Tom - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter question

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />?? The image quality problems have long since been corrected.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The Face images have problems of resolution, lighting and viewing angle. I would also add that the degraded quality of the feature itself presents critical and uncorrectable obstacles to investigation.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">It was very hard to make any sense of the 1998 Face image until we had the spacecraft and Sun data and were able to relate it, feature-by-feature, to the Viking images that preceded it. The DeRosas used a good analogy above. With too much magnification, you can't tell what part of the Mona Lisa you are looking at.

Your statements here, especially this last one just quoted, left me wondering how you could possible be saying that. Then I realized you must never have looked at, or are unable to download, animation #1 at
metaresearch.org/media%20and%20links/animations/animations.asp
Am I correct about that? To me, the animation answers all questions about any suggestion of ambiguity in the MGS raw image.

To me, it also renders all your other protests moot. Have a look if you can, and tell me what ambiguity remains after seeing that.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I viewed the animation when it first became available and I reviewed it again when you posted the link in your previous post because of the evidentiary value you obviously place on it. I'm not convinced that it represents how the Face **would** actually look after correcting for lighting and viewing angle as much as how it **might** look. Even giving the benefit of the doubt, it still doesn't look particularly artificial to me - just a highly eroded rocky hill. One of the things I never took note of before though are the small outcroppings on the left "cheek" - "moles" perhaps?

JR

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by jrich</i>
<br />I'm not convinced that [the animation] represents how the Face **would** actually look after correcting for lighting and viewing angle as much as how it **might** look.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Fair enough. You were not a party to the process of making the animation. (Neither was I, but I followed the construction details closely.) The lighting corrections are a feature of Photoshop. As long as they are applied globally, not selectively, there is no danger of Photoshop making an image look more face-like because the program has no idea what the image is supposed to look like.

The orientation corrections are trickier, but are comparably objective. The two best Viking images and the MGS image were searched to identify control points that can be reliably spotted in each image. Then the offsets of control points relative to one another, which changes with different viewing angles because of perspective, can be used in standard formulas to compute their relative heights. This supplies the third dimension needed to change to any other viewing angle. Once again, the process does not depend on the image contents.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Even giving the benefit of the doubt, it still doesn't look particularly artificial to me - just a highly eroded rocky hill.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The animation was not supposed to show that it was artificial. It was supposed to show that "eye sockets", "nose", and "mouth" could be reliably and uniquely identified so that the tests for secondary facial features could be applied objectively. (They were the correct size, shape, orientation, and location of the predicted secondary features relative to the primary features, plus no other similar features anywhere on the mesa.)

If you keep in mind the playing card analogy, I'm simply trying to show that application of the a priori principle to this case was objective, and therefore a second statistical anomaly that was predicted on the basis of the first must be considered significant.

But I sense that further examples or words are not going to lead to any meeting of the minds. You are not giving me any specifics about why the methodology is flawed. You just don't trust its application because of where it leads.

The one remaining question on the table that would be interesting for you to address is: If there are artifacts on Mars, what would be required to convince you? Especially, is there anything MRO might show that you would find persuasive? Details in the "glassy tubes", for example? Why not try a few predictions of your own about how we can distinguish natural from artificial for this common feature that MRO is sure to image at high resolution early in its mission. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />I don't believe that someone like jrich, who appears to be an educated person, is ever going to be convinced by logical arguments, let alone scientific ones. He seems to be saying that if we can not attain some absolute degree of certainty that there is no hope of ever gaining any real knowledge of artificiality (in this case of the Face at Cydonia).<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I think that scientific tests for artificiality are appropriate for triage to tell us which anomalies merit further investigation. But I also think that artificiality cannot be proved using image data alone if the anomaly is not well preserved. Conversely, I don't think that much scientific analysis is required to confirm artificiality when an anomaly is well preserved. It will likely be rather obvious in that case.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If I read Tom right, he is saying that the objective tests are scientifically preferable (indeed necessary) over intuitive statements that such and such a face looks "artificial" as opposed to "natural." And for the purpose of proposing any viable scientific theory that will be taken seriously by the scientific community he is right.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I think tests of the type Tom has proposed are probably quite good at disproving artificiality. I don't think those types of tests are capable of proving artificiality. I'm not saying though that artificiality cannot be proved, just that the availability of proof is dependent on the quality of the subject rather than the quality of the test.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Even after such objective tests are made and the results are positive, one still needs to go through the process of verification, and confirmation, whether on the ground, or by better imaging, spectroscopic readings, or whatever. Why? because even objective tests don't give us the degree of certainty required to know for certain.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I think there is a possibility that some anomalies are artificial, but that they are so highly degraded that it may be impossible to determine with anything approaching certainty. I also think that this could be the case for all the visible artifacts on Mars. In that case we would need to find some other evidence such as discarded tools and machinery.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I get the distinct impression that jrich is not really arguing science, but epistemology. How do we know what we know?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">What is the scientific method if not an attempt to justify a belief?

