claimed to be the first to suggest that Europa has liquid water under it’s icy crust, this was a lie. He began to claim that artificial structures existed on Mars. This was debunked, hard. Now he claims Iapetus is artificial to freshen up his appearance.

Hoagland’s “Evidence”:
Strange formations are visible on the surface of Iapetus. Craters seem to have a hexagonal appearance. Strange wall surrounds the equator. Impact craters on the same latitude lines. Weird orbital inclination and distance from Saturn shows uncanny artificial properties that must mean aliens. Strange shape of the moon, shaped like a C60 molecule. Light weight of the moon itself. All of his evidence he provided will be debunked in this thread because I had enough of this rubbish.

My Stance:
I strongly disagree with everything Hoagland says. He is a liar and a deceiver that creates his own twisted reality for profit. He bases all his knowledge on sci-fi, especially Star Trek. He doesn’t seem to understand that the term Science FICTION. He comes to conclusions without substantial evidence, which is not good science. He exploits the intelligence of some simple-minded people by creating enormous articles on his site about a topic that go absolutely nowhere and then comes to a conclusion giving the appearance that he looks like he knows what he’s doing. The reality is he doesn’t know what he is doing! Doing this to people for profit makes me sick. I’ll be against all of his evidence in this thread.

Hoagland’s Conclusion:
This is a good one get ready…
That Iapetus was, indeed— an ancient “seedship” … from the Stars. – Hoagland

Wow, there you have it, the most uneducated conclusion of all time. If you didn’t pass out laughing then let the debunking begin.

Links you better check out:
space.com...
www.ufowatchdog.com...
www.badastronomy.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...




[edit on 8/18/2005 by GoldEagle]

I’m going to do this in an orderly manner, I’m going to present a piece of his evidence and debunk it. I’ll continue to do so until I debunk all of his evidence. I would appreciate input from everyone no matter what your stance is. People that believe that the moon is artificial try to stump me if you can. People that are on my side, help me out.

EVIDENCE 1:
The environment inside the “moon” getting ejected out had caused the formation Iapetus’ dark spot.

The organic component of the exposed “dark ellipse’ – and thus, by inference, the rest of the ice-covered blackened surface of Iapetus … still hiding underneath its frozen layers of ancient inside air – could be direct clues to the incineration, explosive decompression and subsequent “cold trapping” on the surface … of its former organic biosphere inside!
-Hoagland

SOLUTION 1:
Just recently I saw an article of another moon of Saturn that currently has material being ejected from it.

The moon is called Enceladus; currently the moon is emitting gases from its south pole from a hot spot. The area is just warm enough to vaporize the gases or promote sublimation (solid to gas). This could have been the case for Iapetus. Compounds that have been found on the surface may have been ejected from below by internal friction. These materials are Water vapour, Carbon Dioxide, Hydrogen gas, Nitrogen gas and Oxygen gas that are found on the surface of Iapetus and now Enceladus. This may indicate a similar structure. What do I make of this? I say that these are the remains of comets that have been captured by Saturn’s gravity. Internal heating caused by internal friction has ejected material by warming frozen gases to well… a gas. The rings are formed by material that has been ejected from the moon Enceladus, this is not a conclusion just a theory.


GoldEagle

Next on my list is the strang surface features that he is pointing out on Iapetus. These features are natrual, be RCH says they aren't.

Here is his evidence.




He claims that these strait lines and "archtecture" are artificial surface constructs. They elevate miles upward. There is also the understructure exposed to the surface.

Hoagland's up to his old tricks again with this one, which he used with the Cydonia. He exploited the JPEG compression format's blockiness when at lower resilution qualities.

To read more about this check out this page.
www.badastronomy.com...

In a nutshell, Hoagland dosen't have access to the high resolution photos that NASA recieves. He gets all of his images off NASA's website. The images on the site are in the JPEG format to make large images easy to download for people that are viewing the page. The flaw with the JPEG format is that they're blocky. Curves look like sharp edges, shadows appear where the shouldn't, and close-up's are bad and square. He uses this to make people see thing that aren't there.

Good Work GoldEagle
You get my way above vote!

Originally posted by I_s_i_s
Good Work GoldEagle
You get my way above vote!

