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[falemagn]

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

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

[PMC]

What have you been up to this time, Blobrana?

[falemagn]

Uh?

[falemagn]

Some interesting pictures:

[Karlos]

@Falemagn

It's a jumptable you dufus!

Oops, wrong thread ;-)

[cecilia]

Walnut in Space

[Karlos]

How much chocolate would you need to make a walnut whip out of that beast?

[Cymric]

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.

[cecilia]

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. :-)

[falemagn]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[blobrana]

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... ]

[falemagn]

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

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

[Karlos]

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

[falemagn]

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

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

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

[blobrana]