9 ms·

I heard an interview with Brandenburg a while back. He sounded sane, smart, and his understanding of physics seemed sound. I can't stand this secular inquisiti

by api 12y ago

I heard an interview with Brandenburg a while back. He sounded sane, smart, and his understanding of physics seemed sound. I can't stand this secular inquisition bullshit of cherry picking any sign of possible 'out there'-ness and using it to completely trash peoples' entire bodies of thought and work. It's anti-scientific. Please point out a problem with Brandenburg's actual published work, or go away. Even if he does hold non-traditional or strange religious beliefs, it's not relevant. Roman Catholicism is no more rational than Eastern mystic cults, so do we throw out all scientific papers by Roman Catholics? I'm not much of a fan of PZ Myers either. I read him a bit back during the mid-2000s 'intelligent design' creationist PR offensive, but stopped reading him as he got more and more shrill and irritating. IMHO Myers is as much a shrill fundamentalist as the religious bozos he constantly wars with. One interesting thing Brandenburg did say was that when he came to believe himself that Mars had been nuked, possibly in act of "biosphere genocide," the realization that this might have actually happened plunged him into a bit of a metaphysical crisis. He immediately thought of the Fermi Paradox, and that maybe the reason we're not hearing/seeing anything is because there are big nasty genocidal intelligences out there that 'cull' anything interesting from the universe. He said he actually got very depressed, and got deeper into religious/mystical stuff as part of this. That doesn't sound crazy to me, just human. Around here we've seen some IMHO irrational fears of super-human dangerous AIs circulating recently, and it seems to have led to a similar amount of metaphysical anxiety among some very brilliant and notable people in the CS field. I'm very skeptical of Brandenburg's thesis here, but I have to admit that the evidence he puts forward is very interesting. It either points to what he says -- some kind of incredibly ancient use of a nuclear device -- or an as yet undiscovered natural phenomenon that can yield a similar signature. One possibility (other than 'reaper' aliens) I can think of would be a natural nuclear reactor that actually went fully supercritical and detonated. Another would be a hypervelocity object, possibly traveling at some significant fraction of the speed of light, that impacted Mars and went thermonuclear in the atmosphere on kinetic energy alone. Maybe an asteroid or comet that got flung by a high-gravity body (black hole? neutron star?) or supernova debris could do that?

