Strong arguments versus weak arguments.

[ka9q]

Y'know what wavelength of light Earth's atmosphere is really good at blocking?  UV.  Y'know what wavelength the Schmidt camera taken to the moon on Apollo 16 operated in?

The earth's atmosphere actually blocks most of the electromagnetic spectrum; only the visible light and lower microwave radio portions are left pretty much untouched. See:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RemoteSensing/remote_04.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_electromagnetic_opacity.svg

Ultraviolet, especially far UV, is pretty much completely blocked by oxygen (O₂) and ozone (O₃). Or it was, until we started to destroy the ozone layer with chlorinated fluorocarbons (CFCs or "Freons").

Water (H₂O) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) each take out large chunks of the near infrared spectrum and even more of the far IR. This is important because objects near room temperature, like the earth, emit their heat mainly in the far IR. Burning fossil fuels increases atmospheric CO₂, absorbing more far IR and forcing the earth to warm up to radiate away all the heat it absorbs from the sun.

Water and CO₂ are the primary greenhouse gases mainly because they're so abundant. But any gas that absorbs far IR and persists in the atmosphere is also a "greenhouse gas". Some are even more opaque to far IR, or block spectral "windows" that would otherwise get through CO₂ and H₂O. Examples include methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O) and most of the CFCs that also destroy the ozone layer. The most potent greenhouse gas known is sulfur hexafluouride, SF₆. It's estimated that releasing one tonne of SF₆ will have the same effect on global warming over a century as 22,800 tonnes of CO₂.

Everything from the far IR to the upper microwave region is totally blocked by water. Even the lower microwave frequencies used by satellites can occasionally be blocked by unusually heavy rain, the higher frequencies more so than the lower ones. A few narrow segments of the otherwise usable microwave bands are completely blocked by oxygen absorption, e.g., 60 GHz and 120 GHz.

And finally, below a certain frequency in the HF (high frequency) radio band the ionosphere becomes as reflective as a shiny piece of metal. This frequency varies with incidence angle and solar activity, and while ionospheric reflection keeps us from receiving them from space, it also enables world-wide shortwave radio communication without the use of relay satellites. ("High frequency" is entirely relative. HF is from 3-30 MHz, well below the "microwave" range that starts above 1,000 MHz. That's in the middle of the 300-3,000 MHz UHF (ultra high frequency) band.)

So given that the atmosphere is opaque in so much of the spectrum, it makes absolutely no sense to go all the way to the moon and do astrophotography in visible light with small hand-held cameras. To be worth the expensive trip a space telescope should either:

a) operate in one of the spectral bands where our atmosphere is opaque, e.g., Apollo 16's far UV telescope, or

b) operate in visible light with a resolution considerably better than that allowed by atmospheric dispersion ("seeing") from the earth's surface. That means a big (most definitely not hand-held) telescope such as the Hubble with its 2.4 meter mirror.

[gillianren]

I read Gillianren's posts, that's how I learned to spell.

So you won't take it amiss if I point out that you've just used a run-on?  You need more than a comma to combine those two sentences; the technical term there is "comma splice."  (Sorry; couldn't resist.)

I hope no one thinks that I'm ignoring them because I haven't responded to their posts or moderation reports. I'll often read them while I'm at work and intend to reply when I get home, but I'm sometimes forgetful about such things. And admittedly I'll also sometimes just skim through threads and miss things.

Trust me, LO, if I thought you were ignoring me, you would hear a lot more complaints.

Thanks, Pete.  I'm perfectly aware I'm not a scientist...

That's what makes your opinion so valuable around here.

Aw . . . .

No, but there's a logic to that, though I'm not sure everyone sees it.  I am able to point out when the arguments get too esoteric.  I am also able to give the perspective of those looking at it from a lay perspective, which is valuable to experts in any field.

[ka9q]

All true, but keep in mind that this isn't apparent to most observers.

