UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

De ijsberg is na achttien jaar aangekomen op een plek waar ijsbergen ‘sterven’. En de vorm? Puur toeval, aldus NASA.

Astronauten op het Internationaal ruimtestation ISS hebben wel een heel bijzondere ijsberg gespot. Zo zagen ze een groot brok ijs in de vorm van een doodskist over de oceaan dobberen. De ijsberg drijft op dit moment steeds warmer wordend water in en is – na bijna twee decennia verdwaald te zijn op zee – onderweg naar zijn laatste rustplaats.

IJsberg B-15T die in de vorm van een doodskist over de oceaan drijft.

Afbeelding: NASA

B-15T
De stervende ijsberg heeft de naam B-15T en drijft op dit moment op de Zuid-Atlantische Oceaan, tussen Zuid-Georgia en de Zuidelijke Sandwich eilanden. De winter op het zuidelijke halfrond loopt op dit moment ten einde. Hierdoor bereikt meer zonlicht het oppervlak, waardoor de zon het omliggende water verder opwarmt. Ook is er rondom de ijsberg geen zee-ijs te zien, wat inhoudt dat de watertemperatuur al boven het vriespunt is uitgekomen.

De plek waar ijsberg B-15T ronddobbert.

Afbeelding: NASA

Reis
De reis van B-15T naar het ijsbergkerkhof is lang geweest. Zo begon het allemaal in maart 2000, toen de Ross-ijsplaat op Antarctica een record brekend groot stuk ijs kwijtraakte. Nog nooit hadden satellieten zo’n groot stuk ijs van Antarctica los zien komen. Het ging om de ijsberg B-15 die een oppervlak van ongeveer 11.000 km2 besloeg. In de jaren die volgden, brak B-15 in meerdere stukken, waaronder B-15T. De ijsberg doolde vervolgens voor achttien jaar rond op zee.

Botsingen
De eigenaardige vorm heeft B-15T te danken aan de talloze botsingen die hij in zijn leven onderging. Zo smashte hij terug tegen de Ross-ijsplaat en klapte vervolgens tegen andere ronddobberende ijsbergen aan. Hierdoor zijn er telkens stukken van het ijs afgebroken, waardoor er lineaire randen en lijnen ontstaan. Dit zagen we onlangs ook nog gebeuren bij een ijsberg die voor de Larsen C-ijsplaat ronddreefen wel hele scherpe en rechte hoeken had.

Dat ijsberg B-15T de vorm van een doodskist heeft aangenomen, is “een ongeluk van tijd en ruimte,” stelt onderzoeker Chris Shuman. “We kunnen alleen maar gissen naar alle processen waaraan dit overblijfsel van B-15 is blootgesteld tijdens zijn lange tocht rond Antarctica.”

Eighty years ago this week, CBS broadcast Orson Welles’ adaptation of “War of the Worlds,” and mass panic ensued. Or did it?

We know today that the popular story of the mass panic sparked by “War of the Worlds,” a radio drama staged as a normal news broadcast interrupted by breaking reports of an alien invasion, was far overblown. In a nation of about 130 million people, fewer than 50 Americans were panicked enough to flee outside. That number emerges from recent scholarship by historian A. Brad Schwartz and others who have explored the scope of the panic in the past decade.

But the myth that thousands mobbed the streets remains powerful. Sensationalist journalism at the time was later validated by social scientists and relayed by historians, creating a myth that just won’t die. Efforts to debunk this myth reveal that fake news doesn’t just distort the historical record but also often spreads damaging racial and gendered stereotypes.

Newspapers that reported on the panic did so in ways that advanced ideas of racial inferiority. “Harlem was shaken by the ‘news,’ ” read one subhead in the New York Times. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle offered a similar, if more fanciful, account. “Sugar Hill in Harlem was transformed from a gay neighborhood into one in which sober, frightening thoughts were uppermost. Excited Negroes rushed into the parlor congregations they had ignored for years to join in singing spirituals. They were welcomed by their more pious brothers and sisters with ‘I told you so,’ as they changed their tune from swinging and swigging to hymning and praying,” the newspaper reported.

The racism in these reports was often coupled with gender stereotypes. Frightened mobs of women and children made appearances in newspapers throughout America. One famous example emerged from Providence, R.I., when “women in hysterical tears … besieged the switchboard of the Providence Journal.”

As with the mobs of frightened African-Americans, none of these women were identified or quoted. Even the policemen involved apparently preferred to withhold their identities. Everyone remained nameless. When researchers from Princeton University later analyzed approximately 12,000 news articles about the panic, the review “failed to produce more than a half dozen interviews” for a follow-up study. That’s because, with few exceptions, real names of actual people weren’t published — but racist and misogynistic stereotypes were.

Some newspapers, however, searched for facts, not tropes. And quite a few discovered little actual panic. “Maine Refused to Get Excited,” read the headline of a piece in the Lewiston Daily Sun. “The nationwide wave of hysteria generated by the Sunday night broadcast … apparently failed to affect Dubuque,” noted the Telegraph-Herald in Dubuque, Iowa. In Chicago, Salt Lake City and elsewhere, some newspapers relayed the lack of any detectable local panic.

Perhaps the most professional reporting to occur that evening came out of the Long Island Daily Press newsroom. Once the phone started ringing, the Press’ reporters and editors got an idea. They decided to conduct a telephone poll of 50 people, and found only four were tuned into the broadcast but “none of them were upset.” More than half of the people telephoned weren’t even listening to the radio, thus confirming the findings of the C.E. Hooper nationwide ratings survey. The Hooper survey established that the ratings for “War of the Worlds” were tiny, and it concluded that 98 percent of Americans were listening to something else, or not listening to the radio, when “War of the Worlds” was on the air.

The Daily Press telephone survey was excellent journalism. Once alerted to a rumor, the newspaper’s staff investigated its reality and reported results. Yet nobody has cited their work. It was forgotten until Tom Tryniski digitized the defunct newspaper’s front page and put it on the Web, where we found it.

The discovery of this forgotten reporting, when compared with the cultural memory inspired by the media’s sensationalism, pinpoints the issues arising when historians inadvertently rely on the fake news from the past. In this case, the mass panic as commonly understood didn’t happen — but newspaper journalists believed that readers would pay for stories about huge mobs of panic-stricken citizens. Their unethical and sensational journalism was a response to economic and social incentives. (Today’s fake news is responsive to these same incentives.)

This episode provides a clear example of the process by which fake news can quickly become ingrained deeply in American culture. Political decisions, governmental administrative moves and even social theory in the United States were made based on the idea that masses of panicked listeners fled their homes, terrorized by the radio — even though it didn’t happen that way.

The lesson is clear. Both journalists and scholars need to be more self-aware and skeptical whenever sensational stories about media manipulation arise. Today’s fake news can just as easily inform tomorrow’s social psychology and history textbooks.

Jefferson Pooley is associate professor of media & communication at College in Allentown, Pa. Michael J. Socolow teaches journalism at the University of Maine.

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