#the writers apparently think it would be “organically correct” for him to have an affair with wallace LMAO

[lunarin64art]

That feeling when he can't stand to see you that way, no matter what you do, no matter what you say😩😭💔

[kinetic-elaboration]

June 2: 2x21 Patterns of Force

Took a nap after work today!! Perhaps a bad idea.

Anyway, some thoughts on the... awkward Patterns of Force.

Another story about Jim looking for his hero, I see. That never (always) ends badly.

Definitely getting an image of little Spock (teenage Spock? young adult Spock? all little Spocks) reading about Earth history.

Oh no, an armed drone. That does not bode well. Why do Kirk’s heroes always betray him?

A subcutaneous transponder. That seems like a useful device to introduce into the narrative. (Slash remember for future purposes...)

Also it reminds of me “He’s a...a... a transponster!”

Spock in a hat. I guess the Ekosians and/or Zeons don’t have pointed ears, then.

“It’s our old enemy...fascism.”

Well this guy literally was not subtle in his references to Nazi Germany. (I’m referring in universe to what’s-his-face but this also applies to the episode writer.)

“The evidence is clear... someone did interfere.”

“You look quite well for a man who’s been utterly destroyed, Mr. Spock.” This man canNOT stop flirting for one second.

Lol, using Spock to distract the Nazi.

“It’s logical to pretend to be a Nazi? Okay, I’m convinced. You said the magic word.”

“Look! I captured him!” So proud.

Kirk’s face when Spock says he would make a convincing Nazi. Bb, you’re not doing the compliment thing right. (I’ll actually be quite honest... I find the humor in that moment but it also makes me uncomfortable given both these actors are Jewish.)

That said, Kirk is canonically better at blending into undercover scenarios than Spock is. He thinks better on his feet, creatively.

How do these people NOT recognize two whole-ass aliens.

...Maybe they do.

I do like when Kirk is being interrogated and still tries to be charming..

That Nazi really lost a lot of authority after being dressed down by his superior in front of the captives.

I like this Zeon. 

“The flaw in the plan is this locked door.” Thanks Spock. It’s this subtle humor that I think people often miss in him. Like where you can’t tell if it’s intentional or not.

Kirk is so smart!!! He never gets credit for being this smart.

Hmm, taking out the transponders is such a weirdly intimate scene.

The Zeon wants to be included in this adventure so much but they’re obsessed with each other, like “What Zeon?”

“I’ll be your platform, Mr. Spock.”

This is such a weirdly humorous interlude for a story about Nazis. Kind of reminds me in a way of that conversation with the police man on City on the Edge of Forever. I mean that ep was much better but just like the sudden switch in tone.

Spock’s like “Oh, that was cool. Made a laser.”

I heard Kirk say, “You, over there,” as in directing Spock to stand over there, but the subtitles say “Beautiful. Over there.” As in, “we did a beautiful job getting out, now Spock, stand over there.” But combine them...?

Not gonna get a disguise for Spock huh? Just gonna let him be shirtless a little more for no apparent reason.

Poor Zeon. These aliens are inscrutable and not letting him in on anything.

“Alien pistols.”

“Who would win? the entire military force of this planet or two phaser-less space husbands?"

I probably shouldn’t laugh every time Kirk impersonates a Nazi but I do. "Don't mind me... completely believable Nazi here..."

The unsubtle of the Hebrew names. And of course.. .Zeon.

“We’ll be just as bad as the Nazis.” No, actually, you’re not and never will be that’s not how it works. BUT you definitely should help the aliens. Like, that phrase grates because it’s usually used to refer to, like, use of violence, use of “censorship” but here’s it more about turning away people who are different or minority and so then it does make sense but....the connotations.

Spock’s like, “May I... get away from this emotion? Has enough time passed for me to ask that?”

More Nazis! Following them everywhere!

Oh, psych. Not Nazis after all.

Spock’s like “Betraying your own father, you say? I have never thought about that.”

“The Fuhrer... is an alien?” Actual real line AND a correct summation of the situation.

This ep does not paint the Federation in a great light. Although to be fair... John Gill was breaking the rules so.

Documentary corps... I love it. Great disguise. Flash lights in people’s eyes, have an excuse to stay in a group, no on looks at you. Genius.

Spock is honestly so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about EVERYTHING. He cannot be tamed. Again, really an aspect of him I miss in the reboots.

Kirk really is the captain of everyone in his vicinity.

“Think positively, Spock.”

Uhura is unflappable. “A Nazi Colonel’s uniform? Of course, Captain.”

