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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Mars Global Surveyor _ Water Flow On The Valley Floor!

Posted by: SigurRosFan Sep 17 2005, 09:23 PM

Original link: http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/09/15/

Okay, okay. biggrin.gif It's only a FLOW of a SEA oF DUNES. tongue.gif


Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 17 2005, 10:20 PM

Are you sure about the dunes? I found the color version.


Posted by: Bob Shaw Sep 17 2005, 10:24 PM

QUOTE (ElkGroveDan @ Sep 17 2005, 11:20 PM)
Are you sure about the dunes?  I found the color version.


*



Ah, right, it's that glacier we've been expecting, in the valley beneath the moss-clad highlands...

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Sep 17 2005, 11:24 PM

Oh, nonsense. Any Hoaglandite can see it's just the top of a giant earthworm.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Sep 17 2005, 11:31 PM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Sep 18 2005, 12:24 AM)
Oh, nonsense.  Any Hoaglandite can see it's just the top of a giant earthworm.
*


Bruce:

It's not the, er, top, I'm afraid. That's a fully-growed sandworm in the advanced stages of the mating season... ...you should see the next frame!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 18 2005, 03:41 AM

You guys will have to admit that I did the colors really well. Been watching Tman's work.

Posted by: Richard Trigaux Sep 18 2005, 07:23 AM

Let us be serious: this image is not from mars it is from Arrakis, and it shows one of its famous sandworm.

Posted by: Richard Trigaux Sep 18 2005, 08:40 AM

Let us be not serious:
hearing you all speaking all the time about Hoagland I end up visiting his site, to make my own opinion.

It is very well done, in fact, with a professionnal design, charts and all, a certain scientific culture and vocabulary, and many true scientific references. It avoids to grossly distort the facts, just introducing a bit of mystery here, a bit of dogmatic scientists there, and when we discard his theories it is because we are establishment scientists unable to question our own theories, as really are some established scientists. But for a person with no scientific culture (or worse bad sci-fi culture) Hoagland's theories cannot be distinguished from true science!!

That amateurs or nutters question science in an absurd way, this is not new. But that "professionnals" with a certain scientific culture and abundant funding do this, it is much more disturbing.

"anomalies" are often based on subtle mistakes. For instance, years ago I heard of Bruce De Palma's "N machine" a kind of dynamo with a conductive plate rotating together with a cylindrical magnet, and which, after known electrodynamics theories, produces no current. However De Palma stated that it produced "free energy" and this was ignored because scientists would be a bunch of dogmatic believers. Who was right? To settle the question, I built myself a "N machine". And it produced a current... Was all our known physics just good to throw to the dust bin? No: the current was induced, not in the rotating plate, which was rotating together with the magnet, but in the peripheral brush, wich was fixed, and thus "rotating" relative to the magnet. I checked with a larger plate, placing the brush outsite the magnetic field, the current diappeared. And now, if somebody has any claim of a "free energy" machine or the like, I fully support him... as soon as he brings me a working model.

Many people with no scientific culture are fundamentally unable to distinguish hoaglandites from true science, and thus fall victim of such false theories, and uselessly lose confidence into scientists and governments.

But the most subtle victims are true anomalies (I mean facts which remain unexplained by thorough examination with known science and history). One of such anomalies which has its own thread on this forum is the Pioneer anomaly. There are also some UFO cases which remained unexplained despites serious examination by professional scientists. There are others which are out of the topic of this forum.

In a good science spirit, when a theory is well established, then the anomalies are the priority spots to examine, because only anomalies bear the potential of new discoveries. Well known example of this are the "absurd" result of the Michelson Morley experiment, which led to Relativity, or the discovery of the cosmic background, or this student who tried to observe that strange radio beats in the sky against the advice of her masters...

But the first thing to do when we have an anomaly it to check out any common explanation. And the second thing to do would be to stop any babbling about this... Today, by the fault of Hoagland and his consorts, the persons interested in true anomalies must keep silent!!! And this is not the worse inconvenient of having two thirds of the world medias in the hands of only two persons.


