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Post by lukepemberton on Jun 14, 2011 15:53:44 GMT -4
Well Jarrah did say in the Binall of America interview that his new website will have a link where people can request an interview with him for whatever reason. Request an interview with him? Who does he think is? Oprah? Can you provide a link to that video, as I'd like to hear him say it. I'm not ploughing through a radio interview with Jarrah. For the record, I formally request an interview with him, over a phone line. He can come here and arrange it with me. This is how he works: Yesterday, I wrote on this thread: 'Even then, the Fe 3+ is in trace quantities. I cannot find the paper, which is really annoying, but if I recall, the traces of Fe 3+ found in one lunar sample were formed by radiation induced changes to the electron band gap in the iron atoms.'I also wrote this on a website I used to maintain. I dug into another of his videos that he released today, as I see from the blurb that he mentioned this quote by me. After a bit of searching I found the part of interest. JW filmed himself next to his computer in full mocking tone telling his audience that: 'I kid you not, this is what this guy has written on his website' and then finishes by looking at the camera like some wisely sage in disbelief that someone could write something so stupid. What he fails to seize upon is that I mention that out of all the samples tested, ONE is believed to contain ferric material due to band gap alteration. ONE sample. He makes a huge point from a minor point. it does not register in his head that the ONE sample I describe might tell him that he is wrong, and that data from that small but valuable sample set might be the nugget that tells us that the samples are not terrestrial. Maybe he can come and discuss his understanding of solid state physics, and band gap electron structures since he seems to know so much about it. I am afraid this is JW through and through. Corner him with science, and he's like a frightened dog. The only route back is to bark, growl and bite. He spins this statement by me as 'propagandists' not being able to make up their mind about the ferric material found in lunar samples, going to great lengths to explain that some 'propagandists' claim the ferric content is due to Earth water contamination, and I have made some ludicrous claim about GCR and band gap alterations to cover up previous 'incorrect' claims about terrestrial contamination being the reason for ferric material, or statements that there is no ferric material in the lunar basalts. The reason I included that statement in my website was not Machiavellian, it was simply to give an example of ferric material in the samples. If I had said that the lunar samples are devoid of ferric material to highlight the difference between Earth and Lunar balsats in general terms, then I would have been accused of lying. It is a no win situation. I looked at another source he quoted about 'rusty' iron in the Apollo samples, and I will look at it closer once I get chance. The source talks about ferric material due to oxidation by water (believed to be Earth contamination). When I saw the paper it struck me straight away that the authors have used the term 'rusty iron' to explain their findings in simple terms. The reason I believe this is they refer to the rust as a ferrous oxide with an hydroxyl ligand. This suggests that the 'rust' they found is a surface species that forms prior to complete iron oxidation. Again, if JW knew anything about surface oxidation processes, then he would realise that the use of ligand notation strongly suggests surface passivation rather than full oxidation of the iron in the crystal structure. Again, I need to take a close look to confirm this. The simple fact: JW cannot understand that while there will be a single story to explain the findings, scientists are still at odds to explain the data. JW takes a bit of data here, a bit of data from there, and general statements he reads from websites or obtains from emails, and accuses everyone of being a liar that cannot tell a straight story. He fails to understand the nature of research and science. What he sees as lies are not unique to the subject of Apollo. He ought to take a look at quantum mechanics and the arguments that rage regarding the nature of the quantum world. It does not mean that his computer, reliant upon quantum processes, does not work. It just means scientists tend to spend time theorising. It is their nature. It does not occur to him that the 'rusty' sample could indeed result from surface contamination, producing ferric material on the surface of the sample, and the ferric content produced by GCR is actually deep in the crystal structure. Both reasons for the ferric content are correct if the context is understood. It is not that the story is not straight, it is that JW does not have the skills or understanding to understand what he is seeing. He also does not have the experience of working in an academic enviroment, and fails to realise that it is not a black and white world. As I said, I'd like to see him come here and defend his claims. I'll start with several papers that compare mare basalts and terrestrial basalts. I have some questions for him about those papers, and why he seems to ignore them. Maybe it is because they don't tell the story he wants. I guess hell will freeze over before he engages with credentialed scientists, other than getting his sister to send emails.