ChuckMcM 12y ago
This is very much the same place I came too with regard to Brandenburg. Regardless of the speculation, the sites look to be interesting places to explore on future missions. In hypothesizing possible causes, I wonder about the relative size of the ejecta of a type 2 super nova. Given that the Uranium, on the planet originated in such events at some point, and the 4.7 billion year half life, one could imagine perhaps a modestly dense fragment cloud of U235 which was traveling at relativistic velocity away from a Type II supernova, and it collides with the atmosphere of a planet in a far away star system. If the pieces were small enough they might simply heat up and impact the ground, however if they were massive enough, the shockwave of hitting the atmosphere might be sufficent to compress them into a supercritical mass. At which point the meteor would undergo rapid, and energetic, disassembly.
- sounds 12y ago
  A supernova-created natural nuclear bomb in asteroid form. Acting just like a human or alien nuke, but completely arising from natural processes. Or did I miss something? :)
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Exactly, the original 'thin man' HEU A-bomb[1] was really pretty simple, compress two subcritical chunks of fissile material into a supercritical chunk and hold it there as long as possible. So imagine you've got a bunch of sub critical chunks all in a line, they hit an atmosphere which gets them to pile up like a line of tailgating cars on the freeway. The numbers should be quite computable to figure out a bounds box on the possible yield. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_%28nuclear_bomb%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_%28nuclear_bomb%29
  - api 12y ago
    Yup, but you left out the part where it is traveling at relativistic velocities and thus also causes the gases in the atmosphere to go thermonuclear on impact from kinetic energy alone. So a "hypervelocity critical mass" might be a thing.
mikeash 12y ago
According to the posted link, part of his "evidence" is proximity to the Face on Mars. That's not some irrelevant religious belief. That's a chunk of unscientific nonsense at the very core of his claims. Pointing out that it is in fact nonsense is not somehow "cherry picking."
- RaecKK 12y ago
  For anyone not familiar, this photo was snapped by the NASA Mars rover Curiosity: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184MR0925102000E1_DXXX.jpg http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184... Zoom in all the way, scroll up and to the right as far as possible, then scroll down just a tiny bit and look at the rock. That rock has a face on it? Definitely a WTF from me. I am so tired of seeing visual evidence dismissed by people who refuse to even consider it if it's not endorsed by some large "respectable" institution. You mean to say this rock is just a naturally occuring anomaly? Really?
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Pareidolia is a thing. And the Face on Mars is the top example on Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia Yes, that rock is almost certainly just a naturally occurring anomaly. People are built to find faces, even in things that aren't actually faces.
  - mjgoins 12y ago
    I've never so strongly wanted to simultaneously up-vote and down-vote a comment.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - sp332 12y ago
    Cropped version, and other imagery of the region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29#.22Face_on_Mars.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29#....
  - 12y ago
tjradcliffe 12y ago
I agree that people like Myers are more anti-science than not, and approach the issues much like their opponents do, looking for data that will validate their own beliefs, not interrogating reality dispassionately. However, Brandenburg doesn't do himself any favours by saying things like "The Natural Nuclear Reactor Hypothesis had the merit that it provided a known source for a large nuclear explosion." Natural reactors, so far as we know, have to be slow-neutron moderated, and slow-neutron reactors are not sources of nuclear explosions. Even fast reactors--which if not actually impossible are certainly much rarer in nature than slow neutron reactors--aren't sources of nuclear explosions unless things go wrong in ways that no one has yet been able to imagine. I won't say it's impossible, but it is wildly, wildly improbable. Granted the distribution of radioactive elements on the Martian surface is anomalous (which I'm only aware of through this article, so I'm going to take with a grain of salt) the hypothesis that leaps to mind is a natural slow-neutron reactor that was close to a perfectly ordinary large meteor strike. We know that Mars was wet in the past (a requirement for natural reactors) and we know that the early solar system was richer in fissile isotopes, and we know that there was at least one natural reactor two billion years ago on Earth, and we know that meteoric impacts were common in the early solar system and that Mars got hit hard and often enough for us to be able to identify a whole class of meteorites that come from Mars. So a natural reactor that got hit by a large impact doesn't require anything wildly improbable, and is likely testable via detailed analysis of any impact structures and glass droplets from around the areas with high concentrations of uranium and thorium.
- abraininavat 12y ago
  I agree that people like Myers are more anti-science than not, and approach the issues much like their opponents do, looking for data that will validate their own beliefs, not interrogating reality dispassionately. When you say "people like Meyers" do you include Meyers? I can't stand Meyers. His approach is grating and maybe even counter-productive. But in my experience his arguments are scientific in content, if not in tone. Do you know of any specific occurrences of him cherry-picking unscientifically as you say?
