Everything you know is wrong, part one (guest post by Uranus)

This is my debut guest post, and is not the actual post I've been working on the past few days. Therefore, I'm testing the settings and the theory for my actual post, which will follow a little later.

Before I started to school in the 1950s, I looked up at the moon and saw craters. I couldn't imagine they were anything but impact craters--mainly because that's what they look like.

"OH, NO!" all the good science said, "the moon's craters are volcanic in origin exclusively. Furthermore, don't you even dare ponder the notion they might be something other than volcanic, because we might be forced to give you the electric chair."

I'm lying about the electric chair, but geologists defended the volcanic origin of moon craters theory loudly, aggressively, angrily, defiantly. I never understood how they could be so very certain, in that no one had gone to the moon. But, as the theory went, they were ancient, having been made immediately after the moon was formed and began to cool: volcanoes vented lava, which formed many of the surface features, and when they became inactive, they collapsed to become craters. Let's call this the moon-is-cheese theory.

The moon-is-cheese incumbents were impervious to criticism, and there were problems. One of the biggest is that this model is based on earth volcanoes which collapse into crater-like surface features, and one of the important contributors to this slow process is weathering by water and wind--which, of course, aren't found on the moon. It's also a problem that without any soil sample whatsoever, you can't say what happened or when...AT ALL. Another problem is that the moon's craters look like impacts--they look like what you get when you toss a stone into mud and remove the stone, a rimmed bowl with ejected material. Let's call this the moon-craters-are-impacts theory.

With me so far?

Good. When geologists/astronomers Schumacher and Levy discovered a fragmented comet which later was observed impacting Jupiter in the 1990s, the moon-is-cheese theory was discarded in a wholesale manner. What you see on the moon are not volcanic craters, they are impact craters, and so far as today's good science knows, nothing but impact craters.

It was hard for many people to give up their trusted, sacred moon-is-cheese theory for the new moon-craters-are-impacts theory. But seeing is believing. Sometimes, what you read, were told, learned, were tested on and have staked your reputation upon turns out to be a bill of goods. There is no shame to that. But if you act upon information you have very good reason to know is incomplete or incorrect, you are a fool of the nth degree.

The leaders of the United States have acted upon (and are making ready to again act upon) information they have good reason to believe is incorrect or incomplete, but that is not stopping anything. And, the human race could pay with its very existence. I'll come back a little later and tell you about that. It isn't as easy to understand as cheese moons or anally cranium inserted geologists. But with extreme effort I think I can give you a rather simple description of it, and the world better kick the subject around in a big hurry before the U.S. goes off half-cocked in Iran.

(update from Lukery. Everything you know is wrong, part 2 is here.)