Mike Bara “to utterly and completly destroy you and your insipid “analysis”” Tonight?

Introduction

For background, first please see download and watch this video. Or go to that page for the transcript. Or go to YouTube and watch a shorter, earlier version of it. Or read my initial blog post on the subject.

Earlier Today …

Seems like I may have hit a nerve, considering that this post on Mike’s Facebook page is addressed to “Dear douchebags.” But he addresses that to those “who have been attacking my integrity,” which I have not done in this particular instance. Nor did I “claim… that [Mike] (or Richard C. Hoagland) faked the Daedalus Ziggurat photo.” I stated that someone did, and that Richard was clearly taken in by the hoax.

But apparently, later tonight, Mike is “going to utterly and completly destroy you and your insipid ‘analysis.’ I am going to prove that NASA are the ones that have faked their image. I am going to expose you as the idiots you are.”

I’ll watch his blog for details.

What Mike Must Show

To be clear, I did not address my video at Mike Bara. I addressed it towards the claims (not the person) made by Richard Hoagland about a photograph. But the photo came from Mike (Richard did not give him credit), and even though Mike “found it somewhere on the internet” he is convinced it is genuine and that NASA is faking their “new” version.

If Mike is going to refute my analysis, this is what he must satisfactorily explain:

1. Why there is less noise in the NASA original but more noise in Mike’s, and why is there more contrast (more pure black and more saturated highlights) in Mike’s? Both of these pretty much always indicate that the one with more noise and more contrast is a later generation … you can’t just Photoshop in more detail like that.
2. Why other images of the same place taken by several different craft (including non-NASA ones), including images at almost 100x the original resolution of the Apollo photo, don’t show the feature.
3. Why the shadowed parts of his ziggurat are lit up when they’re in shadow, on top of a hill, and not facing anything that should reflect light at them?

I’m posting these criteria in advance of seeing his refutation so I can’t be accused of retrodicting anything, though these points are laid out fairly clearly in the video I created.

Temporary Final Thoughts

If Mike can explain those, I will post a statement as such and I will undergo a re-analysis. Those are the main reasons why I doubt its authenticity, and they are the main indicators for something that has been faked, and so I’d like to see what Mike will say to expose me as an idiot and show the NASA original is the one that’s been faked (and all the other photos of the site).

I will almost certainly do a follow-up post when Mike posts his blog on it, which is supposed to be around 10PM PDT, around 3ish hours from now.

Already, I can say that paranoia – as is common with conspiracy theorists – has set in. About four hours after that Facebook post, which got his fans rooting for him (“We’re ALL behind you Mike”), he posted a link to the LPI version of that image, telling his legions of Facebook friends to “please go to this link and download this image before NASA has a chance to replace it. Please save it in a safe place.” ‘Cause, you know, once he posts his analysis, NASA’s going to go in and add more cover-up. Meanwhile, most of the 44 commenters who have said they’ve downloaded the image say they don’t see anything anomalous. Likely not what Mike was hoping for.

But as I said, we’ll see what happens. And Mike, if you’re reading this, I really don’t hate you. And name-calling is really childish. Your arguments should be able to stand up on your own, they shouldn’t rely upon you starting out by calling your opponent a “douchebag,” “moron,” “idiot,” or some such other insult.