- rory096 12y ago
  abraininavat: Your account's been dead for 400 days – most people can't see your comments.
acqq 12y ago
You can check yourself where the weight of his argument in his article for journalofcosmology.com is: http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC24/Brandenburg.pdf http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC24/Brandenburg.pdf Pages 20 to 46 are about the "faces on Mars." The "happy" one is interestingly not mentioned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galle_%28Martian_crater%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galle_%28Martian_crater%29
- r0muald 12y ago
  It's not the Martian archaeology parts, but rather the childish comparisons to Earth archaeology (a fine selection of the most common items in pseudo-archaeological literature) that really stand out as nonsense.
  - acqq 12y ago
    Yes. It is definitely very far from the level of his work that fits his profession. Still I fully understand that he got really worried, previously actively analyzing the effects of the nuclear tests on Earth and seeing the same stuff on Mars. In fact, we all should be more worried than we are about the really not improbable destruction on Earth.
huxley 12y ago
> "One interesting thing Brandenburg did say was that when he came to believe himself that Mars had been nuked, possibly in act of "biosphere genocide," the realization that this might have actually happened plunged him into a bit of a metaphysical crisis. He immediately thought of the Fermi Paradox, and that maybe the reason we're not hearing/seeing anything is because there are big nasty genocidal intelligences out there that 'cull' anything interesting from the universe. He said he actually got very depressed, and got deeper into religious/mystical stuff as part of this. > That doesn't sound crazy to me, just human." I linked to a reasonable article by him to establish that he wasn't just a nut, but we'll have to agree to disagree on his metaphysical crisis, because the speculation that anomalous levels of radiation in parts of Mars is due to "big nasty genocidal intelligences," that sounds Dianetics-level bonkers to me. I think he's drawn attention to some very interesting data, but that's where I get off the bus. Update: I actually watched the video he did with Supreme Master TV, give it a look and judge it for yourself: http://youtu.be/NBuN3uHnjYY http://youtu.be/NBuN3uHnjYY
- gknoy 12y ago
  I think "Dianetics-level bonkers" might be overly harsh. If one believes the radiation anomalies are from nuclear explosions, it seems at least remotely plausible that they came from off-planet (because who would do that to their own?). At that pointpoint it's not entirely lunacy to consider the existence of genocidal aliens. None of that means that any of those are true, but each seems to be an explanation that might occur to any normal person who accepts the preceding points. The idea of genocidal aliens has been part of our cultural zeitgeist for some time -- isn't that the premise of Mass Effect?
  - bronson 12y ago
    Dianetics contains progressions of plausible hypotheses to try to make a nutty conclusion look plausible too. Very much like your comment. I wonder if you're reinforcing the statement you're arguing against...?
  - actsasbuffoon 12y ago
    Uranium deposits can (under the right circumstances) can form a natural nuclear fission reactor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor Occam's Razor dictates that the simplest answer is probably correct. What's simpler: A) This is the result of a naturally occurring process that has happened on our own planet. B) Aliens I'm as excited as the next sci-fi fan to shake hands with aliens, but this isn't even remotely close to a reasonable argument.
altrego99 12y ago
Good comment, sets lots of context right. > Maybe an asteroid or comet that got flung by a high-gravity body (black hole? neutron star?) or supernova debris could do that? I don't think a black hole can fling any particle with speed orders of magnitude higher than the initial speed of either the black hole or the particle.
MarcScott 12y ago
> "That doesn't sound crazy to me, just human. Around here we've seen some IMHO irrationyal fears of super-human dangerous AIs circulating recently, and it seems to have led to a similar amount of metaphysical anxiety among some very brilliant and notable people in the CS field." Reminds me a lot of Roko's Basilisk (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk) and the breakdowns that ensued amongst the LessWrong community.
tptacek 12y ago
I'm like 4 paragraphs into that Pharyngula post, and they have him arguing that the "face" on Cydonia is evidence of a civilization that lived on Mars before being nuked off the planet. Like: that's actually part of his argument.
sytelus 12y ago
The wholemark of a scientist is to stay forever doubtful about his/her theories. This is why many/most legendary scientific papers ends without actually making a grand claims and that task is left to readers (although sometimes providing just enough fun hints). This level of modesty is fundamental to any scientific investigation. The moment you assert your claim about truth from your theory, science ends and pseudo-science starts. So any paper that has has assertion in its title itself that Mars had nuclear activity sends signal to scientific community that author was trying to justify his beliefs and look for evidence as opposed to conducting true unbiased scientific investigation. These kind of titles is indicators of major crackpots and are not typically considered as scientific by any respected professional. A more scientific paper would perhaps start with title "Investigation of distribution of K and Th on Mars" but ofcourse that's not link baity and wouldn't generate lot of attention from press.