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Post by ka9q on Jun 14, 2011 21:53:45 GMT -4
I'm not a geologist, so I don't know much about the present or past earth. But I do know that the earth did not always have an oxidizing atmosphere; O2 was formed as a byproduct of the earliest life forms -- the world's first big environmental crisis. Until then, iron did exist in oxidation states less than +3, including 0 (iron metal). Isn't some of that reduced iron still present in very deep strata that formed before the earth's oxidizing atmosphere, and isn't this part of the evidence for a primordial non-oxidizing atmosphere?
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Post by lukepemberton on Jun 15, 2011 13:54:53 GMT -4
I'm not a geologist, so I don't know much about the present or past earth. But I do know that the earth did not always have an oxidizing atmosphere; O2 was formed as a byproduct of the earliest life forms -- the world's first big environmental crisis. Until then, iron did exist in oxidation states less than +3, including 0 (iron metal). Isn't some of that reduced iron still present in very deep strata that formed before the earth's oxidizing atmosphere, and isn't this part of the evidence for a primordial non-oxidizing atmosphere? Not my field entirely. I'm just curious to why JW has ignored the three seminal papers that compare mare basalts with their terrestrial counterparts. Maybe he can explain the reasons for yet another fallacy of omission.
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Post by gillianren on Jun 15, 2011 14:08:20 GMT -4
At a guess, he doesn't know they exist. It's very rare, I find, for HBs to know much of anything about the ongoing scholarly study of the returns from Apollo.
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Post by lukepemberton on Jun 15, 2011 14:24:43 GMT -4
At a guess, he doesn't know they exist. It's very rare, I find, for HBs to know much of anything about the ongoing scholarly study of the returns from Apollo. Probably. However, I found them in 10 minutes. It's lazy research in my book. You actually highlight a point. Much scholary study of the Apollo samples is returning new data about the rocks to this day. Simply, because the analytical techniques are getting better. This is part of the problem. Back in 1969-1972 when the samples were returned there were many parts of the picture that were incomplete. I've read papers from that era that say: 'We cannot be sure A about this but we cannot dismiss A based on our results.' It's how scientists write when they cannot be sure about something. A few years later, another researcher will apply a new technique and say 'We are sure of A based on our results.' The CTers take these different statements and cry foul, saying it cannot be both and scientists are liars. I'm try not to labour the point any more, but in engineering, the outputs have to be well understood to accepted tolerances. Usually because lives depend on success. In the natural sciences, study is often more grey, and sometimes it takes years to understand phenomena. Of course, this explanation is seen as an excuse and goalpost moving by the CTers. I wonder how many have worked in academic science and understand the challenges of piecing together data from lots of sources. The other aspect of natural science is that sometimes one falls on another piece of research and one's own research falls into place. When I was writing my thesis, I found some wonderful crystal structures had formed on my samples. I had no idea why they had formed where they did. I included the result in my initial draft, and highlighted them as a new finding, but was unable to explain their formation. Scientifically, there is not much wrong with this. The alternative is to make up some outlandish theory. The correct way is to say I have found A, to the best of my knowledge I can't find another example of A in the literature, and can't explain how A formed. A few weeks later, after submitting my draft to my supervisor, I stumbled upon a paper that gave me the answer. Research is about skill and also sometimes about good fortune. This is exactly the story I see unfolding with the Apollo returns. The story is 90% complete (say) after 40 years. Once in a while someone makes a connection, and a previous part of story does not seem consistent anymore. It's just the previous part of the story was put together based on best evidence at the time. JW does not see it like that, and he takes different parts of a moving picture, and then screams and shouts that scientists are liars. You're an English major?
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Post by gillianren on Jun 15, 2011 15:34:56 GMT -4
I was in college, yes. It makes the technical discussion of Apollo a little challenging for me sometimes, and there's really quite a lot which I'm taking experts' words for. However, I find the hoax concept fails on basic logic grounds anyway.
