NASA's Dr. Stuart Robbins - The Gift That Keeps on Giving - Part V

In the final section of his attack piece, Stuart comes to a claim that is so idiotic, so devoid of fact or even a semblance of reality that it has actually left me speechless for years. He claims that -- based on upon the following factually correct statement -- that I somehow don't know what an ellipse is:



"On page 34 of The Choice, Bara states: 'Many of the planet’s orbits, which … should be perfectly circular by now, are highly elliptical. In fact, Mars’s orbit is so eccentric that its distance from Earth goes from 34 million miles at its closest to 249 million miles at its greatest.'”

This simple and factually correct statement has been distorted for years by my critics and touted as an "error" in The Choice. How anyone can somehow derive from this that I don't know what an ellipse is, how it's calculated or how it relates to Mars' orbital eccentricity is beyond comprehension.

Stuart puts it thusly: "It seems fitting that the section after I talk about Bara’s claim that is summarized as “scientists don’t know anything,” that I should come to this last one about ellipses that shows Bara knows less than the average middle school geometry student. It’s really simply incredibly stupid of Mike to claim that Mars’ orbit is highly eccentric because it comes as close as about 0.38 A.U. (“astronomical unit” is the distance between the sun and Earth) but goes as far as 2.67 A.U. (Actually, in fairness, the numbers that he gives equate to 0.37 A.U. and 2.68 A.U.; he and I rounded slightly differently.) Therefore it’s an eccentric orbit that’s evidence for his fission model of solar system formation."

For the record, the word "ellipse" doesn't even appear in my book The Choice, so how that statement can be distorted into a debate about ellipses is beyond me. Maybe I need a Ph.D. from Costco like yours to understand, Stuart. Second, the statement "Mars’s orbit is so eccentric that its distance from Earth goes from 34 million miles at its closest to 249 million miles at its greatest” is FACTUALLY CORRECT. (This page has lots of pictures. Maybe they can help you understand how all this orbital mechanics stuff works.) Third, I have NEVER claimed--on Coast to Coast AM that night or at any other time-- that Mars' orbital eccentricity is "evidence for his (sic) fission model of solar system formation." As I have stated repeatedly, the Solar Fission theory of planetary formation is Dr. Van Flandern's (Ph.D., Astronomy, Yale) theory, not mine. The eccentricity of Mars' orbit is cited in The Choice and elsewhere as evidence that Mars was once in orbit around a "super Earth" Van Flandern named Planet V, which was destroyed sometime in the past. It has nothing to do with the Solar fission theory. Fourth, there is nothing -- NOTHING -- in the statement "Mars’s orbit is so eccentric that its distance from Earth goes from 34 million miles at its closest to 249 million miles at its greatest" that implies, in the most tortuous, ancillary way, that I am somehow calculating orbital eccentricity from Earth rather than the Sun. you have to be a complete moron to claim that it does.

So congratulations on once again getting your argument completely wrong, Stuwie. I guess getting facts straight is low priority for you, since you never seem to be able to do it.

Now, let's examine your statement that "It’s really simply incredibly stupid of Mike to claim that Mars’ orbit is highly eccentric."

Oh really?

Like most debunkers, Stuart uses numbers deceptively to try and make his point. Several of his sycophants have tried to make the same claim that Mars's orbit really isn't so eccentric. But when you graph the numbers, it becomes obvious just how out of a nominal range Mars' orbit really is. 

 

 

Excluding Pluto, which is no longer considered a planet, Mars orbit is the 2nd most elliptical of all the "planets." You can see from the graph that it is far more eccentric than Earth's, exactly as I characterized it. Put another way, Earth’s relative distance to the Sun varies by only about 3.1 million miles in the course of one orbit (year). Mars' orbit, by contrast, varies by as much as 26.5 million miles over the course of a Martian year. Obviously, Mars' orbit is more eccentric by an order of magnitude. How Stuart fails to grasp this I do not know. Maybe he's just stupid.

Not satisfied with getting all of that wrong, Stuart goes on to chastise me for something I never said, and an argument I never made:

"The problem here, for those who didn’t listen to the podcast or don’t remember their middle school geometry is that you measure the long and short axis of an ellipse from the center of the ellipse. Not some crackpot arbitrary point inside or outside of it. In this case, the sun is one of the foci of the ellipse that is Mars’ orbit. The sun is one of the foci of ALL solar system objects that are in orbit. Earth is not. Measuring your axes from Earth is just stupid. It’s made up. It makes no sense. It has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever talked about on this blog, and that’s saying a lot."

First, I agree that measuring orbital eccentricity from Earth would be stupid. About as stupid as claiming that a 2 kilometer wide Ziggurat on the Moon appears on an MRO image strip that actually misses it by a mile or so or using Wikipedia to attack the research of a Nobel prize winner. But I digress. Please show me where, at any time, I have EVER claimed that orbital eccentricity is calculated from Earth. Ever. In any forum. The factually correct statement you cite ("Mars’s orbit is so eccentric that its distance from Earth goes from 34 million miles at its closest to 249 million miles at its greatest") as the basis for your absurd claim says nothing of the kind. Only a retard would conclude that it did.

It takes a special kind of stupid to even make such a claim, completely without evidence. But you have to be even more "special" to compound your fantasy by creating a fake graphic to illustrate your point.

 

But Stuart did it.