Thanks SigurRosFan for this beautiful image, showing what is very probably an ancient flow channel, filled with alluvial sand which later took the shape of dunes.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Sep 18 2005, 12:00 PM

Richard:

I am by nature and enthusiasm a heretic in all things; show me an article of accepted knowledge and I have an urge to challenge it. However, my challenges are based on quite conservative principles, and - best of all - I can distinguish between bad science-fiction versions of the Universe and reality.

There used to be a phenomenon known as 'green ink syndrome' or 'lined paper disease'. This was the unreasonably accurate way of deciding if a new theory, sent unannounced in the post to some eminent (or at least very public) scientist was the work of a, well, how may I put it? Er... ...'enthusiast'? If it was written in green ink, or on lined paper, and purported to be THE TRUTH, then...

...well, it wasn't the truth, let's put it like that!

With the advent of the WWW and a smattering of graphic design (aided also by the oft-quoted dumbing down of real science as a result of PowerPoint) the green ink and lined paper tests are no more, so we're simply left with claims regarding THE TRUTH. In all honesty, the tests for cookiness are not in terms of the strict scientific method, but are more sociological! Any system which claims to be complete, and unified, and superior to all others is, IMHO, de facto plain wrong. Real science is about uncertainty, division, and challenge - but in the details, not in the whole world-view, and conspiracy and secrets are rarely part of that way of dealing with the world.

I wonder if CAPITALS have replaced green ink? Hmmm...

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Richard Trigaux Sep 18 2005, 06:51 PM

Bob, I am very interested by all what is unexplained. I am also alway among the first to question a theory or accepted fact. In the domain of ethics and society, this led me very far, much farther that I expected. But in science it is now very difficult to make a basic discovery. Only remain anomalies as an unexplored field.

In ancient times in Europe it is sait that there was the fool's day. Once a years the fools were allowed to run the city. For fake, of course. But the day after their decisions were discussed, and, it is said, they were often accepted as they proved the most sensical, at last.

So people like Hoagland could be useful in a way, by collecting unexplained facts. So was Charles Fort who gathered "fortean facts" without trying to explain them.

But today "anomalist" in the Hoagland style are much too numerous. It is everyday the fool's day. And to examine all their claims would require several universities. Perhaps in some years, with the inception of XML languages and speech-understanding softwares, it will be possible to have computers scanning all their web sites to check for some useful idea, in a much similar way that computers analyse billions of collisions per second in a synchrotron to detect only one interesting event per day.

As you say the use of strong affirmation could allow to detect them more surely (and in a much shorter time) than in scientifically analysing their claims. Not sure, as it is enough to instill some doubt and the evil is done (or the book is sold) Anyway Hoagland does not pass this test. The only page I read (that was enough to make my opinion) was speaking of an anomalous electric behaviour of Voyager when it crossed Saturn Ring plane. Suddenly came the explanation, stated in a very positive way: It had encountered "extradimentionnal forces" !!

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Sep 18 2005, 09:38 PM

In any case, it can't possibly be a Sandworm. See any Fremen running around looking mystical, or any fat villains who keep referring to themselves in the third person like Bob Dole? (Parenthetically, why is it always the VILLAINS in these books who are fat? Why can't we have a fat hero now and then? Fat people of the world, unite!)

Posted by: edstrick Sep 19 2005, 06:52 AM

Bruce Moomaw: "....Why can't we have a fat hero now and then? "

Try old Nick van Rijhn <sp?>, Poul Anderson's merchant master in some of his classic SF short stories from the late 50's through early 70's. Definately plump, I recall. "Trader to the Stars" collection and "The Man Who Counts" (short version: "War of the Wing Men")

Poul was one of the great, multiple award-winning SF authors who was utterly ignored by the literati and hollywood types who fawn over crazy Philip K. Dick and his lunacies.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Sep 19 2005, 08:54 AM

Oh, yes, I'd forgotten about Nick. His status as a hero was somewhat ambiguous, though, given that even his employees used to refer to "the clinkered cockles of his greedy heart" -- and meant it. (David Falkayn finally read him the riot act when he got TOO greedy at other people's expense, and forced him to angrily back down.)

