Iapetus

January 11, 2007 10:49 AM

What Did Arthur Know … and When Did He Know it? To all you Vader haters out there . . . we'll blow your planet up! we got Death Star!
posted by augustweed (49 comments total)

Uh, is the first link supposed to be just a picture?
posted by WinnipegDragon at 10:52 AM on January 11, 2007

I say we go there. Who's got the money? I've certainly got the time.
posted by parmanparman at 10:53 AM on January 11, 2007

Not if you scroll down.
posted by augustweed at 10:53 AM on January 11, 2007

Ah, okay, nevermind. Scroll bars. Something about the page (perhaps the lack of anything visible but the picture) just made me think there was nothing else on it. No idea why...
posted by WinnipegDragon at 10:55 AM on January 11, 2007

Coming soon: the extraordinary Part 7 Conclusion of “Moon with a View”
posted by parmanparman at 10:58 AM on January 11, 2007

Zooming in on progressively blurrier digital images /= proof
posted by gottabefunky at 11:07 AM on January 11, 2007

Both Iapetus and our moon have neary circular orbits. Try putting the moon into a circular orbit at this interactive website.
posted by augustweed at 11:11 AM on January 11, 2007

That was fun. Thanks augustweed.
posted by caddis at 11:16 AM on January 11, 2007

Crazy-ish, but lots of fun to read, especially for former A. C. C. fanatics. Thanks.
posted by koeselitz at 11:18 AM on January 11, 2007

Given that the folks at JPL are fully as capable as we are of putting this together, is it possible that this Cassini close-in Iapetus radar return was SO anomalous, that it was correctly analyzed … for what it was … within the first few hours of being received at JPL: the radar detection of an entire, artificial moon -- explicitly designed according to Professor Ufimtsev’s cutting-edge electromagnetic theories?!

And that soon, “someone” – much higher up in government than JPL (or even NASA) – after seeing this definitive, highly anomalous radar data … on a place with “hundred-mile-long-edges!” quietly issued a “gag order” on this entire “Iapetus intelligence experiment” … in consonance with “Brookings?!

When did rambling crackpots become the best of the web?
posted by Rhomboid at 11:19 AM on January 11, 2007

Here is a time-laps animation of how the moon moves during orbit.
posted by augustweed at 11:21 AM on January 11, 2007

Needs the Hoagland tag. The guy sees stuff everywhere!
posted by yhbc at 11:24 AM on January 11, 2007

Rambling crackpots have always been the best of the web, Rhomboid! Bring 'em on!
posted by MrMoonPie at 11:30 AM on January 11, 2007

Man, I haven't seen that Star Wars Rap thing for years. Classic.
posted by lowlife at 11:36 AM on January 11, 2007

Needs more random bolding and blink tags.
posted by Artw at 11:36 AM on January 11, 2007

Eh? Hoagland claims to have been a friend of Sagan?
posted by edd at 11:40 AM on January 11, 2007

Ah, delicious. Thanks, augustweed.
Requesting batshitinsane tag, plzkthx
posted by boo_radley at 11:41 AM on January 11, 2007

Hoagland is so nut. And by the way, Clarke called the moon Japetus, not Iapetus, as a deliberate jape.
posted by A189Nut at 11:44 AM on January 11, 2007

Augustweed - that orbit simulator is cute, but what's with all the god stuff?

Also i'm pretty certian the answer to "How Did The Moon Get Into Orbit" is not "it appeared out of nowhere with a preset launch angle and velocity".
posted by Artw at 11:53 AM on January 11, 2007

Is that right A189nut?

Because I was used for the J sound until relatively recently in the Latin alphabet. Clarke may have deduced that the name should be pronounced "japetus" and hence transliterated using our modern j, since no one will make the j sound when they see an i.

Here's wikipedia on the subject:
posted by Mister_A at 11:55 AM on January 11, 2007

Somewhere in Lost Worlds of 2001 - his book about the writing of the novel, making of the film, he comments on it.
posted by A189Nut at 12:02 PM on January 11, 2007

He comments on it in the afterword to either 2010 or 2063, too.

Also, was I the only one who originally thought this was about Arthur Dent and the Vogons?
posted by thecaddy at 12:10 PM on January 11, 2007

Crackpot, yes. But still fun to play make-believe. And that Star Wars rap brought back some great memories.
posted by yeti at 12:18 PM on January 11, 2007

Thanks for the info, a189nut and thecaddy.

And yea I totally thought it was Arthur Dent. Turns out it was just some moonbat (pun intended). Pretty cool though, about that 60,000 x 60,000 ft. wall on Iajapapappettapus there.
posted by Mister_A at 12:19 PM on January 11, 2007

When did rambling crackpots become the best of the web?

At least six years ago. Are you educated stupid?

I noticed that Hoagland makes references to sharing his hyperdimensional geodesic interpretive data on Art Bell, which strikes me as an immensely entertaining place to hear about this.
posted by mwhybark at 12:24 PM on January 11, 2007

Oop, missed MrMoonPie's response, above. Sri for overkill.

edd, Hoagland actually notes that Sagan sent pix to Clarke, not him.
posted by mwhybark at 12:27 PM on January 11, 2007

Turns out it was just some moonbat.