 

NOT Bara's explanation of Eccentricity

 

Also lost in all of this nonsense is that fact that even if he were right, and this was an "error" on my part, or that I was the one who was "incredibly stupid" as opposed to him, it still wouldn't matter. the fact is, this whole question of eccentricity is completely immaterial to the arguments, conclusions or deductions in The Choice. It was merely a little factoid I was tossing out to make a minor, off-camber point. Even if Stuart was right, which he isn't, it would not change one single thing about the books' conclusions.

That's what debunkers, as opposed to true skeptics, do. They ignore the big stuff and try to argue the minutiae. And Stuart, as I've continually demonstrated, can't even do that right. 

But if that wasn't enough, just to prove what a complete creep he is, Stuart was actually dumb enough to try and "catch" me at making an incorrect statement about ellipses and orbital eccentricity.

 



On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 10:22 AM, I got an email from an anonymous address from somebody claiming to be "Shawn."

 

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Nho Buddy <nhobuddy@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Dear Michael,

I found out about you after being referred by someone to a post of yours on Richard Hoagland's website.  I was looking for some information about you and found a blog post by an astrophysicist who critiqued some of your claims (http://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/tag/mike-bara/).

Without going into everything else because I'm not sure I really understand all of his arguments, I do understand geometry, and I'm trying to determine if his claim about what you said about Mars' eccentricity is correct.  You can find what he says about it in his next-to-last section on "Ellipses in Planetary Orbits," or by going to http://podcast.sjrdesign.net/images/010_eccentricity_bara.jpg versus http://podcast.sjrdesign.net/images/010_eccentricity_science.jpg .

If you really claimed that Mars' eccentricity is around 0.75, could you please explain why, and how you justify using arbitrary points from which to measure your ellipse major and minor axes in spite of the fundamental definition of an ellipse?

Sincerely,
Shawn

I of course did not take the bait, and replied to "Shawn" with the following:

On Jul 18, 2012, at 10:42 AM, Mike Bara <mikXXXxx@gmail.com> wrote:

I have no idea if his claim is correct, since I've never read his post
nor do I intend to. Nor do I believe you aren't him. Nor did I use
anything "arbitrary" in my book. If you want to know whether my claim
about Mars' orbit being the 2nd most eccentric in the solar system is
correct, I suggest you look it up on Google.

On the off chance you aren't really [XXXXX] or some other plant, I'd
suggest you take anything they may say about my "claims" with a grain
of salt the size of Pluto. They even seem to be claiming I predicted
the end of the world in 2012, or something along those lines, which of
course I did not. However, everything I did predict in The Choice has
come true so far, and in pretty much exactly the timing I said it
would.

Have a nice day. I'm sorry I don't have more time to address false
claims from morons, but I have another book to finish. By all means
look for me on Ancient Aliens this week tho!

 "Shawn" then replied to me with the following:

Nho Buddy <nhobuddy@gmail.com>	7/18/12
to me

I do not know who [XXXXX] is, nor am I the owner of that blog.  I use a pseudonym email account because I work in a law office and cannot risk having my name "out there" affiliated with non-business work.  Could you possibly explain to me how you define eccentricity of an ellipse, and how you measure major and minor axes?  You don't have to read that post to tell me that.

- Stuart

 

Now, at the time, I had no idea who Stuart Robbins was, but it's now completely obvious what happened. He had a signature with his real name in this email address, which he changed to "Shawn" in the initial email so I wouldn't know who he was. Of course, even if he had used his real name, I wouldn't have known who he was, nor would I have cared. But when he hit "reply," he forgot to redact his real name and insert "Shawn."

 

What a dunce. For future reference, Stuwie, when lurking creepily on the internet it's a good idea to think before you send off an email that proves you're both stupid and creepy.

Before I could even respond, he sent me the following panicky email trying to cover his tracks:

Nho Buddy <nhobuddy@gmail.com>	7/18/12
to me

 

P.S.  I actually have a few different pseudonyms I commonly use.  Thought I'd go with "Stuart" on that one as a little joke, don't take it to mean anything else.  I have a weird sense of humor, similar to you if I've read your material correctly.

 

See what a creep he is? First, he lied about who he was, then he lied about working in a law office, and then when he fucked up he compounded his first lie by lying about using pseudonyms. Anybody who takes this smarmy coward seriously at this point is off my Christmas card list. He's creepier than Pee Wee Herman at peep show.

I sent him one last retort:

Or you fucked up and realized you pretended to be "Shawn" on the first
email and put "Stuart" on the second.

Pass this on to {XXXXX} and your other friends; If you always tell the
truth, you never have to remember what you said.

 
To sum this all up, let's look at the facts first and foremost.

Stuart Robbins has made numerous claims about me and my research over the years, pretty much all of which I have proven to be false, misleading or just plain stupid. I have time after time exposed him as the sloppy, venal, jealous, petty, lying creep that he is. I'm sorry if you don't have the talent to get as much attention as I do Stuart, but that's not my problem. If you continue to attack me with your silly, mistake-filled rants I guess I will from time to time respond, but don't count on it. The simple fact is that your behavior shows you are a person with demonstrable emotional problems. I can't do anything about that. I'd suggest therapy.

My final conclusion after reading several of the items that he has posted about me is that Stuart has about as much knowledge of the subjects he attacks me on as he does about kissing girls – i.e. none.

Maybe you should lay off the blog and try and get laid once in a while buddy. If I ever come to Boulder, I'll wingman 'ya...