Richard C. Hoagland

Hoagland has no education beyond the high school level. According to Hoagland's curriculum vitae, in West Hartford, Connecticut, 1967–1968, and was a Science Advisor to CBS News during the Apollo program, 1968–1971. In July 1968, Hoagland filed a copyright registration for a planetarium presentation and show script called The Grand Tour. A popular planetarium lecturer at the Springfield Science Museum, Hoagland produced a program called "Mars: Infinity to 1965" to coincide with the Mariners 3 and 4 missions. He designed a room with special equipment to display the relative positions of the Earth, Mars, and the Mariners during their trip and thereafter contracted with NASA to relay the pictures of the Martian surface, on a near-live-feed, to the general audience. Local newspapers had noted the radio broadcast to be history's first laser audio transmission. Hoagland authored the book The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever (published in 1987) and co-authored the book Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA, which was ranked 21st on November 18, 2007, on The New York Times Best Seller list for paperback nonfiction. Richard Grossinger, the founder of North Atlantic Books, writes that Monuments became the most successful title published by North Atlantic, and that at its peak the book sold over 2000 copies per month. Grossinger also reports that Hoagland wrote much of the book while in Los Angeles County jail. Hoagland appeared regularly as the "Science Advisor" for Coast to Coast AM, a late-night radio talk show, until being replaced by Robert Zimmerman in July 2015. While Hoagland makes frequent reference to his receipt of the "International Angstrom Medal for Excellence in Science" in August 1993, the organization that awarded the medal, The Angstrom Foundation Aktiebolag, founded by Lars-Jonas Ångström, was not authorized by Uppsala University or the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to make use of the academy's Anders Jonas Ångström memorial medal. The academy has long authorized only Uppsala University to use its medal for the Ångström's Prize (Ångströms premium), awarded yearly by Uppsala professors to physics students. Mr. Ångström stated in May 2000 that although his award to Hoagland was a mistake, he acted with good faith and with good intentions. ==Claims by Hoagland==

Hoagland claims the source of a so-called NASA "coverup", with relation to the "Face on Mars" and other related structures, is the result of a report commissioned by NASA authored by the Brookings Institution, the so-called Brookings Report. Hoagland claimed that page 216 of the 1960 report, "Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs", instructed NASA to deliberately withhold from the public any evidence it may find of extraterrestrial activity, specifically on the Moon, Mars, or Venus. Hoagland has also proposed a form of physics he calls "hyperdimensional physics", which he claims represents a more complete implementation of James Clerk Maxwell's original 20 quaternion equations, instead of the original Maxwell's equations as amended by Oliver Heaviside commonly taught today. The mainstream physics community rejects these ideas as unfounded. Hoagland claims the "Face on Mars" is part of a city built on Cydonia Planitia consisting of colossal pyramids and mounds arranged in a geometric pattern, indicative of an advanced civilization that once existed on Mars. His book Dark Mission purports to "carefully document" how "NASA has been quite consciously, deliberately and methodically concealing from the American people and the world for all these years" the "staggering truth ... [that it was not aliens but rather] ... our own ... ancestors ... who [eons ago] lived ... and built ... and walked amid" that city (emphasis in original) — ditto the Moon. In the years since its discovery, the "Face" has been near-universally accepted as an optical illusion, Similar optical illusions can be found in the geology of Earth; examples include the Old Man of the Mountain, the Pedra da Gávea, and Stac Levenish. Some astronauts, NASA photo analysts and others have attributed his alleged Moon artifacts to photo processing defects and grainy/fuzzy spots (susceptible to pareidolia) resulting from excessive photo magnification. Although the Pioneer 10 plaque was designed entirely by Carl Sagan, Linda Salzman Sagan, and Frank Drake, Hoagland has inaccurately claimed to have co-created the plaque with Eric Burgess, as in 1990 when asserting that "Carl for many years has been taking public credit for the Pioneer plaque which, of course, Eric Burgess and I conceived." Sagan's correspondence regarding the matter also contradicts Hoagland's claims, specifically saying "he did not contribute one bit of data towards the message design." Burgess recalls similarly, adding that all Hoagland did concerning the plaque "was support me and say it's a good idea." ==Responses by scientists==

Many scientists have responded to Hoagland's claims and assertions. Professional astronomer Phil Plait described Hoagland as a pseudoscientist and his claims as ridiculous. Prof. Ralph Greenberg asserted that the logic of Hoagland's deductions from the geometry of Cydonia Mensae is flawed In 1995, Malin Space Science Systems, NASA prime contractor for planetary imaging, published a paper critiquing claims that the "city" at Cydonia is artificial, the claimed mathematical relationships, and – very specifically – denying any claims about concealing questionable data from the public. In October 1997, Hoagland received the Ig Nobel Prize for Astronomy "for identifying artificial features on the moon and on Mars, including a human face on Mars and ten-mile-high buildings on the far side of the moon." The prize is given for outlandish or "trivial" contributions to science. ==Publications==

Books • • • Contributions, introductions, forewords • • • Videos • • • • • • Hoagland, Richard C. (March 21, 1990). Videotaped guest presentation (untitled) at the NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, about the allegedly artificial "Face" and other "Monuments of Mars" == Notes ==