Hoagland thinks Iapetus is artificial

[james_davis_nicoll]

Yeah, I know. I was surprised too.

There is no viable geological model to explain a sixty thousand-foot-high, sixty thousand-foot-wide, four million-foot-long “wall” … spanning an entire planetary hemisphere … let alone, located in the precise plane of its equator!

Well, except for this one.

Nicked from Bad Astronomy

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Stupid Occam and his stupid razor. Dude's been taking all the fun out of the universe since the Middle Ages.

- Ken

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

I thought it was Janus that was supposed to be the alien spacecraft.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It was Amalthea in Jupiter V.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

They're all artificial. So's the Earth. It only spins on its axis because of the really big engines located 22 miles below the surface of Gary, Indiana. Oh, and they're oil-powered, so things should be slowing down any day now.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I've always thought the Space Needle and the CN Tower were actually attachment points and that one day they would blossom into the engines needed to drag the whole planet into hyperspace.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

If the Space Needle ever blossoms with anything, my f'list will be among the first to know. I still think it's far more likely that the EMP building will animate and go on a good old-fashioned monster rampage, though.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Heretic! The Earth is flat, with four corners!

[sargent.livejournal.com]

O no! You have been educated stupid, and can't compute a time cube!

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Be careful about saying that in such a private place! The Great Clockmaker might decide to extinguish the fires of the Sun, and then where would we be?

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Er, "public."

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of Pushing Ice.

I like Reynolds, but man are his universes grim places.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

Century Rain wasn't so grim...but very film noirish.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The implied human history that we don't see in Pushing Ice doesn't look that bad.

[phanatic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but all the stuff we do see? I'd prefer greenfly.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Oh dear god...he's serious, isn't he?

[anzhalyumitethe.livejournal.com]

I think Hoagland is an alien plant sent to cover for the day there actually is something we find artificial: he'll claim it is and the rest of us will automatically ignore that possibility.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

Of course! We should've known....

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Mainspring presents a reason.
:)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Seems pretty clear to me: it's obviously a mold mark. Iapetus must be a cheap plastic toy; this explains the low density as well.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

We get close enough, we might see "Made in Betelgeuse."

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

If you were going to park a spaceship somewhere in solar orbit for safe-keeping, where would you put it? Not down close to a gas giant, where collisions occur at high speeds.

Out in the Kuiper?

[citizenpsmith.livejournal.com]

Perpendicular to the ecliptic, anyway.

[fabulist.livejournal.com]

I like the think Gaea was right on target, talking about her sister on Iapetus in Varley's Titan books.

[timgueguen.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Hoaxland, as he was frequently refered to on sci.skeptic, in danger of dropping dead from some malady or other in recent years>