As for Anderson vs. Dick, I nearly idolize Anderson, in spite of his occasional stylistic quirks -- because of the way he uses a virtually encyclopedic knowledge of both the natural sciences and history in his stories, which thus remain as fresh as ever even half a century after he wrote them -- but I see no point in spitting on Crazy Phil, who lest we forget, really did try to focus on some genuine, important and extremely disturbing philosophical and religious subjects, even if he never came up with any really convincing answers to his questions. (How many of us do, for God's sake?) The two authors were trying to do entirely different things; it's like comparing apples and rutabagas. (By the way, did you know that Anderson actually turned up as a CHARACTER in one of Dick's stories in 1964?)

Posted by: edstrick Sep 19 2005, 10:55 AM

Dick was a good author, wrote a lot of trash, but as Sturgeon's Revelation states: "90% of Science Fiction is Crud. 90% of EVERYTHING is Crud!". And he wrote some utterly damnfine fiction as well. Not that Hollywood can tell what's good or bad. "The Man in the High Castle"... 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Nah..they'd never film that. Note comments in the reviews:

http://www.philipkdick.com/works_novels_mancastle.html

Hollywood and the literary establishment has a very very limited stable of Science Fiction writers they are even aware of, excluding some of the most important names in the field. Most of their awareness falls on writers who match their social-political vision of reality, and relatively conservative writers like Anderson are utterly outside their view.

Posted by: David Sep 19 2005, 11:36 AM

QUOTE
Hollywood and the literary establishment has a very very limited stable of Science Fiction writers they are even aware of
*


Poul Anderson is a very well known and respected science fiction writer. I'm not sure what "literary establishment" you are thinking of, but I hardly think you can be unfairly ignored and award-winning at the same time.
If you really want to see one of Anderson's works Hollywoodized (and this is not always, or even often, a good thing), then obtain permission from his estate, write a screenplay, and market it until you get a buyer. I don't believe there exists any conspiracy to defraud Anderson of a feature film based on his politics (which are completely unknown, and irrelevant, to me).

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Sep 19 2005, 12:43 PM

Keep in mind that -- while Hollywood claims to regard Dick as a hot property -- they have, every single time they've used him, stripped all the core ideas out of his work, from "Blade Runner" on. The reason, I think, is that his core ideas are too SCARY for Hollywood to use. (The final insult is the fact that his name was misspelled in the credits for "Total Recall"!)

As for Anderson supposedly being too conservative for Hollywood to use: that hasn't stopped 'em from using Tom Clancy -- who is both distinctly more right-wing than Anderson and infinitely stupider. And do I really need to bring up the Rambo movies, or John Milius? The real reason they haven't used Anderson is simply that his stories are too INTELLIGENT for Hollywood to use in an SF movie, since readers of SF with any brains whatsoever both have some background in science to begin with and are willing to put up with a hell of a lot of expository background material that moviegoers won't tolerate. (It's the triumph of the McLuhanite self-lobotomization of mass society in a nutshell.)

Posted by: RGClark Sep 19 2005, 05:06 PM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Sep 19 2005, 08:54 AM)
...  The two authors were trying to do entirely different things; it's like comparing apples and rutabagas.  (By the way, did you know that Anderson actually turned up as a CHARACTER in one of Dick's stories in 1964?)


Ok, you gotta tell me which story that was!


Bob C.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Sep 19 2005, 05:54 PM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Sep 19 2005, 09:54 AM)
By the way, did you know that Anderson actually turned up as a CHARACTER in one of Dick's stories in 1964?
*


Bruce:

The process of authors putting their peers into SF stories (often to their considerable discomfort) is quite common - it's formally called 'Tuckerisation', after Wilson Tucker, who popped everyone and their auntie into his tales. L Sprague de Camp and Elron (He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoke Lest It Cause The Elronistas To Google You (hint)) sorted out each other that way, each murdering not only the other but the other's characters!

Oh, and have a look for 'Rocket to the Morgue' by Anthony Boucher, set at a LASFS-alike Convention and featuring practically *all* the Golden Age SF authors in barely disguised forms.

