moon rock given to Holland by Neil Armstrong is Fake

[Northern Lurker]

I have found an interesting phenomenon regarding cell phones. My apartment building and couple neighbouring ones have common parking garage. 1st parking level is half underground, 2nd level is next to and half level below 1st and 3rd again half level lower and under 1st level.

When I drive to my own parking square on 3rd level I usually have decent cell reception. As soon as I get out of my car calls usually drop and my phone shows no reception. I thought getting out of a car shaped Faraday cage would give me better reception not worse 

Lurky

Some cars have external aerials. For example, some Fords have heated windscreens that really do turn the car into an effective Faraday cage (virtually invisible wires are embedded i the windscreen). These cars "pipe" to signals into the car to get round this problem.

Thanks for the answer. My car is 2001/Mk3 Ford Mondeo Station Wagon with heated rear window only. Do car makers install external aerials to all cars regardless if optional heated windscreen is ordered to simplify manufacturing?

Lurky

edit: typo

[ka9q]

Radio propagation is tricky. It's simple enough in free space, where everything propagates by the inverse square law. JPL routinely does link budgets for interplanetary spacecraft with hundredths of a decibel precision, and they're usually right on.

Land mobile radio is a whole different beast. There is almost never a direct line-of-sight path from transmitter to receiver; everything is scattered and diffused over multiple paths. Whether those signals combine constructively or destructively at a receiver can change when the receiver moves mere fractions of a wavelength. If you've ever played with a laser and noticed its interference patterns, well, that's the same thing.

Much (nearly all, actually) of the R&D into radio in recent decades has been to overcome multipath. My company did it with spread spectrum CDMA that allowed the receiver to separate (some) of the multipath signals so they could be combined constructively in the receiver. Several base stations could transmit to you at once, with your phone combining the best signals from each.

Newer schemes like LTE and the recent versions of WiFi break up the data into a bunch of low speed parallel streams that are less affected by multipath, with the receivers again putting them back together.

And it's now common to use beam-forming antenna arrays, which is why some WiFi base stations have so many antennas. The principle was around for a long time, but until recently it was far too complex and expensive for anything but military and space applications. Times have changed!

[Dalhousie]

Still waiting for an explanation why petrified wood is not a rock......

[Echnaton]

Still waiting for an explanation why petrified wood is not a rock......

You know how those pertrideniers are....

[Luke Pemberton]

Still waiting for an explanation why petrified wood is not a rock......

In fairness I think even a few people here at this board have fallen foul of listening to the hoax claims, where CTs  have dropped the petrified from petrified wood and referred to the Dutch rock as a piece of wood. You are indeed correct to highlight the falsehood and I for one appreciate your attention to detail as I found out about petrified tree stumps and the Gilboa fossil forest. Thanks Dalhousie.

[Dalhousie]

Happy to be of service

[onebigmonkey]

So, given that some hoax believers are still trying to extract some juice from this dried lemon (both from our favourite Dutch nuisance and also on ATS), I thought I'd resurrect this thread to collect any additional thoughts and evidence (including maybe some of the stuff that made its way into the awe thread).

We know that this rock became famous largely as a result of it making its way into an exhibition called 'Fly me to the moon' by art duo Bikvanderpol, which used the stone as its centrepiece to try and provoke thought and discussion. Whether they put the stone and card together for artistic effect, or whether they genuinely came across them and took them as inspiration is debatable.

Some parts of the exhibition handbook are online, but I decided to actually buy a copy and there are images in there that are not available on the net. It's not hard to get hold of, but getting hold of a sensibly priced copy is not so easy - I got lucky

Here it is on my sofa:



What is also known is that it the rock and card were supposedly  found in a drawer in the museum as part of material donated by Drees' family - some in 1991, some in 2003. The catalog number forms part of the title of the handbook: NG-1991-4-25. It's worth noting the obvious date format, but this does not coincide with the date of the donation as recorded in the book (February 1991). Other material (according to the book) was also donated in 1967.

This is the drawer:



and here is a close up of the fossil.



It's worth noting a couple of things.

1. Each item shown has retainers that keep them in place when the drawer is opened, with two exceptions: objects with pins, and the card & stone.

2 Every item shown has a small label with its catalog number written on it. Except for the card and stone (the one that is visible on the close-up relates to the flag and plinth next to it).

I'd also add from my personal OCD perspective that the positioning of the card and stone is a little odd, given how well spaced all other items are. It also doesn't seem right to have one object on top of another one like this as it risks damage to the card if the stone moves.

Many of the other items on display have catalog numbers beginning 2003, although others are not shown in the online results from searching the museum catalog.

Here is the object, without card, being photographed for the book:



and here it is seemingly part of the exhibit, again without card.



The book does show the stone and card together, and markings on the card show it is the same one as in the drawer. There is an online version of that image here:

http://www.bikvanderpol.net/214/fly_me_to_the_moon/

This doesn't look like the same display in the other photograph.

Now, for my money the discrepancies in the drawer suggest a bit of artistic skullduggery here, but then again it is a puzzle as to why the artists would randomly choose the moon as a subject for their exhibit. Artists, eh!

I think that's enough thought provoking for now

[Miss Vocalcord]

It's worth noting a couple of things.

1. Each item shown has retainers that keep them in place when the drawer is opened, with two exceptions: objects with pins, and the card & stone.

2 Every item shown has a small label with its catalog number written on it. Except for the card and stone (the one that is visible on the close-up relates to the flag and plinth next to it).

It also seems there are empty "slots" (e.g. on the far left in the middle, below the drawing). Can you read what those cards say?

[onebigmonkey]

No, sadly. They are consistent with being catalog numbers like the others, and the missing items are possibly on public display.

If you're getting at what I think you're getting at, I did consider whether the fossil and card were originally in those slots, and it is a possibility.

However I am not convinced that any are the right size for them, or in the vase of the card the right orientation. If they were neatly displayed in those slots, why not photograph them there?

It is all speculation based on nebulous detail, but it adds to the picture.

I've not seen a good quality image of the drawer online, and my magnifying glass on the original page doesn't help!

The little book, by the way, is a cool thing

[onebigmonkey]

I have, for my sins, spent much of this evening with an array of magnifying glasses, macro lenses and other bits and pieces.

I am not confident as to what the catalog numbers of the missing items are, but I am reasonably confident as to what they are not.

As another interesting aside, the original 'maansteen' can still be found in the Rijskmuseum listings under the catalog number, but the card does not seem as easy to find and it does not turn up in searches for 'Drees', 'Middendorf' or 'Apollo'.