Thursday, April 21, 2005

Scientific and Historical Anomalies - The Engineered Moon

"The storyline for this 'Anomalies' article might begin: Long ago on a planet called Earth, orbiting around a medium sized star located on the outer edge of the Milky Way Galaxy, a civilization capable of planetary type engineering designed and built a huge titanium alloy sphere, a moon, to orbit the Earth. Over untold millions of years cosmic dust and debris collected on the sphere until, in recent times, people had the strange notion that this 'moon' was the result of 'natural forces at work'."

The "Artificial Moon" hypothesis is one of my favorite far-out ideas. Anthropic philosophers like to point out that life as we know it would be impossible without the presence of our moon, which they interpret as evidence that the universe was somehow designed to facilitate human consciousness. Maybe. Could it be more likely that the Moon is a manufactured or modified object designed to hasten the evolution of intelligent life?

Numerous anomalies on the lunar surface suggest we weren't the first to go there. If artificial, they don't prove the Moon is artificial, only that it was visited . . . unless, of course, we're seeing occasional remnants of some dilapidated super-structure poking through a mantle of accreted dust . . .

Oh, my. I just realized I'm sounding an awful lot like Richard Hoagland.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hoagland makes a far better case for Iapetus being artificial than does the Epoch Times writer for our own Moon being artificial, I think. I also have the same problem with this notion that I do with Hoagland's much better-conceived idea. If something really large slammed into a structure like this -- as has obviously happened -- wouldn't it expose the underlying structure? (And anyway, if planetary engineers were going to create a spherical artificial world, why not start with a natural one and just hollow it out?) However, it does strike me that, if there are artifacts in other places in the Solar System, then there are likely to be some on the Moon as well. The ancient Martians (or whoever) weren't likely to have been confined (like us so far) to a single planet.
--WMB

1:44 PM
Mac said...

Who says the Moon *isn't* a natural object that's been hollowed out...?

1:57 PM
Anonymous said...

I'd like to take Occam's razor and shave the beards (and/or heads) of some of NASA's "skeptics." And, in fact, I think various people like Arthur Clarke and even Carl Sagan have pointed out that the ETI hypothesis in some cases may, in fact, be the simplest one! Also note how convoluted some of the geological explanations for anomalies, especially Martian ones, can get. And take a look at Mac's highly amusing "debunking checklist" on Cydonian Imperative. I think he includes the epistomologically dubious Occam's razor as an essential "debunking" tool.

11:41 AM
Mac said...

I read that checklist at my MUFON presentation in Sedona and got some laughs.

I think it's important that would-be debunkers remember that Occam's Razor is a potentially helpful tool, but not by any means a scientific law.

And it should be pointed out that the goal of science isn't to arrive at the "simplest" answer; the goal is to arrive at the *correct* answer.

1:46 PM
Anonymous said...

The "extraordinary claims" rubric is (rightly) on Mac's list, I think. It really is a debate shutter-offer more even than Occam's razor, and I agree with you observations re the use of this rubric. For a long time, I too regarded the infamous Face as a simulacrum until recent pictures seem to bring out the underlying (or overlying!) pattern. Yes, at this stage, I think it is ridiculous to CLAIM with absolute certainty that some extraterrestrial formation IS (absolutely and without doubt) artificial. I do think it's legitimate to regard many (like the Face) as being highly suggestive of artificiality. (There are also many gridlike formations on Mars that seem difficult to explain -- or explain away -- as being natural in origin.) I think it's OK to "believe" in possibilities like this, without necessarily "believing in one's belief," so to speak, which tends to absolutize the believed-in belief. And certainly, many "skeptics" equally absolutize their disbelief. And I wonder if anyone has ever asked a so-called skeptic what exactly would constitute "extraordinary evidence" in specific cases. (To me, the lack of a plausible natural explanation for an anomaly certainly goes a long way in that direction!)

10:48 PM

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