5. More Double Cratering
A feature found on
the Moon is also found on Mars: “double cratering.” Richard
Hoagland, again, was the one who noticed this odd characteristic,
and began to wonder about a mechanism that could explain it. To see
why, it is necessary to place what he says in the context of his
wider musings on craters.
Craters themselves —
whether double or not — are a significant geological technique for
the dating of surface features on planets.
1) Given that every other solid planetary body in the solar system has major portions of its surface “saturated” with large (above 20 km) craters — Mars has roughly one entire hemisphere (the southern) covered with such craters.
2) Given that the central assumption for the creation of these “shoulder-to-shoulder” craters is that there was a period of intense bombardment very early in the history of the entire solar system — Mars’ heavily cratered terrain most probably dates from this “heavy bombardment period’ as well.
3) Given that the presence of these ancient crated terrains on the Moon, Mercury, and the satellites of the outer planets...bespeaks preservation in the airless vacuum of these objects’ surfaces — the preservation of similar terrain on Mars argues forcefully for negligible erosion, most likely from the lack of dense atmosphere for most of the lifetime of the planet.
4) Given that the other hemisphere of Mars (the northern) matches similar terrains on the Moon and Mercury, in terms of far less cratering — this “two-faced” distribution of craters argues ...that there was a dramatic drop-off in the rate of cratering for Mars, consistent with a solar system-wide termination of “heavy bombardment” 4 billion years ago.627
While Hoagland is
here following the standard line that such cratering is due to the
early stages of the solar system and its presumed intense
bombardment of planets by meteors, and therefore that he is
following the standard model’s dating of such surface features with
an age more or less concurrent with that of the planet’s formation
some four billion years ago, Hoagland is quite alive to other
possibilities of explanation, and therefore, for the formation of
these features in much more recent times.628
The presence within
the southern, heavily-cratered hemisphere of Mars of many apparent
water-run off channels in the same terrain, however, indicated a
problem. For the standard theory, it indicated that Mars either had
abundant water very early in its planetary history, or that it was
suddenly inundated with abundant water. Either way, this appeared
to pose problems for the age of Mars. For one thing, it meant that
water and atmosphere were stripped from Mars at a very early
period, making the idea of intelligent life dwelling on that planet
quite problematic. This, plus the anomalous “Face-Sphinx” and
pyramidal structures at Cydonia on Mars, which were of an
apparently later date, was the problem. How to reconcile the two
conflicting data streams? Hoagland was thrust back upon the method
of “dating by cratering,” and began to look at the Viking Cydonia
images from this point of view:
The area of the single Viking frame encompassing the objects - 35A72 — was slightly less than a thousand miles in area. - a thousand times smaller than the areas used for “crater counting” in the literature. Nonetheless, I decided to apply this tried and true technique to this single Viking frame, for it would give me some rough estimate of the numbers of craters in this region of the planet — and thus a rough idea of the underlying landscape’s age...And moments later I was presented with a paradox: there were “too many” craters.....(The) actual numbers of craters in the picture, exceeding a kilometer in size, was three to five times the numbers in the published curves. This could be explained by “clumping” (the numbers were a statistic fluke...), or they could be real...In which case, this region of Cydonia was among the oldest on the planet — over 4 billion years in age! 629
It is worth pausing
for a moment to consider this possibility in the light of what has
been written previously here about the primordial nature of the revolt and cosmic war in
the pantheon. If — and it must be emphasized that this is a
gigantic “if” — Cydonia and its artifacts were that old, then it
would constitute prima facie corroborative evidence of this
primordial cosmic war.
However, such an
extreme date for all these Martian anomalies need not actually have
been the case. Van Flandern’s Exploded Planet Hypothesis in any of
its versions would also explain why there is such heavy cratering
on Mars and much more aptly explain why it is
limited to largely the southern hemisphere of that planet.
It would similarly explain why Mars shows every sign of having been
suddenly and violently inundated with water. It would explain the
run-off channels and their presence in heavily crated areas quite
easily. But this would place the cratering dates at a much later
65,000,000 or 3,200,000 years ago. This is more acceptable, to be
sure, in terms of the possibility of the presence of life on
Mars.
Hoagland began to
turn his attention to the phenomenon of double-cratering, i.e.,
twin craters of almost the exact same size and internal features,
laid out in neat linear patterns. But there was another problem he
noticed about many of the craters on Mars, whether double or not:
many were too shallow to have been caused by
impacts. This, plus the evidence of strange damage to the
admittedly eroded “Face” and even stranger apparent damage to the
massive five-sided D&M Pyramid on Mars formed “one of the most
disturbing observations” that Hoagland made, “that the objects at
Cydonia exhibited considerably more than ‘natural degradation’ —
for any reasonable age.”630 And it all went
back to Hoagland’s highly anomalous crater counts for the Cydonia
Viking frame.
This led him to pose
the following significant question. This, and the response of the
scientist whom he consulted, is cited extensively below, for it is
of paramount importance as corroborative evidence of the Cosmic War
Hypothesis:
Was it possible (I’d dared to ask myself, after the numbers consistently came out too high), that the evidence of significant erosion on the Face and pyramids - and the abnormally high number of 1-kilometer creators in the area were a result of some powerful artificial agent...?In other words, had life on Mars — the Roman “God of War” — been exterminated in an all-out nuclear holocaust?!The thought was too fantastic...yet, it could explain a lot of things ... the craters... and the other evidence I’d seen; in examining the City under the magnifying glass, I’d viewed direct evidence of melting and flow on the Main Pyramid within the City. In addition, there was the apparent massive destruction of much of the southeast sides of both that structure, and the equally puzzling “Fort” — and of forces which had, somehow, apparently completely vaporized (or blown off) the “roof” which must have originally covered up “the honeycomb!”Then, there was the strategically placed “impact crater” in the south-eastern flank of the D&M pyramid, and the equally suspicious “domed uplift” distorting its geometry. Was this the work of some kind of “rocket-borne explosive” — which had penetrated the interior of the pyramid, and then detonated, leaving an exit “blow-hole” type crater, and severe internal structural deformation?Very cautiously, during our second phone call, I explored with (plasma physicist John Brandenburg) the kinds of craters a nuclear exchange would leave behind, and the “statistical anomalies” of so many craters on the objects of most interest — like the Face and the D&M pyramid.It was his suggestion that, if craters on this part of Mars were “artificial,” there would be a way to tell — because nuclear explosions (as opposed to meteor craters) would be shallower... On the other hand, he said (undercutting in the next breath, my brief hope that here was a definitive test!), the craters produced in targets in the lab, as part of the new Space Defense Initiative tests, were deep — not unlike meteor craters themselves — a direct result of the way they were produced: by exotic particle beams “burying” their energy deep within the targets.Now shades of ray guns and Orson Welles’ green Martians!More significant was the fact that (John Brandenburg) had access to people at the lab who did have information regarding the kinds of exotic isotopes a nuclear exchange would likely leave behind within the atmosphere... 631
Remember the
Xenon129 found on Mars, a nuclear
by-product not normally encountered naturally?
What Hoagland has
clearly implied is that the Cydonia region shows every sign of
having been deliberately targeted and destroyed in a war, a war
that notably was fought not only with nuclear bombs, but exotic
energy weaponry, weaponry recalling the plasma discharges of
Anthony Peratt, and the ancient petroglyphs. Cydonia, in other
words, constitutes not only strong prima facie evidence of a
civilization on Mars, but also of a war, a cosmic war, that
destroyed it.