The process continues within SF fandom, at least in the UK: I have been eaten by zombies, as well as having my sexual prowess mocked mercilessly, in Deathday by 'Shaun Hutson' (names behind the nom-de-plume hidden to protect the guilty)and was recently also killed (but met my end as a bit of a hero) by King Richard III in one of Freda Warrington's novels. Jim Allan, a Glasgow fan known for obscure reasons as 'The Parrot' was immortailsed by James White in the form of a race of parrotoids in the Sector General stories (the Nallajim). I believe that John Brunner never forgave Michael Moorcock for the 'Miss Brunner' charactor in the Jerry Cornelius cycle!

I've been writing, for years, a series of grisly detective novels set in Glasgow (to be finished Real Soon Now, yeah, r-i-i-i-i-ght!) and have had enormous fun terminating with extreme prejudice a whole range of people. Any volunteers to be knocked off will be gratefully received, and will (naturally) be sent a Memorial Certificate, New Horizons style, to honour their selfless sacrifice!.

Who's first?

Bob Shaw

Posted by: mchan Sep 20 2005, 02:31 AM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Sep 18 2005, 02:38 PM)
(Parenthetically, why is it always the VILLAINS in these books who are fat?  Why can't we have a fat hero now and then?  Fat people of the world, unite!)
*


One of my favorite SF characters is indeed fat -- Haviland Tuf from George R.R. Martin's short stories collected in "Tuf Voyaging".

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Sep 20 2005, 02:57 AM

QUOTE (RGClark @ Sep 19 2005, 05:06 PM)
Ok, you gotta tell me which story that was!
  Bob C.
*


The story is "Waterspider" (from the Jan. 1964 "If") and you can find it in Mike Resnick's recent anthology "Inside the Funhouse".

Posted by: dvandorn Sep 20 2005, 05:49 PM

QUOTE (edstrick @ Sep 19 2005, 05:55 AM)
Hollywood and the literary establishment has a very very limited stable of Science Fiction writers they are even aware of, excluding some of the most important names in the field.  Most of their awareness falls on writers who match their social-political vision of reality, and relatively conservative writers like Anderson are utterly outside their view.
*

While I really can't explain the popularity of Phil Dick's stories as the (extremely loose) basis for a number of Hollywood films, I don't think that political content is the major factor. Face it, Poul Anderson's works tend to be of vaster scope than Dick's (dealing with great historical trends and mapping such trends against possible future histories). As such, they're not as conducive to nice, edgy, self-contained 93-minute screenplays.

Anderson's future histories, including the van Rijn stories and the Flandry stories, would far better suit themselves to longer, episodic forms. Like episodic television, or a brace of mini-series.

And for all of those who saw "Ensign Flandry" as thinly-disguised justification for the war in Vietnam, I'm sorry to say that I found more parallels with the expansion and maintenance of the Roman Empire in the Flandry series than any statement of political views relating to 20th-century America. But, of course, that could just be my own perception.

-the other Doug

Posted by: dvandorn Sep 20 2005, 06:09 PM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Sep 19 2005, 07:43 AM)
As for Anderson supposedly being too conservative for Hollywood to use: that hasn't stopped 'em from using Tom Clancy -- who is both distinctly more right-wing than Anderson and infinitely stupider.
*

Very true -- but then again, against all odds, Clancy is a very entertaining and compelling storyteller. You all have been able to tell, I'm sure, that I'm not exactly a political conservative. But I've read, and highly enjoyed, every book Clancy has written. And anyone who can present such conservative views in such a way as to keep me from tossing the book against the nearest wall must have some really good storytelling techniques going for him... smile.gif

Besides, the film versions of Clancy's stories (with the possible exception of "Hunt for Red October") have gutted his core statements, just as Hollywood has carefully avoided Dick's core statements. This isn't a matter of Hollywood preferring liberal or conservative authors -- it's a matter of the Hollywood blender removing controversy from most of its products in order to maximize blandness -- er, non-offensiveness.