Or. Crazy like a fox maybe.

I got laid once by agreeing with a girl I met and a part and pretending I believed there was a face on Mars built by Aliens. BTW. The same aliens also aided the ancient Atlantians in building the hollowed out base in the center of the earth.

Unethical? Sure. A violation of personal integrity? Maybe. But she was hot. Really really hot.

I figure this guy has got to have an angle, right? Nobody works that hard unless he is trying to get laid in the end, right?
Right? Maybe that's just me.
posted by tkchrist at 12:33 PM on January 11, 2007

Did anyone else see the image of Bob Dylan in the lower right corner of this picture?
Or maybe it's Mabus...
posted by MtDewd at 12:45 PM on January 11, 2007

MtDewd - it looks like a walnut, doesn't it?

tkchrist - we (me and a couple of my stupider friends) used to put on phony Russian accents in college to try and impress girls. That only works until you start guffawing and high-fiving your drunk buddies.
posted by Mister_A at 1:07 PM on January 11, 2007

"That Iapetus is not one of the normal “moons” of Saturn -- but is actually a 900-mile-wide, manufactured, ancient world-sized spaceship ... created under 1/40th terrestrial gravity according to a fractally apparent, “tetrahedral” pattern! Nothing else makes sense."

Nailed it.
posted by potch at 1:47 PM on January 11, 2007

"But what’s most amazing about all this is that none of the extraordinary information or analysis supporting this tentative conclusion has come to you via “an official NASA press release” -- despite this data having been on Earth for months!"
posted by potch at 1:53 PM on January 11, 2007

TIMECUBE!
posted by rikschell at 2:04 PM on January 11, 2007

I have to admit something.

I SO want this to be true. C'mon. Most of you are with me.

I would like nothing better than while my wife sit on some Sunday evening pouring over our bills, looking at our dismal retirement outlook, and compiling our 2006 taxes to our Holy Emperor Bush, that outside the dreary Seattle sky above opens up and Iapetus appears in orbit. While it casts it's shadow over the Western Hemisphere the dark moon holographicly projects a giant stern alien face in the sky. Then comes a booming unholy voice echoing over the mountains and every bandwidth on earth

"HUMANS! WE HAVE RETURNED!"
posted by tkchrist at 2:16 PM on January 11, 2007

Wait, what?
posted by deborah at 3:08 PM on January 11, 2007

but is actually a 900-mile-wide, manufactured, ancient world-sized spaceship ...

All we have to do is get there, replace the flux capacitor, and get it going 88 mph.

But the 12-mile-high "bellyband" on the equator is really spiffy.
posted by Enron Hubbard at 3:18 PM on January 11, 2007

I love Clarke, but he should leave the wordplay to Nabokov.
posted by dhartung at 3:27 PM on January 11, 2007

I loved that. I was only skimming it at first, and I didn't notice the crazy. Then I was like, wait, what the fuck?

Still read 4 pages into it. Beautiful madness.
posted by empath at 3:30 PM on January 11, 2007

Btw, IS there an explanation for that 'wall'?
posted by empath at 3:30 PM on January 11, 2007

I love Clarke, but he should leave the wordplay to Nabokov.
posted by dhartung

"It's no use. He sees her. He starts to shake and cough . . . ."
posted by augustweed at 5:47 PM on January 11, 2007

Silly rabbit. Iapetus is a seed, not a moon.
posted by jimfl at 6:26 PM on January 11, 2007

so, what does that mean w/r/t the South African Iapetan nodules?
posted by mwhybark at 6:47 PM on January 11, 2007

Hoagland, of course, is Mr. Face-on-Mars.
posted by barjo at 7:45 PM on January 11, 2007

I would believe in the face if they found an ass on the opposite side of mars.
posted by Citizen Premier at 8:50 PM on January 11, 2007

[This was good]... til i realised it was Hoagland and that I could not trust a word of it. Then I regretted going there and becoming slightly dumber.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 10:15 PM on January 11, 2007

mwhybark: yeah I got that. It was this that caught my eye:
'Arthur later reported that our mutual friend and colleague, the late Carl Sagan....'
emphasis mine.
posted by edd at 5:17 AM on January 12, 2007

...Arthur Dent and the Vogons...

Didn't they record "Space Ship on the Mersey" back in '68?

(Personally, I immediately thought it referred to Arthur the ambiguously-specie'd animated children's charater.)

I would believe in the face if they found an ass on the opposite side of mars.

Well, I don't know about the back of your head, but the back of mine does not look like an ass.

(But, then, if the face is on Mars, where would the ass be?)
posted by lodurr at 5:53 AM on January 12, 2007

(But, then, if the face is on Mars, where would the ass be?)

*sigh* Mercury.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:42 AM on January 12, 2007

Thanks. FoB. I hate finding out about all these cool fun cartoons I can't watch...
posted by lodurr at 7:52 AM on January 12, 2007

But, then, if the face is on Mars, where would the ass be?

The Whitehouse?
posted by tkchrist at 9:28 AM on January 12, 2007