I apologize for coming across as a pompous ass. But you’ve assumed that I might trust the DJ as much as the scientists. And that makes you come across as a presumptuous ass.
NASA is an authority on matters that they deal with expertly like colorizing images of Mars. There is no fallacy in appealing to authority when the authority is expert in the field. But that doesn’t mean that the authority cannot make mistakes. Nor does it mean that the nonauthority cannot be right.
If there is no way to settle who is right and who is wrong, then the reasonable thing to do is to postone making a conclusion. Basing a conclusion on the source alone is simply unreasonable.
If someone were to come up to you on the street right now, and ask you, “What color is Mars?”, what would you tell him? Would you tell him that Mars is a reddy-orange, or would you tell him, “It’s impossible to say. I used to think it was a reddish-orange, but now a conspiracy theorist says NASA’s lying, so who knows?”
Based on what you’ve been saying thus far, it would seem that you would have to say “who knows?” if you wanted to avoid hypocricy.
Jeff
So…when the Boy Who Cried Wolf comes in again and for the third time cries “Wolf!”, then it’s unreasonable to assume that he’s lying this time, too?
And when your alcoholic neighbor knocks on your door in the wee hours to warn you, lurching unsteadily there on your front porch, that giant spiders are taking over the town, do you stand there and actually cogitate over whether giant spiders could in fact be taking over the town?
Moderator’s Note:Toadspittle, having racked up over 1,500 posts, you know what forum terms like “pompous ass” belong in, right?
And since there is a separate thread on the whole issue of the “Genetic Fallacy” or “Considering the source”, perhaps this thread can concentrate on claims of NASA conspiracies based on the different appearance of the planet Mars in images made and processed in various different ways, and similar matters.
Darn! I didn’t know there was money to be made! . . . I wouldn’t have to lie or anything, would I?
On to my main digressions . . .
As an ex-NASA contractor type, the idea that 1,000s of NASA employees and contractors, from every walk of life, from every political and religious conviction, could somehow agree on defrauding the public on an issue of little benefit to any of them is . . . farfetched? Unreasonable? Enough to make despair of the whole purpose of communication between mammals? There . . . is . . . no . . . way . . . NASA is trying to deceive people about the color of Mars. To do this they’d need the help of Podkayne and me, and every other NASA-affiliated person who understands photography. I don’t know about Podkayne, but until I see some major cash on the barrel, I swear Mars has been represented correctly.
There is however the question about what any real color on Mars means, exactly. The sun, shining on Earth at midday, through its atmosphere, is our gold standard for real color.
A rock viewed on the surface of Mars is not being seen through Earth’s atmosphere, but its own. Is “real” color that imparted by the Martian atmosphere, or the way it would look if seen in Earth’s?
Also, pictures of Mars seen from orbit aren’t the same color as ones on the surface, since to reach an orbiter sunlight has to pass through the atmosphere twice. On the surface, it’s only once.
See, your first mistake was to even start to take seriously anything Hoagland says.
He is a man who either has no knowledge whatsoever in the fields of science and space technology, yet is totally unaware of his deficencies to this regard, or someone who knows you can make a career out of feeding fools stories.
Here’s the thread in GQ I started on this very topic right after Hoagland posted his latest cough compelling and scholarly theory cough to his webpage. I thought this was interesting though, from a link posted by scr4 in that thread:
I take this to mean that no one’s really sure why the early '90s Hubble images showed an apparently much bluer sky.
Yeah, I was going to say, we are aware that there are photos taken from the surface as well. (I think I saw these in the illustrated version of Cosmos when I was about 11 and it blew my mind as I’d had no idea we’d landed there already).
As a Martian myself, i must tell you that Barsoom is really pink. Anyone who’s watched My Favorite Martian knows that! We got a guy working on the inside at NASA who bought a big box of crayolas.
GOM, I’m curious. IYO, what is NASA’s goal? In your posts on the PP you seem to hint that bit-by-bit NASA is presenting false evidence in order to get people accustomed to the idea of extraterrestrials. I’ve never seen you explain your ideas on this topic in full, but from what I gather you seem to feel that the culmination of the hoax will come when NASA ultimately fakes first contact with an extraterrestrial race.
Could you explain your thoughts on this subject in more detail?
It makes a quite interesting read, and includes the additional information that if the dust particles absorbed less radiation the sky would appear more whitish. As it is, they absorb a great deal of blue. Hence the characteristic Martian red sky.
Ya’ll know one of the reasons NASA slaps an American flag on the Mars probes right where the camera can see it, doncha? It’s not merely so that we can shout “USA! USA! USA!” in all our photos without really having the announcer do it for us, it’s so that the guys at NASA can make sure they’re getting the color images close to what they should be.
Of course, until we actually slap humans on Mars, we won’t truly know what the color of Mars’s sky is. I say this because I’ve played around with various “full spectrum” lights and even though things may look “normal” under ordinary lights, when you slap a “full spectrum” light of one sort or another over things you can notice a dramatic difference in things depending upon the type of “full spectrum” light it is. So while the guys at NASA are no doubt some of the brightest bulbs on the planet, until we get a human on Mars to twiddle the knobs on the cameras and say, “That’s how it looks, guys.” the best we can do is come up with an educated guess.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll take Hoagland’s word over NASA’s. I’m still waiting for the results of the space probes he was going to launch before the 1992 elections.
I’ll have to review my COSMOS dvds tonight, but until then,
Were Sagan’s comments no more detailed than that? And why is he necessarily speaking about just the color? Tint those pictures green, blue or fuschia and it still looks a lot like a desert.
