On Conspiracy Theories
back to Family (I wonder if this
doesn't belong under Work?)
My daughter Viannah once asked me what I thought of conspiracy theories
by asking what I thought of
http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-conspiracy-theory.htm
The first sentence says it all: "If the venerable television series
"Star Trek" has taught us one thing, it's that the holodeck will never
work properly and you should never go in there." The article
clearly has something going for it. I read through and made this
reply:
==========
Just an hour ago I wrote a letter to a friend saying that I didn't
typically believe in conspiracy theories. Working in government
and on complicated things, I just don't observe that people are smart
enough or organized enough to get away with all that stuff. Or,
put another way, it would be a lot easier from an engineering
perspective to just go to the moon than it would be to fake it credibly.
This friend was giving Bin Laden credit for foreseeing and
orchestrating that his "little" blow on the World Trade Center would
divert American attention from the oil crises until it was too late to
do anything constructive, then we would all be subject to
Muslims. Well, it might happen, but Bin Laden was luckier than
smart, in my view. Right place at the right time kind of luck.
I don't know what it is about people that needs to not believe in
things that are plain and obvious. Does anyone believe that
skyscrapers don't exist? They are a more incredible achievement
than a lot of the claims on the link. Just because you can see
that it looks tall and go into it and get in an elevator and come out
and see the views out a window, can you really believe all that?
They could be shaking the elevator box or holding you upside down or
something to make you believe you're going up. They could have
real-looking pictures plastered on the windows with some focal length
trickery and good lighting. Maybe we should visit the window
washer at work. Maybe we should take the stairs. Who is
"they" anyway?
As we know, everything is just within a few miles of La Canada.
"They" roll the scenery past to give us the illusion that we are
traveling, by car or plane.
Governments don't help themselves by lying about stuff. Nobody
knows what to believe or think when you know for a fact that the
government will lie to you if it supposes that it needs to, for
whatever reason. Which is easier to believe, "The government lies
to you." or "The people who say the government lies are lying."
Right.
Of course, the military does some amazing things, and denies it
all. So, when anything unexplained happens an obvious possibility
is that the government / military knows all about it or did it.
The denials mean nothing. No way to tell if they're true or
false. (Of course, the way the government works, it will only be
a handfull of people in the government that "know" any such thing.)
So, as to the theories:
10. The dead cosmonaut. I've read all about this in various
places. Totally plausible, totally unprovable either way.
The Russians were known for not publicizing anything until after it was
done and successful, so that matches. One of the ones I read said
he was on the way to the moon. What does snopes say? (Send
me the link.)
9. Shifting poles. The people I work with are the world's
experts on this. The rotational pole wanders around on a day to
day basis within an area about a hundred meters in extent. It's
chaotic and random. We measure and solve for it and publish all
the results online daily. Other scientists study the tilt of the
rotation axis to the heliocentric orbit plane. It varies from 0 -
24 degrees over the eons, constrained (as other planets are not) by the
moon. No controversy, no coverup. If they're talking about
the magnetic poles, they do in fact reverse every once in a
while. Another reversal may be imminent. It would be a pain
but not a big deal. People have been on earth and writing down
stuff for such a brief time compared to the time scales of these
effects, it's silly to worry about it. The reversal itself will
take generations (it's only quick in "geological time"). The pain
will be that the current magnetic field that we depend on will be weak
and/or fluctuate during that time.
8. 2012 - the Mayans ran out of material for their
calendar. Well, what did you expect, that they would still be
working on it out to infinity to this very day? They had to stop
somewhere in the distant future, to them. Right, get back to me
about this on January 1, 2013.
7. Illuminati. I've read about the illuminati in many
contexts, usually religious apocalypse. This one is news to
me. Cross between an extra terrestrial reptilian race and
humans? What is more unlikely, a cross between an extra
terrestrial reptilian race and humans or people with post WW-II
technology landing on the moon and bringing rocks back?
