Ha ha Hoagland

[mmcirvin]

Through self-Googling, I just learned that Richard Hoagland's website uses one of my early Iapetus color composites (they credited me in the URL) in the process of arguing that Iapetus is an alien artifact.

Here, some creationists are tossing it around as an example of the failure of naturalistic science. I like the guy who suggests that he hadn't seen the picture before because scientists like to cover up their embarrassments (those earliest pictures of the Iapetus ridge were only a few months old at the time, and I had gotten my source data directly off JPL's public website).

I am so proud.

I actually really enjoy reading the LJ post I made just after I saw the first pictures of the Iapetus ridge--the "WTF???" feeling is palpable. (World seems to be down right now, so the accompanying photos may not be visible.) I had forgotten that it was right after the Indian Ocean tsunami; I really needed something not-horrible to focus on. Then again, the best theories of the ridge's formation sound kind of cataclysmic as well, though on an uninhabited moon (as far as we know...)

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that Wikipedia article might need some work--it implies that the ridge was discovered in the Dec. 31 images, and here I am writing about it a few days earlier. Also, I edited that passage myself a few days later and didn't change the wording. Well, maybe I figured that the Dec. 31 images were the first really clear ones.

[factitiouslj.livejournal.com]

Conclusion: your LiveJournal post was the earliest known discovery of the ridge. If you edit Wikipedia to claim that, maybe it'll prod someone else into finding an earlier mention.

I still say its a seam from the plastic molding process

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

I added a comment on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Iapetus_%28moon%29 the Wikipedia article talk page] suggesting the language saying the ridge was "discovered" on 31 December be reworded with a pointer to your 27 December post. (I doubt you were the only one looking at the images at the time, but hey, maybe everyone else was too busy watching the "Fat Albert" movie to notice.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

"High on the Hoagland" would be a great title for a techno track.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Better still, the spheroid-vs-sphere image that's a screen up from where yours is included also includes your image, but doesn't credit you-- rather it indicates that Enterprise Mission has the copyright.

Except, using easy terms that even I can understand, our mutual friend the copyright lawyer Mr. Piano, explained that this is what the copyright law calls a "derivative work" of your original. Now, I don't know if you get the copyright to your version of a Cassini's photos, but whoever does has the copyright retains the same right over derivative works. At least, that's my understanding of the US copyright law, which is pretty readable for a non-lawyer such as myself.

So, either you or NASA can finally LAWSUIT Hoagland right out of the conspiracy business.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

NASA photos are, I think, in the public domain by law.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Which is to say that I think the offended party would be me, barring any sort of government "copyleft" keeping me from retaining rights to derivative works (though I am not a lawyer).

I did officially release some composites I did for Wikipedia into the public domain, but not this one.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...On the other hand, I would definitely categorize going after a guy who looks for alien cities in JPEG artifacts for infringing a copyright on my DIY mashup of NASA photos as Not Very Punk Rock. Even if he annoys the hell out of me.

[brooksmoses]

So, he posts an "embarassing" photo of this ridge, and a scientist involved in the production sues him to make him take it down.

Yeah, that'll stop the conspiracy-theorising, sure thing.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

By the merest effort of cover-up, Matt's role in The Great Conspiracy (and therefore his scientific credentials, because only great men can to cover up great discoveries) would be massively inflated by the conspiracy community.

Cut to: mid-December, 2009: Vice President-elect Mitt Romney is browsing the internet one day, trolling the conspiracy sites to find someone to run NASA. Because he's just counting the days until NASA encounter aliens from the last Orson Scott Card book he read, he's looking for a guy who knows how to make science look good, but also knows how to keep a secret. Matt's gotta make that short list.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Though it'd be very stupid for me to actually do that, it's worth reposting my periodic disclaimer that I'm actually not a scientist or involved in any space mission; I'm just a planetary-mission fanboy who occasionally likes to edit JPEGs that I got off of space mission web sites.

[jwgh]

Am I right in thinking that this turned out to be a giant crater?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That was the first theory I came up with, but it's probably wrong. The prevailing theory at the moment seems to be that both the ridge, and Iapetus's odd shape, are the result of it having once been much faster-spinning and more oblate, after which it spun down and reconfigured itself with resulting massive damage to the crust. Whether this is supposed to somehow relate to the mysterious bright-dark pattern, I don't know.