For what? A theory that friction causes gas upwellings and close up of a burnt waffle?

I'm not getting it. I don't necessarily think Iepetus is an artificial moon but if you have something that disproves that theory, lets hear it.

A theory that friction causes gas upwellings? Isn't that a proven fact that this can happen? It's logical answer oppose to the answer that aliens built it and it decompressed when an asteriod hit it, that Hoagland claims.

His theory makes no sense and I can't believe why people will still believe him after he has lied so many times to them. Nothing he says it true.

Excellent post.......This guy is so full of B.S. you can smell him before you can see him.

I heard this douche on Coast to Coast one night talking about this...how this was the DEATH STAR!!!! Because a crater resembled the Death Star's main laser weapon.

It's awesome how true believers will try to make you prove them wrong(meaning, how do you prove anything to someone that believes Aliens built this moon...when they have no proof for what they believe....it's the old catch-22)

How did I miss this thread?

Nice job Goldeagle..

I remember when the 2 Mars rovers landed.

Hoagland was seeing ancient "machinery" all over the surface of the Spirit landing site.
Of course, it was JUST out of the range of clarity, like usual. So he applied his imaging techniques. So we had gears, and vehicles, and such sitting
on the surface of Mars..

But Hoagie forgot one thing..The Rovers, they ROVE!
This allowed closeups, and views from other angles.
Result? No more machinery talk. RCH moved on to Iapetus..
LOL

again, nice job...

Hoagland does bring up some interesting points though that I have yet to see adequately answered. The equatorial ridge is the most obvious strange feature. I don't buy that the moon used to have a ring and the ring fell back and formed the ridge -- that's just shows desperation to come up with SOME idea.

The pentagon-shaped craters are rather interesting also. Although to be fair, pictures taken of other moons have also had similar pentagon-shaped craters. So unless aliens created several moons, pentagon craters doesn't necessarily mean constructed. BUT, I still would like to know why they are not roundish like a crater should be. Or at the very least blobish... but certainly not with 5 flat sides. And not just one or two such craters, but lots of them, including smaller pentagon craters within larger pentagon craters. Perhaps his hyperdimensional physic model would be a better explanation for these craters than aliens would, but I'm just wildly guessing now.

I agree that close-up of the alleged "buidings" posted first in this thread didn't look like anything at all to me... I couldn't tell what he thought he was seeing.



[edit on 8/24/2005 by asawa]

You have some serious issues with hoagland. You would think you know him personally and at some point he stole your "candy". Anyhow I personally think both sides of this argument are equally assinine until someone sets foot and eyeballs these sites. You could be wrong and hoagland could be right or it could the other way around. At this point you and NASA know no more then he does. So what if it turns out your wrong. Do you plan on apologizing or debunking yourself? The only other thing I will say is I have yet to see anywere in which nature creates a perfectly strait line.
And this isnt debunking anything no matter how much you think it is. All it is your opinion vs. his.

[edit on 24-8-2005 by Whompa1]

Chances of Hoagland being right..

Slim to none..
He's a snakeoil salesman.

I'd like to see a list of things he is/was right about..I'm sure it's pretty short..
I'll even start off with one.

1. When seeing the first pics of Europa, from Voyager, he suspected "water/Ice" and a potentail ocean underneath..

Originally posted by spacedoubt
Chances of Hoagland being right..

Slim to none..
He's a snakeoil salesman.

I'd like to see a list of things he is/was right about..I'm sure it's pretty short..
I'll even start off with one.

1. When seeing the first pics of Europa, from Voyager, he suspected "water/Ice" and a potentail ocean underneath..

I'm not saying he is right. All I am saying is the guy thinks outside the cookie cutter shapes NASA hands us over and over again. "Nothin here folks just some rocks, and stuff. Move along". What exactly is wrong with that? If anything NASA could use some excitment injected in to their boring cliche explanations of outer space.

ok,
I'll give you that. He does think outside the box..
And it's nice to speculate, even if it's WAY OUT there..
I even enjoy listening to his stories, like I said earlier.

I just think he barks up the wrong tree often.