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Post by lukepemberton on Jun 15, 2011 17:34:27 GMT -4
I was in college, yes. It makes the technical discussion of Apollo a little challenging for me sometimes, and there's really quite a lot which I'm taking experts' words for. However, I find the hoax concept fails on basic logic grounds anyway. I hope I didn't sound patronising. It's great having people from all walks of life on the board. The reason I asked is that I was reading about Beowulf, and some of the scholary debates that it invokes. I was going to raise an analogy between art and science. Basically, science is sometimes like art, and can be shades of grey. The full data may not be there, or the data may invoke different theories. Scientists, as much as they like to be precise are also conservative animals and use phrases like 'these data suggest' or 'it is possible.' Most science is black and white, but given the small amount of samples returned from Apollo, the picture will probably not be fully complete and the debates and interpretation will be different. We don't understand the geology of the Earth fully, and we can explore it well. I think that the argument that one scientist say this, and one scientist says that means that the rocks are fake shows an complete lack of understanding scientific process, method, practice and culture.
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Post by gillianren on Jun 15, 2011 18:58:19 GMT -4
Oh, yeah; even things that the average person thinks are cut and dry are often the subject of a great deal of scholarly debate under the surface, and that's even without getting into the whole conspiracy theory that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare's plays. Which also fails on basic logic grounds.
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Post by Ginnie on Jun 16, 2011 20:55:13 GMT -4
Oh, yeah; even things that the average person thinks are cut and dry are often the subject of a great deal of scholarly debate under the surface, and that's even without getting into the whole conspiracy theory that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare's plays. Which also fails on basic logic grounds. Shouldn't that be cut and paste?
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Post by ka9q on Jun 16, 2011 23:00:18 GMT -4
The CTers take these different statements and cry foul, saying it cannot be both and scientists are liars. I'm try not to labour the point any more, but in engineering, the outputs have to be well understood to accepted tolerances. Usually because lives depend on success. In the natural sciences, study is often more grey, and sometimes it takes years to understand phenomena. Another big difference between science and engineering is that, while engineering is entirely based on science, it quite conservatively relies only on established science. In contrast, scientists seek out the weakest areas of science because it's their job to improve that understanding. These are very different activities. Engineering research may still fail (if you can't afford to have it fail, then it's not research) but not because the fundamental scientific principles are in doubt. Most scientific principles are pretty well established long before engineers begin to figure out how to apply them to useful devices and systems. Sure, in principle at least, some experiment may yet overturn Maxwell's equations, or relativity, or thermodynamics, or quantum electrodynamics. But if I build an engine that doesn't work, my first thought isn't that the 2nd law of thermodynamics must be wrong. A few scientific principles progressed to engineering reality with amazing speed; nuclear fission went from groundbreaking scientific discovery in 1938 to engineering (and political) reality in 1945 (or 1942 if you count the first nuclear reactor). But it's definitely the exception.
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Post by gillianren on Jun 17, 2011 1:51:06 GMT -4
Oh, yeah; even things that the average person thinks are cut and dry are often the subject of a great deal of scholarly debate under the surface, and that's even without getting into the whole conspiracy theory that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare's plays. Which also fails on basic logic grounds. Shouldn't that be cut and paste? Only in the worse school essays on the subject!
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Post by Kiwi on Jun 17, 2011 23:53:25 GMT -4
JW... takes different parts of a moving picture, and then screams and shouts that scientists are liars. It's not unusual to get different descriptions of items from different experts, as explained by Dr Randy L. Korotev, a research professor at Washington University in St. Louis, in Lunar Meteorites: It's a pity that Jarrah White has so little understanding of the things he "studies." Note: The WUSTL webpage was revised in April. Thanks to PhantomWolf for originally supplying the link.
