A Tale of Two Cities

[Phobos]

The enterprise mission has just posted a claim that NASA have been altering images sent from the Cydonia region of Mars. The above thumbnail image is said to be from the same site at different times, where the first image set's detail have subsequently been removed and replaced the the second set (2 sets of 9 IR, false colour images).

Image tampering claim

They also submit the following D&M image which they claim comes from the origional and unaltered image set.



On Art Bell's radio show, Richard Hoagland claims that the false colours in this image shows differing materials, and the brightness relates to the heat (dark objects being cold, bright being hot).

Phobos

[jumbo]

Isnt there the possibility that the lower res versions are intended for the public to look at and get an overview of the data while not having to download a larger higher res image?
Perhaps the detail of the higher res (and different format ?)is only of use to people who are going to analyse the image and hence need better data.
An example: At uni i had to search through a bunch of digital images of galaxies looking for optical counter parts of radio observations. These images were rather large in file size but i needed the high res to find what i was looking for. A picture of the same area that was easier to find on the web may not have this resolution. It wasnt a cover up, the higher res stuff was available if you knew where to look ,and the lower res was fine if you wanted a nice picture for wallpaper etc.
Im sure if you know where to go the more detailed images would be available.

I`m not an expert when it comes to the false colour IR image but can`t the difference in temperature be down to differences in temperature of the same material rather than a range of materials?

[Phobos]

I have written websites and whilst not an expert, I have learnt a bit about image compression.

Images can compressed a quite a bit before the image becomes noticably degraded. It would be quite easy to produce images which were quite small in size but still represented what they were meant to convey. So in answer to your question I would consider it unlikely that NASA would have allowed images from Mars to be degraded to this extent.

Reducing the resolution is a different matter, and can indeed reduce image size, but the claim is complete removal of the specific details of interest which if truewould seem to be more than resolution reduction was involved.

This would imply that either the claim that they changed the images is false, or that the images were tampered with.

Having said that, even if the images were tampered with then the tampering itself in no way proves artificiality.

I do not know the details of the false colour images. All I know at this point is the claim that temperature is represnted by brightness not colour, and colour is being used represent different surface materials.

Phobos

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Phobos on 2002-08-30 08:08 ]</font>

[John Kierein]

OMIGOD. He's using the ENVI software that was developed by my daughter and sold to Kodak! This is great software, by the way, used by most of the NASA Landsat and EOS teams and Radarsat, etc. It is really good for spectral analysis from multispectral and hyperspectral imagers as well as radar image analysis.
It looks like what he's seeing is a pyramidal shaped mountain that is hot on one side and cold on the other. Probably hotter on the sunlit side. I'll have to ask my daughter what he's showing.

[Phobos]

On 2002-08-30 08:11, John Kierein wrote:
OMIGOD. He's using the ENVI software that was developed by my daughter and sold to Kodak! This is great software, by the way, used by most of the NASA Landsat and EOS teams and Radarsat, etc. It is really good for spectral analysis from multispectral and hyperspectral imagers as well as radar image analysis.
It looks like what he's seeing is a pyramidal shaped mountain that is hot on one side and cold on the other. Probably hotter on the sunlit side. I'll have to ask my daughter what he's showing.

That would be very usefull John. All I have to go on at the moment is what he has said on the Art Bell show and the images posted on the website.

And congratulations on the achievements of your daughter - I for one would be very proud.

Phobos

[jimshep]

An annoying aspect of almost all of the "Against the Mainstream" websites is that they spend more of their energy on conspiracy theories than on the subject they are trying to promote. This article shows the same pattern and essentially says "We have data that proves these are artificial entities, but instead of publishing this data we are going to get to the bottom of the obvious conspiracy at NASA first" (this is highly paraphrased). Why don't they just post their report and deal with the alleged conspiracies later? Is it that without a conspiracy to cover the holes in their findings, their interpretations of their findings would be clearly unjustifiable? (The same questions go to the ZetaTalk folks, etc.).

[jumbo]

Phobos, my point was some files used for analysis are VERY big and if this 'evidence is a small section of a larger image thats been brought down to a lower res then there may be visible degradation. I dunno what the situation here is though so i`ll stop speculating till some facts come along an whack me over the head [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[Phobos]

I guess we will have to wait for more information before we can work this one out properly. If what Richard Hoagland says is true, and an official website replaced a good IR image with a degreded one, then this would make NASA look bad (especially if the replacement had the same filesize and covered the same region).

Phobos

[Russ]

Why don't they just post their report and deal with the alleged conspiracies later? Is it that without a conspiracy to cover the holes in their findings, their interpretations of their findings would be clearly unjustifiable? (The same questions go to the ZetaTalk folks, etc.).

You ask very valid question but I think you're looking at the problem from the wrong angle. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img] These peopble are not scientists with valid critiques. They are excitement and adrenalin junkies who need conspiracies and scandle to feed their habbit. If they haddn't stumbled on this to be all "spun up" about they'd be off bugging the FBI or Congress or some other likely supplier of said fix.

