Original SH thread:
Circular lakes: evidence of the War of Gods?
KorbenDallas: Circular lakes sure do look cool, and are normally considered to be admirable creations of nature. Along with circular lakes there are smaller lakes with imperfect round shape. We are provided with multiple reasons for the existence of the said lakes. Those normally are: meteorite craters, sinkholes, gas explosion lakes, etc. The official narrative wants us to think that these "natural" lakes are hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of years old. But are those lakes really natural, and are they really as old as we are being told?
Skepticism, like many other words and concepts, has sort of a dual-meaning these days. It’s traditionally defined as “doubting or questioning attitude or state of mind.” But if you veer far enough away from consensus, being a “skeptic” becomes synonymous with being “crazy.” This is especially true within the institution of “science” (which isn’t to be confused with the “scientific method”) where average people will routinely believe whatever is asserted as fact, as long as it’s backed by an “expert” or “authority”, no receipts required. Anyone who has done a relatively deep dive into the “science” of the “pandemic” over the last two years should be well familiar with this (Dr. Malone touches on this in a recent post).
Of course, there’s truth to “don’t have such an open mind that your brains fall out,” but I think the balance is easier (but more time-consuming) than many believe. We need the discernment to separate verifiable facts and data from the opinion and analysis that is often tightly connected to it. So much of our thinking is done through the lens of a certain foundational philosophy or paradigm that is becomes hard to even see the baby in the bathwater, let alone avoid throwing it out entirely. And being unafraid to ask questions that ones may find foolish, because there is much in our reality that we do not understand and could be ultimately unknowable.
In that vein, this topic began with KorbenDallas showing comparisons between craters that resulted from known human activity and those alleged to have resulted from natural (if otherworldly) means. A quick example, you can see more in the link to the SH article:
Sedan Crater, NV, USA - “Artificial” (nuclear tests)
Meteor Crater, AZ, USA “Natural” (from sky rocks, obviously)
My reaction to KD’s article is not to necessarily believe that all craters are the result of human bombardment. Being truly skeptical, I aim to see what evidence exists. And if you take a step back from what we think we conclusively know (and realize that human beings have “known” a lot of things throughout recorded history that we now “know” is “false”) and examine the underlying premises, often times, you’ll find that there are a lot of “educated guesses” (to put it charitably). For instance, "natural causes" can include rocks and assorted debris traveling from regions unknown in "outer space" and hitting Earth, even though no one has ever seen the full event (from traveling across the cosmos to entering the atmosphere and then smashing into the ground). I thought saying "the sky is falling" was the sign of an overactive, paranoid imagination. I guess it's "science."
So, I speculated: how is appealing to space origins any different than saying a god did it? (Spoiler: it's not.) Until I can hop on a spaceship to the moon (or at least a very, very high orbit where I can see the totality of the "planet"), I'm skeptical. And unsurprisingly, that skepticism was quickly met with derision (I mean, the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid! Maybe. At least that’s what I saw in the cartoons!).
A commenter replied to my obviously uninformed musings with the following:
Mostly, geologists and astrophysicists agree that its meteors because they find iridium in every crater and also in the rock layers that date to the theorized large impacts and nowhere else. So, either aliens use iridium bombs, "God's" power is based on iridium(which makes him just an alien),or it came from asteroids.
We know that asteroids exist. So, that is the answer until a better, more provable, one comes along.
This is how science works.
Bold assertion, with some vague trivia, combined with some condensation… this is how you write on the Internet! Don’t forget to throw the word “science” in there too. (Fun tip: replace the word “science” with the deity of your choosing whenever people want to wax poetic about our vast knowledge… you’ll quickly see what’s actually going on.)
Needless to say, I disagree pretty vehemently with this reply (except I concede "experts" agree, which is worth absolutely nothing to me). First of all, how would you know that the iridium came from the object that collided with the Earth and not a part of whatever was destroyed at the impact crater?