And it's highly possible that all there is, is Rocks n stuff..(which I happen to be interested in, LOL)

That's the thing about Hoagland, it's been a few months and he has already jumped to the conclusion that it is a "ancient seedship from the stars". How do you know that? Have you ever read his articles on his website, and I mean really read them, nothing but ramblings. Appearantly he writes his theories with the begining and end in mind and fills the middle as he goes.

As for Hoagland as a person, I don't hate him at all. He seems to be a good guy. I never meet him personally. It seems to me that he is trying to make himself a leader in the field of something, by lying isn't the way to do it.

P.S. Hoagland wasn't the first person to come out with the theory that Europa had a liquid ocean under the ice, he plagerized it. Just scroll down to the part on this page of the link I provided called "Was Hoagland the First to Think of Life in Europa's Ocean?"

www.badastronomy.com...





[edit on 8/25/2005 by GoldEagle]

Originally posted by Sport Kensington

I heard this douche on Coast to Coast one night talking about this...how this was the DEATH STAR!!!! Because a crater resembled the Death Star's main laser weapon.

Roflol.. I happen to like Star Wars...

Oh well, excellent post, GoldEagle. Sorry I already gave my "Way Above" vote, but I never saw this post =(. But lol this guy's a psycho. Granted that Iapetus has some really weird stuff. The BlackCloud, the Equator Mountain Range, and stuff like that, but I don't think it could be artificial.

I need to do a bit more work in debunking the mountain range and the hexagonal craters, I should be able to post my theories soon after I figure out a few more things. I'm also free to answer any questions people may have about this topic and about Hoagland's theory.

Here is another question for you guys to keep you busy. How do you know that Hoagland isn't altering his photos?

[edit on 8/25/2005 by GoldEagle]

Originally posted by GoldEagle
Here is another question for you guys to keep you busy. How do you know that Hoagland isn't altering his photos?

[edit on 8/25/2005 by GoldEagle]

In the past, I have spot checked some of the photos he's posted with what's available at NASA's web site. They were legit. When he performs image enhancement techniques to an image, he says so, so those won't match. Presumably, if you know the exact technique he used to enhance an image, you should be able to replicate it and produce something very similar -- I haven't tried that since all I have is Paint Shop Pro and I doubt that will do those sorts of enhancements.

Besides, it'd be too easy to call him on it if he did anything that outrageous. Its harder to call someone on something when it just comes down to "It looks like it is constructed" vs "No it doesn't".

By the way, I'd like to add the following before someone asks me for details. Specifically, I looked at his postings of "flows" of some sort of liquid around crater walls and cliffs, as well as his various pictures taken by the rovers of some interesting-looking rocks that he said were mechanical devices. These matched with what I found on NASA's web site.

I do wish the rovers got closer to those interesting rocks.... it'd have been very simple for NASA to single out a few of these rocks and get up close to them as its going about its travels. At the very least, it'd either debunk Hoagland or confirm that he's right -- either way would have been valuable information. Many of those rocks at least looked metalic instead of just "rock", so there'd be scientific value in exploring blobs of metal on Mars to try to figure out what's up with them.

I just got my hands on a super high-resolution photo of the moon Iapetus. It looks a whole lot different then what is on Hoagland's website. The craters are rounder for starters and that equalateral mountain range dosent extend around the whole moon. The tower thing that Hoagland claims is on the bottom hemisphere is not there anymore. The moon itself is alot rounder and not a buckministerfullerine shape.

I'll break up the picture to show these points as soon as I can.

I made a 3D redering of Iapetus' surface using the new high-res images I picked up. They are very telling of the geography of the moon. I'm planning to make another few more 3D maps. The maps are created using steriographic images of the moon to give me the apoximate altitude of features.

The map below is a 3D render however dosn't have height information in it, the surface is flat, so basicly it's just a textured plane. The 3D maps are being worked on, so hold on for now.




In explination to the polygonal shaped craters, look at the geography of the cliffs surrounding them. The cliff systems themselves are vast, the impacts just so happend to occur beside them. That's the quickest explination I can give at the moment, if you don't know what I meant by that, I will write a more detailed explination with images. Hexagonal formations occur only beside these cliff formations.

You may also notice that the "wall" mountain range dosen't extend around the whole moon as claimed. At the bottom of the image you can see where it ends.