by api 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago

This is very much the same place I came too with regard to Brandenburg. Regardless of the speculation, the sites look to be interesting places to explore on future missions. In hypothesizing possible causes, I wonder about the relative size of the ejecta of a type 2 super nova. Given that the Uranium, on the planet originated in such events at some point, and the 4.7 billion year half life, one could imagine perhaps a modestly dense fragment cloud of U235 which was traveling at relativistic velocity away from a Type II supernova, and it collides with the atmosphere of a planet in a far away star system. If the pieces were small enough they might simply heat up and impact the ground, however if they were massive enough, the shockwave of hitting the atmosphere might be sufficent to compress them into a supercritical mass. At which point the meteor would undergo rapid, and energetic, disassembly.

sounds 12y ago
A supernova-created natural nuclear bomb in asteroid form. Acting just like a human or alien nuke, but completely arising from natural processes. Or did I miss something? :)
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Exactly, the original 'thin man' HEU A-bomb[1] was really pretty simple, compress two subcritical chunks of fissile material into a supercritical chunk and hold it there as long as possible. So imagine you've got a bunch of sub critical chunks all in a line, they hit an atmosphere which gets them to pile up like a line of tailgating cars on the freeway. The numbers should be quite computable to figure out a bounds box on the possible yield. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_%28nuclear_bomb%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_%28nuclear_bomb%29
- api 12y ago
  Yup, but you left out the part where it is traveling at relativistic velocities and thus also causes the gases in the atmosphere to go thermonuclear on impact from kinetic energy alone. So a "hypervelocity critical mass" might be a thing.

mikeash 12y ago

According to the posted link, part of his "evidence" is proximity to the Face on Mars. That's not some irrelevant religious belief. That's a chunk of unscientific nonsense at the very core of his claims. Pointing out that it is in fact nonsense is not somehow "cherry picking."

RaecKK 12y ago
For anyone not familiar, this photo was snapped by the NASA Mars rover Curiosity: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184MR0925102000E1_DXXX.jpg http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw-images/msss/00184/mcam/0184... Zoom in all the way, scroll up and to the right as far as possible, then scroll down just a tiny bit and look at the rock. That rock has a face on it? Definitely a WTF from me. I am so tired of seeing visual evidence dismissed by people who refuse to even consider it if it's not endorsed by some large "respectable" institution. You mean to say this rock is just a naturally occuring anomaly? Really?
- mikeash 12y ago
  Pareidolia is a thing. And the Face on Mars is the top example on Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia Yes, that rock is almost certainly just a naturally occurring anomaly. People are built to find faces, even in things that aren't actually faces.
- mjgoins 12y ago
  I've never so strongly wanted to simultaneously up-vote and down-vote a comment.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- sp332 12y ago
  Cropped version, and other imagery of the region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29#.22Face_on_Mars.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_%28region_of_Mars%29#....
- 12y ago

tjradcliffe 12y ago

I agree that people like Myers are more anti-science than not, and approach the issues much like their opponents do, looking for data that will validate their own beliefs, not interrogating reality dispassionately. However, Brandenburg doesn't do himself any favours by saying things like "The Natural Nuclear Reactor Hypothesis had the merit that it provided a known source for a large nuclear explosion." Natural reactors, so far as we know, have to be slow-neutron moderated, and slow-neutron reactors are not sources of nuclear explosions. Even fast reactors--which if not actually impossible are certainly much rarer in nature than slow neutron reactors--aren't sources of nuclear explosions unless things go wrong in ways that no one has yet been able to imagine. I won't say it's impossible, but it is wildly, wildly improbable. Granted the distribution of radioactive elements on the Martian surface is anomalous (which I'm only aware of through this article, so I'm going to take with a grain of salt) the hypothesis that leaps to mind is a natural slow-neutron reactor that was close to a perfectly ordinary large meteor strike. We know that Mars was wet in the past (a requirement for natural reactors) and we know that the early solar system was richer in fissile isotopes, and we know that there was at least one natural reactor two billion years ago on Earth, and we know that meteoric impacts were common in the early solar system and that Mars got hit hard and often enough for us to be able to identify a whole class of meteorites that come from Mars. So a natural reactor that got hit by a large impact doesn't require anything wildly improbable, and is likely testable via detailed analysis of any impact structures and glass droplets from around the areas with high concentrations of uranium and thorium.

abraininavat 12y ago
I agree that people like Myers are more anti-science than not, and approach the issues much like their opponents do, looking for data that will validate their own beliefs, not interrogating reality dispassionately. When you say "people like Meyers" do you include Meyers? I can't stand Meyers. His approach is grating and maybe even counter-productive. But in my experience his arguments are scientific in content, if not in tone. Do you know of any specific occurrences of him cherry-picking unscientifically as you say?
rory096 12y ago
abraininavat: Your account's been dead for 400 days – most people can't see your comments.