Exactly. The whole idea of lossy compression is to keep only the most important elements of a picture and throw away everything you're unlikely to notice in normal viewing. These "photo analysts" are doing the exact opposite, throwing away all that's important and looking at the crud that's left.

I wonder how these guys would look for "hidden clues" in an ordinary mounted photographic print. They'd probably scrape the print off with a razor blade and focus a microscope on the residual glue patterns underneath. After all, that is information of a sort, deliberately hidden deep in the picture. Maybe you can even deduce from it the identity, mood and entire life history of the guy who mounted the print. And if he's an astronaut you could tell if he's really telling the truth about seeing stars in space.

That's because JPEG engineers intended the process to apply to real-world photographs, in which there wasn't expected to be much high-frequency high-amplitude variance in any of the channels.

True again. Other compression schemes are better suited to non-natural images such as line drawings, sketches, doodles, cartoons, etc, with relatively few distinct pixel values and large areas of exactly the same pixel value. GIF, for example.

I'm always obliged to point out that JPEG, JFIF, and DCT are different things.

Also true. I used JPEG because that's the term people know. I specifically described the DCT-based lossy compression scheme nearly always associated in practice with image files having the ".jpg" suffix.

To those of us who have worked with image compression, transmission, and analysis for something like 20 years, and have seen thousands of these artifacts (literally), people who say they're some kind of sinister plot to suppress the truth sound literally like someone saying cars are really monsters that eat children.

I know. The metaphor of examining the lint in your navel and thinking it actually means something is not very original, but I can't think of one that better captures the absurdity and pointlessness of the whole exercise.

[ka9q]

No, but there's a logic to that, though I'm not sure everyone sees it.  I am able to point out when the arguments get too esoteric.  I am also able to give the perspective of those looking at it from a lay perspective, which is valuable to experts in any field.

Well, I see it. Those sorts of comments are indeed very useful.

[advancedboy]

Jay, it is the dwindling US precision manufacturing, that puzzles me. It is the fact that Airbus takes a bigger and bigger slice out of Boeing`s pie. It is that every next generation civil aircraft Boeing makes  , has less and less domestic engineering, accounting for 787 only 35%. What is the next generation Boeing going to look like, like 20% of domestic engineering? All companies in US have a similar pattern - resorting to extreme outsourcing, which leads to rebadging an import product, and finally, the bankruptcy. It is the diversity of Russian aviation, it  is those An -158, Tu-334, Tu-204, MC-21, Su-100, Su-80,  and plethora of other airframes that show inventiveness of russian engineers and ability to execute such ariframes  under limited budget. The same is  in helicopter industry- mil-38, now the under constructiom Mil-54,  also ka -62,  Kazan Ansat, and various more projects where I see how the legacy  of aviation engineering is carried on. Even after a collapse  of Soviet Union , none of design bureaus died, maybe Yakovlev would be drastically downsized. While US had only 2 large civil aircraft manufacturers, and having no real crises, one of them had to go.  I see this engineering pattern in all US industries- consolidation, consolidation, until there is only one player, which then is wiped out by imports. I don`t see a big difference from Boeing endlessly unpgrading an old 737 , or Bell upgrading endlessly old fuselages to Harley-Davidson,  or Bose or Apple ( poor product diversity, innovation and quality purely by outsourcing). The same goes to car industry. All the companies that show healthy ability to grow show an interesting ability to engineer majority of complex components internally. it  is clearly seen with Germans, Japanese, and now even South Koreans, it is exactly the opposite with US.  And it is exactly crawling into aviation and space  industry. How does it apply to moonlanding credibility. Well, if already 40 years ago they had an ability  to execute such superbly complex engineering feats, they would have gone further and further, increasing complexity even more. You can clearly see how it is done by Nissan that constructed the GT-R. And the secret of their engineering ability- engineering through accumulation of DOMESTIC expertize. The same is for Sony, the most complex , expertize driven components are in-house, in Japan designed. Japanese don`t outsource to foreign companies, especially if it  is a matter of complex engineering expertise. The exception would apply to japanese aviation, referring to construction of their cargo plane, akin to C-17, but only because their aviation is in rookie status comparably to US. Observe how japanese addd and add and add new models every year, more and more diversity. Us is so much relying on hit or miss products, that I doubt they have enough engineeering capacity to execute manifold complex tasks. While Apollo proved it was quiet easily done, in a comparably short period of time. And considering todays computers offer so much  improvement over what was available then. Of course Us has a lot of great ideas, but many great ideas were simply suffocated before finalised- RAH-66, X-33, etc.  After all these years of triumphant Apollo missions why do  we still stand here with RD-180 and  a tiny replica of Space Shuttle projected for next missions. is it really just the budget issue?
 And I don`t denounce astronauts as cowards or hoaxers, it was not up to them to decide. And it was not up to many great engineers who contributed to that project, and it would be  not their decision.....
 Time will only tell, and as time goes, and US extrnal debt accumulates  beyond  reason, so will shrink NASA budget. All I expect  then is more sloppiness to appear, which will finally lead to  leakage  to more information on Apollo.  Kinda Tonkin incident from space to put in a poor analogy.That is my belief.