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Post by lukepemberton on Jun 18, 2011 3:44:19 GMT -4
It's a pity that Jarrah White has so little understanding of the things he "studies." Exactly. I'd say study is a little generous though. He's also making a big thing about hapkeite (iron silicide) not being found in the Apollo samples but found in the Dohfar 280 meteorite. He has dug out a paper titled Space weathering on airless planetary bodies: Clues from the lunar mineral hapkeiteHe has read the one part of the paper that supports his case, and omitted the parts of the paper that do not. Specifically the part about the Apollo samples containing nanophase iron that is formed by space weathering. Interestingly, the nanophase iron is only found in the upper layers of the Apollo samples, and this small fact is rather significant since it probably helps explain why iron silicide won't last long on the lunar surface. There are about three other parts to the paper he leaves out, and these sink his argument further. Also, reading the above paper in full, the authors have no doubt that the Apollo samples are for real, it is implied throughout the paper. This is another weasel trick that he plays. He quotes authors who do not doubt the Apollo missions, and spins their quotes as evidence against the authenticity of the landings. Jay Windley is a past master at asking theorists if the author they quote believes the hoax theory. He did this with Jarrah at the IMDb, and Jarrah dodged this line of questioning like the plague. My understanding is that finding hapkeite in any sample is like trying to find a fairy at a gnome convention. The proposed mechanism for its formation is the production of a surface film from the vapour phase (created by micrometeorite impacts). So it would take surface transport of the vapourised film to form crystals that are appreciable in size. Bombarded by electrons and ions from the solar wind, any surface film or small crystals of iron in an oxidised state are going to reduce to elemental iron or get sputtered from the surface. Jarrah needs to take a look at how surface scientists 'clean' their crystal samples. They bombard them with ions that are comparable to the energy of solar protons and helium to remove the utter most layers of contamination. Any iron silicide films or nano-crystals exposed to the solar wind are not going to kick around for long on the lunar samples. Unfortunately for Jarrah, I have dug out a paper in five minutes that reports iron silicide in an Apollo 16 grain. So that 2 hour portion of his rock series is debunked in about 10 minutes. At this rate, 9 months work will take an hour to pull apart. The sad part is that he does not realise he is wasting his life. His small section on hapkeite really has shown his lack of understanding. As I said before, let him keep opening his mouth. The more that comes out of it, the more it shows how ludicrous that CT crowd are. It is quiet funny to listen to at times. Shame it denigrates the brilliance of so many. Then it becomes less funny. I know he lurks here - please Jarrah, after two efforts at your moon rock series, go away and look up the definition of oxidation and reduction in terms of electron loss and gain. Maybe you'll begin to understand the science you so badly bastardise.
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Post by tedward on Jun 18, 2011 4:46:46 GMT -4
Interesting stuff there.
I get the impression he has taken on board the need to get technal (deliberate misprouncispilling) and has demonstrated his ability to read papers.
At some point you have to ask is he winding people up. Of course he could put up a paper of his own directly challenging the ones he harvests. Lets not forget he feels safe in youchube land and can control to an extent the replies.
Rock on.
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Post by lukepemberton on Jun 18, 2011 9:30:40 GMT -4
The CTers take these different statements and cry foul, saying it cannot be both and scientists are liars. I'm try not to labour the point any more, but in engineering, the outputs have to be well understood to accepted tolerances. Usually because lives depend on success. In the natural sciences, study is often more grey, and sometimes it takes years to understand phenomena. Another big difference between science and engineering is that, while engineering is entirely based on science, it quite conservatively relies only on established science. In contrast, scientists seek out the weakest areas of science because it's their job to improve that understanding. These are very different activities. Engineering research may still fail (if you can't afford to have it fail, then it's not research) but not because the fundamental scientific principles are in doubt. Most scientific principles are pretty well established long before engineers begin to figure out how to apply them to useful devices and systems. Sure, in principle at least, some experiment may yet overturn Maxwell's equations, or relativity, or thermodynamics, or quantum electrodynamics. But if I build an engine that doesn't work, my first thought isn't that the 2nd law of thermodynamics must be wrong. A few scientific principles progressed to engineering reality with amazing speed; nuclear fission went from groundbreaking scientific discovery in 1938 to engineering (and political) reality in 1945 (or 1942 if you count the first nuclear reactor). But it's definitely the exception. Nice post and clarified the point I was trying to make. A good example would be relativity and GPS. Physicists know that that general relativity begins to break down at the Planck temperature. Does it mean general relativity is wrong? No, it just means that general relativity is incomplete, or more precisely it has not been reconciled with quantum mechanics. Physicists are seeking to solve the problem since it is a weakness in the theory. Whatever new theory scientists come up with, it also needs to explain the 99.99% that general relativity currently accounts for. Does this stop engineers from building GPS satellites using the principles of gravitation and kinematic time dilation. No. They know the principles of relativity are good in weak fields, and don't need to design their systems for stable orbits around a black hole. This is exactly how Jarrah works. He takes bits of science that seem to conflict, usually because he extends their scope and does not take them in context, and then cries foul. His view of science is Faustian. Such a view shows he has little understanding of how real scientists work, and how he should interpret data and scientific writings. He and his friends call it skepticism. I call it ignorance and idiocy.
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