What makes this an attractive target for them is the very fact that it is easily misunderstood, and "spooky" so they don't have to work very hard to get their fix.

I'm quite sure that not one of them would admit to this situation because that would take the "edge" off their high. I've got a neighbor like this. Her source of excitement is movie stars and polititians. She's always wiggling up to tell me the lates dirt on Penelope or whoever and is always horribly disapointed when I'm not as excited as she. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img] On the one hand I find these people amusing on the other scary.

[David Hall]

Well, if this isn't a bunch of bunk, I don't know what is. Let's see what we have.

First, Hoagland begins with the standard "big, bad government agency and poor old persecuted Hoagland who nevertheless is continuing the fight for truth" bit. Nothing new there.

But then get this. He says the THEMIS website first put up a "degraded" image on July 24th. Then for no apparent reason they took that one down and put up the original for one day on July 25th. Then they took it down again and restored the original "degraded" one. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]

Next, look at the gall he shows. From the page: In any scientific investigation, you simply cannot go forward with any conclusion based on ambiguity in the chain of evidence. He says this just before he claims the first (and current) photo is wrong and the second photo is the good one. Well, how do we know that? First of all, we don't even have anything but his say-so that any such swap even took place. Second, how do we know the current one isn't the good one and the second (if it actually happened) isn't the poor copy?

Now, as for the photo itself, he claims the version he posts at the bottom of the page is the genuine one because it contains "block patterns". Well, it seems to me that "block patterns" more likely indicate digital artifacts than actual Martian features, and therefore less likely to be genuine.

Second, I downloaded the .tif file he claims is the real one. http://www.enterprisemission.com/ima...0724A-REAL.tif

I also found the original on the THEMIS website http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20020724A.html and downloaded the .tif file they provide: http://themis.asu.edu/fullimages/20020724A.tif .

Well, the first thing I noticed was that the THEMIS image file is more than twice as large as Hoagland's, 7856kb vs. 3719kb. Seems kind of strange that their file should be larger when Hoagland claims it has been degraded and information has been removed, don't you think?

Anyway, now for the final piece of evidence. I took both images and compared them both visually. I'll let you guess as to which one I think is the degraded one. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Anyway, you can perform this test yourself. You can either download the .tif files directly (a long and slow process, especially with Hoagland's tedious server), or you can try it with these two sections I cropped from them. I clipped out the same section from each one, the upper Cydonia half of the last strip on the right. Then I converted them both to .jpg form (100% quality). The visual quality doesn't seem to be much different from the originals.

Cropped section from the THEMIS photo
http://www.occn.zaq.ne.jp/cuaea503/i...fromthemis.jpg

Cropped section from Hoagland's "real" version
http://www.occn.zaq.ne.jp/cuaea503/i...omhoagland.jpg

I suggest opening each one up in a separate browser window and flipping back and forth between them. I recommend especially looking at the "face" itself (near the center) and the plateau at upper right with the bump in the middle.

Also look at the general quality of the Martian surface itself. It looks to me like the Hoagland photo has been run through a couple of filters of some kind. If there are any digital image experts here, maybe they can guess what's been done.

Well, that's it. Now I think you know why we call him HOAXland.

[Phobos]

I took the images you provided, then pasted the lighter image (the one from the THEMIS photo) and pasted it into word. Bumped up the contrast to match that of the other image and did a visual comparison.

My visual comparison seems to back up what David is saying - that the THEMIS image is more detailed than the other one (and no fancy graphics system required - just word).

This crude test seems to back up what David said, but I do not know the exact true purpose of the image processing that has been performed - still too early to draw any conclusions.

Phobos

[Rift]

Good job, David.

I don't think it's too early to come to a conclusion... Typical Hoagland hoagwash.

I've always been confused as to why these conspiracy people claim that NASA is trying to cover up any "proof" of life on Mars anyway. It seems to me that NASA would only benefit from the excitement such a discovery would generate, through increased public interest to increased funding.

What possible advantage our underfunded and unapreciated space program would reap from hiding such a important discovery is beyond me.

I've always thought the only ones who would suffer a loss of following from discovery of life on Mars are the religious "right". Perhaps they are behind the speading of these coverup stories to discredit our programs legitamacy. What do you think?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ronin on 2002-08-31 14:11 ]</font>

[Espritch]

I've always been confused as to why these conspiracy people claim that NASA is trying to cover up any "proof" of life on Mars anyway.

I think it has to do with their total lack of evidence to support their silly theories. By inventing a conspiracy, they can claim that the lack of proof is proof of a conspiracy to hide the proof. Since you cannot disprove any hypothesis wherein a lack of proof is considered as proof, they are safely insulated from any need to modify their world view to match reality.

[ToSeek]

The mountain labors and delivereth forth a mouse

Is it just me, or are they really claiming that the blocks of pixels in the data represent architecture?

[Phobos]

Yes, but the claim is the structures are sub-surface, and only visible by their IR signature.

Phobos