[Zakalwe]

Jay, it is the ..............
<rambling snipped>

Again with the gish-gallop.

Get back on track and please answer the questions that you have been asked.

[SolusLupus]

All I expect  then is more sloppiness to appear, which will finally lead to  leakage  to more information on Apollo.

It would be fascinating to know how they, against all reason, physics, etc., managed to fake it, and their justification for spending so much money on a rocket that didn't actually go to the moon (if you're going to build it anyways...)

That is my belief.

I do not deal in faith, I deal in facts.

[Jason Thompson]

Jay, it is the dwindling US precision manufacturing, that puzzles me.

None of which has anything to do with whether or not Apollo happened.

And I don`t denounce astronauts as cowards or hoaxers, it was not up to them to decide. And it was not up to many great engineers who contributed to that project, and it would be  not their decision.....

Oh no, don't you dare try and wriggle your way out of it that way. You are claiming the astronauts went along with a great fraud. You ARE calling them cowards and liars. After all, if one of them was a brave truth-teller the whole fraud would be exposed. Therefore everyone who worked on Apollo and knew it was supposedly fake is, according to you, a cowardly liar, willing to go along with it rather than expose the truth and stand up for principles of integrity.

YOU are a coward and a liar, without even the moral fibre to stand behind your own arguments and accusations. Pathetic.

[LunarOrbit]

I read Gillianren's posts, that's how I learned to spell.

So you won't take it amiss if I point out that you've just used a run-on?  You need more than a comma to combine those two sentences; the technical term there is "comma splice."  (Sorry; couldn't resist.)

I only learned to spell. I'm still working on the grammar.

[ka9q]

You don't understand the science, you don't even understand the evidence.

It should be understood that no one is (or should be) ever judged harshly merely for not understanding the science or the evidence.

The most expert person you know came out of his or her mother just like everyone else: naked, crying, utterly helpless and ignorant. Everyone spends years learning the basic skills generally expected of all modern humans, e.g, speaking, reading and writing a natural language. A few people chose to spend many more years (and usually a lot of money) learning a lot of optional stuff, such as most of the accumulated knowledge of a particular scientific discipline. Some of them then choose to spend their lives trying to add to that knowledge; they become scientists. Some spend their lives conveying this knowledge to others; they are teachers. Some decide to apply this scientific knowledge to finding new ways to satisfy some human want or need like transportation, communications, food production or thousands of other things; they're engineers.  Most people select another of the thousands of ways to be useful in the world, or even create their own way. People are amazingly diverse.

So I at least try not to fault anyone simply for not knowing something. They probably know a lot I don't know. But I will fault someone who demands to be taken seriously about something despite an admitted or evident lack of relevant knowledge.

So for someone like advancedboy to claim he's absolutely certain that Apollo was hoaxed, and that we should respect him for it, when almost in the same breath he admits to knowing next to nothing about it or the relevant physics, engineering, math or even history, that gets me pretty steamed.