Resistance to heat and corrosion makes iridium an important alloying agent. Certain long-life aircraft engine parts are made of an iridium alloy, and an iridium–titanium alloy is used for deep-water pipes because of its corrosion resistance. Iridium is also used as a hardening agent in platinum alloys. The Vickers hardness of pure platinum is 56 HV, whereas platinum with 50% of iridium can reach over 500 HV.
Devices that must withstand extremely high temperatures are often made from iridium...
...An iridium–platinum alloy was used for the touch holes or vent pieces of cannon. According to a report of the Paris Exhibition of 1867, one of the pieces being exhibited by Johnson and Matthey "has been used in a Withworth gun for more than 3000 rounds, and scarcely shows signs of wear yet. Those who know the constant trouble and expense which are occasioned by the wearing of the vent-pieces of cannon when in active service, will appreciate this important adaptation"
So iridium could be used to make super durable weapons? Seems like that could be a high profile target in a potential war in antiquity.
Of course, "science" won't explore that possibility because iridium wasn't "discovered" until the 19th century. So I do not agree that I have to select from the three options listed.
Pulling it back further (and getting into the meat of this post), what is the proof for asteroids? Examples of anomalous elements (but not truly "alien", see the SH thread discussing unobtainium near presumed impact craters)? And then correlating that with lights in the sky? I very carefully worded my original comment to state "no one has ever seen the full event (from traveling across the cosmos to entering the atmosphere and then smashing into the ground)" and I fully stand by that. Unless you have some real interesting film lying around... (post in the comments below!!)
Is this really “how science works”? In one sense, sure, if you mean "science" as the bastardized version of the original philosophical discipline. The scientific method doesn't address "what is" questions, like identifying supposed sky rocks, but rather seeks to validate cause and effect through systematic experimentation, not suppositional correlation. If it doesn’t follow the “scientific method” but is claimed to be “science”, well, that has another term:
pseudoscience: a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.
Pushed further, the commenter replied, to try and support their claim that meteors traveling from vast distances in outer space hit the Earth and cause craters.
We have pictures of asteroids. They fall to earth every day Just not big enough objects to destroy anything. You can track them and if you have a telescope, watch them fly by.
Are meteor showers now aliens dumping debris into our atmosphere? In yearly cycles, for weeks at a time?
I am willing to concede the possibility that rocks fall from the sky. I have never personally seen it happen and I imagine capturing video of such an event would be difficult. Do we actually track the streaking light across the sky to its eventual landing spot and then have complete certainty that whatever remains we find in that spot was a physical rock (and not some sort of energetic reaction)? I guess it depends on the level of evidence one is willing to accept. Personally, I need to go on a case by case basis. I will say though that I am far less accepting of believing that asteroids travel millions of miles in a sky vacuum to eventually crash into Earth.
Meteor showers are lights in the sky with little to no physical evidence.
A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth’s surface.
So, no aliens necessary using earth as their dumping ground!
It do find it sort of funny that the rebuttals to my skepticism involved implying that I think "aliens" did it, when I put very little stock in the existence of physical aliens as generally described and find the whole "ancient aliens" subculture incredibly reductive and lazy. So to be put into that box is amusing.
I offer no explanations for celestial phenomenon. It seems to be "natural" though I could also be mistaken about that. However, I am highly dubious when anyone tries to correlate the lights above to physical changes on the earth. It seems to be largely based on the current cosmological model, which allows for and expects such things rather than any sort of direct validation.
I found this uncritical acceptance of the mainstream scientific narrative (on a site that questions conventional chronologies) to be quite odd. if anyone is open to our understanding of history being false, they need to also consider that our understanding of science is as well. The two do not work in isolation, they use foundational elements of each other to build more elaborate models. If those foundations are faulty, then the conclusions are dubious at best. Again, we do not consider that the iridium anomaly could ever be the result of man-made objects because iridium was not credited with discovery until 1803 by Smithson Tennant. Combine that with dating methods that send our impacts into the distant past, it's easy to see why scientists would not consider an artificially produced possibility. But if any of these assumptions are wrong (that we can accurately date impact craters, that iridium wasn't unknown to man until 200 years ago), then the entire premise falls apart. Eventually, if enough of these premises are proven false, the paradigm that spawned them dies. It seems like that has happened before and I would bet it happens again. Human beings are not good at realizing that we don't know what we don't know and what we do know is incredibly limited when compared to the grandeur of the world.
