Richard C. Hoagland of Enterprise Mission and astronomer David Darling discussed Richard's new theory about Saturn's moon, Iapetus. With a diameter of around 900 miles, Saturn's third largest moon has a number of noteworthy properties, Hoagland detailed. It has a dark side that makes it seem to disappear for half of its 79-day orbit, and a huge 12 mile-high ridge that bulges along its equator.

According to his analysis (Part One, Part Two, Part Three), Hoagland suggested that the ridge shows recto-linear properties as if it was built and that Iapetus' overall shape has flat edges and appears to be a dodecahedron rather than an ellipse. He further hypothesized that the heavily eroded Iapetus may once have been "a huge ancient space station," and its ridges could have been part of a field-manipulated propulsion system.

While Darling concurred that Iapetus is "wondrously bizarre," he said he could not see evidence of straight edges or polyhedron shapes from looking at the high-res images posted on the Cassini site. "Richard's built a marvelous castle of imagination on somewhat shaky foundations," he concluded. Darling theorized Iapetus may have acquired its unique features through some type of natural catastrophe such as a collision with another object. Yet both agreed that Iapetus is deserving of further investigation, and Hoagland urged calling various contact numbers to encourage NASA to redirect the Cassini Probe to image Iapetus before its next scheduled time in 2007.

19.5 Degrees of Issues

In tandem with Richard Hoagland's appearance, we received a special Ebejeebies comic panel from Vulnepro.com in which the alien Crell is examined for signs of hyperdimensional physics. Click here to view.

Bumper Music

Bumper music from Wednesday February 23, 2005