acqq 12y ago

You can check yourself where the weight of his argument in his article for journalofcosmology.com is: http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC24/Brandenburg.pdf http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC24/Brandenburg.pdf Pages 20 to 46 are about the "faces on Mars." The "happy" one is interestingly not mentioned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galle_%28Martian_crater%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galle_%28Martian_crater%29

r0muald 12y ago
It's not the Martian archaeology parts, but rather the childish comparisons to Earth archaeology (a fine selection of the most common items in pseudo-archaeological literature) that really stand out as nonsense.
- acqq 12y ago
  Yes. It is definitely very far from the level of his work that fits his profession. Still I fully understand that he got really worried, previously actively analyzing the effects of the nuclear tests on Earth and seeing the same stuff on Mars. In fact, we all should be more worried than we are about the really not improbable destruction on Earth.

huxley 12y ago

> "One interesting thing Brandenburg did say was that when he came to believe himself that Mars had been nuked, possibly in act of "biosphere genocide," the realization that this might have actually happened plunged him into a bit of a metaphysical crisis. He immediately thought of the Fermi Paradox, and that maybe the reason we're not hearing/seeing anything is because there are big nasty genocidal intelligences out there that 'cull' anything interesting from the universe. He said he actually got very depressed, and got deeper into religious/mystical stuff as part of this. > That doesn't sound crazy to me, just human." I linked to a reasonable article by him to establish that he wasn't just a nut, but we'll have to agree to disagree on his metaphysical crisis, because the speculation that anomalous levels of radiation in parts of Mars is due to "big nasty genocidal intelligences," that sounds Dianetics-level bonkers to me. I think he's drawn attention to some very interesting data, but that's where I get off the bus. Update: I actually watched the video he did with Supreme Master TV, give it a look and judge it for yourself: http://youtu.be/NBuN3uHnjYY http://youtu.be/NBuN3uHnjYY

gknoy 12y ago
I think "Dianetics-level bonkers" might be overly harsh. If one believes the radiation anomalies are from nuclear explosions, it seems at least remotely plausible that they came from off-planet (because who would do that to their own?). At that pointpoint it's not entirely lunacy to consider the existence of genocidal aliens. None of that means that any of those are true, but each seems to be an explanation that might occur to any normal person who accepts the preceding points. The idea of genocidal aliens has been part of our cultural zeitgeist for some time -- isn't that the premise of Mass Effect?
- bronson 12y ago
  Dianetics contains progressions of plausible hypotheses to try to make a nutty conclusion look plausible too. Very much like your comment. I wonder if you're reinforcing the statement you're arguing against...?
- actsasbuffoon 12y ago
  Uranium deposits can (under the right circumstances) can form a natural nuclear fission reactor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor Occam's Razor dictates that the simplest answer is probably correct. What's simpler: A) This is the result of a naturally occurring process that has happened on our own planet. B) Aliens I'm as excited as the next sci-fi fan to shake hands with aliens, but this isn't even remotely close to a reasonable argument.

altrego99 12y ago

Good comment, sets lots of context right. > Maybe an asteroid or comet that got flung by a high-gravity body (black hole? neutron star?) or supernova debris could do that? I don't think a black hole can fling any particle with speed orders of magnitude higher than the initial speed of either the black hole or the particle.

MarcScott 12y ago

> "That doesn't sound crazy to me, just human. Around here we've seen some IMHO irrationyal fears of super-human dangerous AIs circulating recently, and it seems to have led to a similar amount of metaphysical anxiety among some very brilliant and notable people in the CS field." Reminds me a lot of Roko's Basilisk (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk) and the breakdowns that ensued amongst the LessWrong community.

tptacek 12y ago

I'm like 4 paragraphs into that Pharyngula post, and they have him arguing that the "face" on Cydonia is evidence of a civilization that lived on Mars before being nuked off the planet. Like: that's actually part of his argument.

sytelus 12y ago

The wholemark of a scientist is to stay forever doubtful about his/her theories. This is why many/most legendary scientific papers ends without actually making a grand claims and that task is left to readers (although sometimes providing just enough fun hints). This level of modesty is fundamental to any scientific investigation. The moment you assert your claim about truth from your theory, science ends and pseudo-science starts. So any paper that has has assertion in its title itself that Mars had nuclear activity sends signal to scientific community that author was trying to justify his beliefs and look for evidence as opposed to conducting true unbiased scientific investigation. These kind of titles is indicators of major crackpots and are not typically considered as scientific by any respected professional. A more scientific paper would perhaps start with title "Investigation of distribution of K and Th on Mars" but ofcourse that's not link baity and wouldn't generate lot of attention from press.