Coincidentally, the day after I originally posted this, I stumbled upon an article that made my point better than all the words I’ve wasted thus far.
For the first time, scientists have been able to precisely map the flight path of an asteroid that landed on Earth and trace it back to its point of origin. The boulder-size fragment's journey to our planet began 22 million years ago, according to new research.
The asteroid, known as 2018 LA, appeared like a fireball in the skies over Botswana on June 2, 2018, before breaking apart and landing in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Prior to breaking up in Earth's atmosphere, scientists determined that the asteroid was about 5 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter, weighed 12,566 pounds and had been traveling at 37,282 miles per hour.
These "scientists" are determined all right...
This is only the second time scientists have been able to observe an asteroid in space before it impacted Earth.The first was asteroid 2008 TC3 in Sudan 10 years earlier, according to Peter Jenniskens, lead study author and meteor astronomer at the SETI Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center.
Only the second time? I had been led to believe this is common place!
The Botswana Department of Wildlife and National Parks and the country's Department of National Museum and Monuments helped the researchers search and stay safe in their quest to locate the fragments.
On the last day of the search, Lesedi Seitshiro from the Botswana International University of Science and Technology found the first one. It weighed 0.6 ounces (18 grams) and was only about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) in size.
Talk about a needle in a haystack. Good thing they found it on the last day. Or else skeptics like me could still go around flapping their ignorant jaws.
This is my favorite image:
No mini impact crater? Or buried in the ground? What would happen if you shot a bullet straight into the ground (this was allegedly far faster than that)?
"The meteorite is named 'Motopi Pan' after a local watering hole," said Mohutsiwa Gabadirwe, study coauthor and geoscientist at the Botswana Geoscience Institute, in a statement. "This meteorite is a national treasure of Botswana."
Gabadirwe is now the curator of the Motopi Pan meteorite.
The researchers uncovered a total of 23 fragments within a few months of the event.
Well, they ended up recovering many fragments, so I guess that'll really shut me up. I don't know what a multi-month expedition looking for pebbles costs, but in my opinion, it's money well spent!
Now, with stones in hand, tell me a bedtime story please:
Some of the oldest known materials from Vesta and the meteorites include Zircon mineral grains that date to more than 4.5 billion years ago, back to the birth of our solar system.
"Combining the observations of the small asteroid in space with information gleaned from the meteorites shows it likely came from Vesta, second largest asteroid in our Solar System and target of NASA's DAWN mission," Jenniskens said. "Billions of years ago, two giant impacts on Vesta created a family of larger, more dangerous asteroids. The newly recovered meteorites gave us a clue on when those impacts might have happened."
All sarcasm aside, this clearly doesn't fulfill my original "no one has ever seen the full event (from traveling across the cosmos to entering the atmosphere and then smashing into the ground)" and it sounds like this is the best to date. So I guess I'll continue to spread my nonsense beliefs, maybe I should become a Reddit (Edit: I couldn’t figure that out, so I became a substack. Substackie? Substackite?)
By the way, in case you're wondering, per wiki, zircon is commonly found in the earth's crust. I would suspect that the more common the composition of these presumed sky rocks plays a role in determining that the origin point was closer, in this case within our solar system.
If you want to know more, here's the CNN article and a link to the study:
So what does any of this prove? Absolutely nothing, and that’s the point. Look close enough into many subjects and you’ll find the mountains of evidence are really just pebbles that are being stared at so closely that they’ve lost all context and sense of proportion.