JR

<i>jrich writes</i>: "I think tests of the type Tom has proposed are probably quite good at disproving artificiality. I don't think those types of tests are capable of proving artificiality."

I tend to agree with the second sentence as well as the first, if by "proof" you mean evidence that convinces in a conclusive, final way, so that we can say we are convinced beyond any reasonable doubt. My sense is that since we are so far basing the tests on images alone, the objective tests described previously by Tom, will if passed,lead only to <i>increased probability and thus confidence </i>in artificiality--not "proof," in any final, conclusive sense. But such increased confidence is all that we are asking for. If the establishment scientists recognized that increased confidence. They would have good reason to want to conduct further experimentation and research in this area.

<i>jrich also writes</i>: "I think there is a possibility that some anomalies are artificial, but that they are so highly degraded that it may be impossible to determine with anything approaching certainty. I also think that this could be the case for all the visible artifacts on Mars. In that case we would need to find some other evidence such as discarded tools and machinery."

I also agree with this. But if we gain increased confidence in the possibility of artifacts on Mars, through the type of objective tests described previously, wouldn't that encourage you to want to call for projects that would search for the archeological evidence you describe ("discarded tools and machinery")?

If anyone was listening, I'd tell them to look inside the Face first.

Neil

JR,

Neil is right - we[1] don't see the results of these objective tests as being conclusive. Nor do we expect you to see them as conclusive.

Personally, I find the results interesting in the extreme. But since I still have trouble seeing some of the things others say are obvious to them I remain on the fence. I have somewhat less trouble "seeing" the stuff related to the face. The results of the various tests for this particular feature seem to me to be significantly less ambiguous than for most other features. but this doesn't cause me to declare the issue settled. It does cause me to want more detailed examination to occur.

LB

[1] "we" means those of us with -

*) a formal technical education
*) some formal technical experience
*) an open mind

Many of the personalities on this board lack one or both of the first two but have a strong interest in science. They tend to over simplify things and to confuse evidence with proof. Mainstream scientists have plenty of the first two, and probably plenty of the last one. But the significance of actual artificiality (if it exists) seems to cause them to reject their scientific training.

I resist, but I don't reject.

Why don't people give more attention to this photo?



I think it is the most important one because it shows the right side in the best resolution. To me it is much more important than the animation, since the animation only shows what the right side "might" look like, whereas the above photo shows what it actually looks like (at current resolution). To me, it kind of renders the animation moot. The right side simply *doesn't* look like the way the animation shows.

An ambiguity, though, is that the actual right side image aboveonly confuses the issue more, because of the "melt"-looking feature. While it doesn't show secondary facial characteristics (and not much more of the primary characteristics that we saw from Viking either), it nonetheless shows what appears to be a degradation event, which implies that the right side looked different before the event. This is really unfortunate, because it just keeps the question hanging.

As for new, secondary facial characteristics on the *left* side (revealed not in the above photo, but the raw MGS photo prior to correction for viewing angle), basically all I see new is nostrils. I don't see any pupils and the "eyebrow" looking feature was present in the viking image to begin with. As for the eye "socket," it is heart-shaped? Who ever heard of a heart-shaped eye socket? So to me it doesn't look like an eye socket at all.

What does it say, then, for artificiality when all the post-viking images taken together reveal only potential "nostrils" as secondary facial characteristics and nothing else? Is this a strong positive result?

I realize others here might see more than I do, and that perhaps my monitor is not as good as it could be, but yet it does seem to me like people are over-emphasizing the animation, which to me is much less reliable then the raw photos. And the raw photos (the one above showing the right side in good resolution, and the raw mgs photo showing the left side in good resolution) seem to me to only show one potential secondary facial characteristic: nostrils.


Emanuel