If you don't have the background to form an informed position on something, and if you're unwilling to trust those who do have it, it seems only proper to simply withhold judgment -- especially if you're not willing to properly defend your position or learn the necessary material. It's a huge insult to insist on being taken as seriously as a real expert in a field while also deprecating those same experts and everything they invested in their positions.

[Jason Thompson]

Indeed. Ignorance is fine and nothing to be ashamed of. However, nor is it something to be proud of, and wilfully remaining ignorant while professing to be able to discuss the subject sensibly is simply ridiculous behaviour and deserves to incur the ire of those who have spent the time learning about the subject so they can talk about it in detail.

[Andromeda]

Excellently put, ka9q.

I agree with Jason, too.  (But then, I almost always do...)

[ka9q]

advancedboy, you seem very concerned about a perceived decline in the state of US science, engineering design and manufacturing.

You know what? I share your concern though I don't want to overstate it. We could be a lot worse off; after all, which country sponsored the technologies that we're using to communicate right now? But I do want my country to lead the world in science and engineering and all the good things that come from them (which excludes weapons, one of the few markets where we still seem to have a positive trade balance).

Now, do you know why this problem has been developing over the past few decades? I think I know one of the causes: a streak of anti-intellectualism that has pervaded the United States throughout its entire history, waxing and waning over time. It probably reached a low in the several decades after WW2 when scientific and technological development arguably reached an all-time peak in human history. It has resurged in the past 30+ years, roughly coinciding with the end of the US Apollo program and an ideological shift by the federal government away from publicly funded basic scientific research. But that may just be a coincidence.

What are some of the manifestations of this American anti-intellectualism? There are many, but two stand out to me. The first is fundamentalist opposition to the teaching of evolution, the backbone of modern biology. And the other is the surprisingly tenacious, wholly irrational belief of some that the United States faked the Apollo moon landing program. This belief has often been cited to illustrate a major failure of the American educational system, primarily in science and math programs. I agree.

[nomuse]

And I just went into a logical spiral there.  I need to avoid forums at one in the morning!

I agree you can't blame someone for their ignorance -- all of us are ignorant about something (actually, about most things; it is hard to be well-versed in more than a handful of subjects).  But can you blame them for willful ignorance either?  Because that's the very nature of Dunning-Kruger effect as described; being ignorant that one is ignorant.  You could hardly be called "willfully ignorant" if, from your point of view, you understand the subject quite well enough, right?

It is a puzzlement.  I think of it as parallel to what Feyman was saying in his famous address.  The hardest skill to learn, sometimes, is the skill in detecting when you have to stop, back away, switch off the machine, and find someone who can show you how to use it correctly before you kill yourself with it.

I dunno.  Maybe the best pedagogical tool is to resist being drawn into the same kinds of general statements, vague assertions, simplified analogies and the like that are within the hoax believer/Dunning-Kruger victim's comfort zone, and confront them with direct numerical challenges to their skill.

Like the question above about shutter speed for the Hassie in order to capture even a single bright star.  This isn't a "Well, maybe the Soviets felt this way but didn't say anything officially" kind of question.  It is a question that has a numeric answer.  You can either do it, or you can confront the idea that perhaps there IS a skill there.  And you don't have it.

Or so are my thoughts at way past bedtime, when my own ability to critique my own thinking is basically at zero!

[ka9q]

nomuse, I have been pounding on the mathematical theme myself, especially when I spar with Hunchbacked over on Youtube.

He constantly compares himself with Galileo (a classic crank gambit). But Galileo had this to say about mathematics and science:

Philosophy [now better known as 'physical science' - ka9q] is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.

This is most eloquent statement I've ever read about science, yet my friend Hunchbacked seems completely immune to it (and to the irony of his self-comparison). He almost never uses math or makes a quantitative argument, and he ignores mine. You can't get anywhere with someone like that.