-the other Doug

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Sep 20 2005, 07:43 PM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Sep 20 2005, 06:09 PM)
And anyone who can present such conservative views in such a way as to keep me from tossing the book against the nearest wall must have some really good storytelling techniques going for him...  smile.gif
*


Conversely, like me reading Carl Sagan or watching Gene Roddenberry's works.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Oct 5 2005, 11:15 PM

"The process continues within SF fandom, at least in the UK: I have been eaten by zombies, as well as having my sexual prowess mocked mercilessly, in Deathday by 'Shaun Hutson' (names behind the nom-de-plume hidden to protect the guilty)and was recently also killed (but met my end as a bit of a hero) by King Richard III in one of Freda Warrington's novels. Jim Allan, a Glasgow fan known for obscure reasons as 'The Parrot' was immortalised by James White in the form of a race of parrotoids in the Sector General stories (the Nallajim). I believe that John Brunner never forgave Michael Moorcock for the 'Miss Brunner' charactor in the Jerry Cornelius cycle!"

Oh. So you're THAT Bob Shaw. I was wondering...

"L Sprague de Camp and Elron (He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoke Lest It Cause The Elronistas To Google You (hint)) sorted out each other that way, each murdering not only the other but the other's characters!"

What a pity that de Camp didn't do it in person, thereby significantly advancing the cause of human civilization. (I don't suppose he used Hubbard as a character in "When Darkness Falls"...)

Posted by: Bob Shaw Oct 6 2005, 09:49 AM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Oct 6 2005, 12:15 AM)
"The process continues within SF fandom, at least in the UK: I have been eaten by zombies, as well as having my sexual prowess mocked mercilessly, in Deathday by 'Shaun Hutson' (names behind the nom-de-plume hidden to protect the guilty)and was recently also killed (but met my end as a bit of a hero) by King Richard III in one of Freda Warrington's novels. Jim Allan, a Glasgow fan known for obscure reasons as 'The Parrot' was immortalised by James White in the form of a race of parrotoids in the Sector General stories (the Nallajim). I believe that John Brunner never forgave Michael Moorcock for the 'Miss Brunner' charactor in the Jerry Cornelius cycle!"

Oh.  So you're THAT Bob Shaw.  I was wondering...

"L Sprague de Camp and Elron (He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoke Lest It Cause The Elronistas To Google You (hint)) sorted out each other that way, each murdering not only the other but the other's characters!"

What a pity that de Camp didn't do it in person, thereby significantly advancing the cause of human civilization.  (I don't suppose he used XXXXX as a character in "When Darkness Falls"...)
*


Bruce:

Aaargh! You mentioned the 'H' word! We're all doomed, they'll come and visit us and bore us all to death! N-o-o-o-o!

And as for L Sprague de Camp's sad oversight, yup!

And, er, actually I'm probably *not* the Bob Shaw you're thinking of - I'm the Evil Fake Bob Shaw (I kid you not!).

Bob Shaw

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Oct 6 2005, 10:02 PM

QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Oct 6 2005, 09:49 AM)
Bruce:

Aaargh! You mentioned the 'H' word! We're all doomed, they'll come and visit us and bore us all to death! N-o-o-o-o!

*


Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Idiocy, I shall fear no quacks. (Never mind that these creatures actually planted dope in the apartment of a Washington Post reporter who had investigated the Church of Shitology in an unsuccessful attempt to frame her for drug-running. What would we possibly do without religion to bolster our morality?)

"And, er, actually I'm probably *not* the Bob Shaw you're thinking of - I'm the Evil Fake Bob Shaw (I kid you not!)."

Ah. So by the reference to "fandom", you mean you're one of THEM.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Oct 6 2005, 10:17 PM

QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Oct 6 2005, 11:02 PM)
Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Idiocy, I shall fear no quacks.  (Never mind that these creatures actually planted dope in the apartment of a Washington Post reporter who had investigated the Church of Shitology in an unsuccessful attempt to frame her for drug-running.  What would we possibly do without religion to bolster our morality?)

"And, er, actually I'm probably *not* the Bob Shaw you're thinking of - I'm the Evil Fake Bob Shaw (I kid you not!)."

Ah.  So by the reference to "fandom", you mean you're one of THEM.
*



Bruce:

No, not one of THEM - one of THOSE!

Bob Shaw (Evil SMOF)

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