6. Roswell. See above under "government always lies, always
denies." There's no way to know what goes on or went on out
there. Ask Cousin Sappho. Her husband was at Roswell and
she has testified and been interviewed on TV about it, after his
death. He could never say anything, of course. She knows
more about it than anyone I know but I've never been told what she
knows.
5. Planet X. Well, if Pluto isn't a planet, wouldn't it be
Planet IX? People about four offices down the hall from me are
the world's experts on this. They simultaneously solve for the
ephemerides (the positions and trajectories) of all objects in the
solar system, planets, asteroids, moons, comets, everything. They
can see the effect of anything they don't know about in these solutions
and guess where such unknowns might be. Planets and less have
indeed been discovered in this way. Their claim is that they
would know about any object with five earth masses within 100 A.U.
(astronomical units, the distance from earth to sun) of the sun and
there isn't anything in that category that is dangerous to earth.
There is lots of trans-Neptunian junk being discovered daily and vying
for status with Pluto, but this is only of academic, not world-ending
interest. This all rules out anything large enough to be causing
earthquakes or weather effects on earth that they haven't already been
seeing in their data for decades anyway.
There was a result some years ago postulating a pretty large planet X
(about five Jupiters if I remember right) that was on a 500 year orbit
and was on the way out right now. As it's predicted position was
in the Milky Way, it was impossible to observe and, as it was on the
way out, it was going to get less possible to observe for the next 300
years or so. There is another theory that the sun has an orbital
companion with a period of 13 million years. Whenever it swings
by it upsets the asteroids, pummeling the inner solar system for a
while. This is credited with extinctions, climate changes,
etc. The theorized object is near it's aphelion right now and is
therefore millions of years away from doing anything ... or being
observable with current technology.
In short, the people who know physics are working hard on this, to the
limited extent that funding permits, and there isn't anything out there
doing anything that anybody would notice. These physicists like
to post tabloid claims like this on their office doors next to the
Dilberts.
4. Spy Satellite 193. Forget what the military said in
their news conference. There was no hydrazine threat to anybody
on the earth. They just don't want those classified electronic
parts and secret codes imbedded therein falling into unknown
hands. Also, they wanted some target practice. Also, they
wanted to show China that we could do it too, without making low earth
orbit unusable for the next five decades like they did. Good
shooting fellas!
3. Flat earth society. Too bad they didn't tell about the
founder's story that his wife was from Australia and he knew the earth
wasn't round because she wasn't standing on her head. Huh?
If you want to believe the earth is flat, fine.
2. Face on Mars. Yeah, this guy still comes out to protest
once in a while. I see my colleagues out chatting with him beyond
the front gate sometimes. He's probably one of your mother's
[mental] patients, but she couldn't say, of course. The Cydonia
region was investigated thoroughly with the MRO camera http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/
that could see a cow on Mars and track its movements. The
investigators (Malin, et al) drew a hiking trial on the mesa once
thought to be a face. Looked like fun.
They even saw an avalanche in progress:
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/newsroom/pressreleases/20080303a.html
It was protests like these that led me to postulate that life existed
on all planets just below the resolution to which we had been able to
examine them. You can never prove me wrong and I can always be
moving the goalposts to stay right.
Nowadays, the outside protesters are the intrusive rebadging
people http://hspd12jpl.org/
The injunction is still on. I've signed my life away already but
haven't been asked to complete the badging process until the lawsuit is
settled.
1. Moon Hoax Heads. Right, you've heard me rant about this
before. My favorite commentary on this is in the outtakes during
the end credits of "In the Shadow of the Moon." http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000XJ5TPE/bookstorenow19-20
In one Charlie Duke says, "If we faked the trips to the moon, why did
we do it NINE TIMES? NINE TIMES!?"
But my favorite was Alan Bean, Lunar Module pilot of Apollo 12.
In his disarming Oklahoma drawl ("I was the most fearful of all the
astronauts.") he says, kind of incredulously, "Yeah, some people say we
faked the whole thing in a hanger in Arizona somewhere. Ha.
Yeah, well, maybe that would have been a GOOD IDEA!"
written 2008 March 29, cbd
edited 2010 February 12, cbd
(c) Courtney Duncan, 2010