Send him down naked if you have to!! Yes, please, send him down naked.

Spock giving McCoy detailed instructions on how to put on boots... Why was dialogue like this not in the reboots?

McCoy is so polite. Polite first, confused later. “Nice to meet you, Nazi--wait, Nazi???”

I love how McCoy immediately put on his drunk face and Spock was like, "An opportunity to insult McCoy?? Awesome.”

So I assumed the Chairman was either dumb or didn’t recognize them with their shirts on but apparently he was yet another mole, so. At least it’s not a plot hole.

“The speech has no discernible pattern or logic.” Hmmm, I wonder what it feels like to have a leader who speaks with no discernible pattern or logic?

Guys. Pals. Awful people. Did he really give orders, or did he just say random shit? People will flock to anything. I'll be honest, I actually think this is one of the subtler and better parts of this episode: how chilling it is to contemplate how people will rally around any non-speech that has the right tone and a few key words. This is garbage language. But it incites people to kill.

McCoy and his stimulants again.

Spock and his mind probing again.

Wow Spock really messed with his mind there. “He can answer questions but not otherwise speak?” What kind of crazy shit is that?

They are being so mean to Spock. “Malformed ears.” “Low forehead.” That’s not a low forehead, that’s bangs.

Nice triumivirate scene at the end. Feels good, feels organic. Kirk likes to hear his two BFFs bickering because it feels like all is right with the universe, and I agree. Nature is healing.

This episode has a very weird (and very hard to swallow imo) backstory. Like, who primarily associates the Nazis with efficiency? And even if you do, if you think there’s something to the way they put together the country so fast post-WWI, all of this “efficiency” is directly tied to hatred and violence. Like Isak said, the Ekosians have nothing to hold them together BUT hating Zeons. That's at the center of the design. It's not like Gill’s plan backfired it was just... a horrible plan?? It doesn’t even make sense to me that his “effective regime” was co-opted by one hateful person because what was at the center of the “Nazi” regime before the hatred of Zeons? What could it have been? There are no other alternatives provided. Also, even if it could have been somehow accomplished without the use of a scapegoat.. is fascism really an ideal? Like the story never reckoned with that concept at all, which I find disturbing.

Here’s the thing about Gill. He is a certain real type and I appreciate his inclusion up to a point. He’s the Naive, Hubristic Intellectual. He thinks because he’s studied something, academically, he knows more about it even than people who experienced it, and he can fix all of its problems. “I can do this, but better. I am so smart, I am so well-informed, I have no flaws.” I can even see this sort of person being someone a young Kirk would admire because there’s an optimism and idealism to this naivete. I don’t think Kirk is arrogant but he is very idealistic, and when he was a young man, still in the market for heroes, or at least idols or mentors? Yeah, someone with that kind of attitude toward life--that we can deeply understand and then improve upon history--would have appealed to him. It’s possible that Gill even was the “compassionate, gentle” person that Kirk thought, or that he had that side to him.

Where I think the episode erred is in absolving Gill of most of his guilt for this state of affairs. He does die and he does admit he was wrong, but his biggest sin is allegedly in introducing a regime that could be co-opted for evil rather than one that was inherently bad. He is literally drugged (tortured in a way), to emphasize just how non-culpable the narrative thinks he is. Also, while he does apologize for interfering at all, even this is fairly brief and not expanded upon in the rest of the narrative. The truth is he shouldn’t have interfered in general, because that’s not his place or his right, and he shouldn’t have interfered in this way specifically. Even if Malakon hadn’t risen and taken over, the ideal Gil was imposing was one of unthinking uniformity, lack of autonomy, worship of a leader over the rule law--these are not the values of the Federation, the show Star Trek, or me. But he’s used more as a device to explain why the show is so unsubtly Nazi, rather than a real villain or object lesson. Even though Gill is a much better object lesson than Malakon.

And what about Malakon? The ending presents him, literally and in so many words, as the “one evil man” responsible for all of this. I think we know both from studying history and, unfortunately, from our own times, that this is untrue because impossible. One evil person is just a lunatic ranting on the street corner. One evil leader became leader because others agreed and gave him power, or agreed in part, or made a deal with the devil, or disagreed but said nothing, or spoke but were overwhelmed. It’s a disservice to the subject matter to say that dictatorships or authoritarian regimes are that simple. I get that the episode is only 50 minutes and it needs to wrap up, and it’s simpler to say “Okay, killed the Villain, now we can go back to being Not Evil, all the Ekosians will be as happy as the Zeons because we never really wanted this.” But Hitler and his henchmen weren’t the only Nazis. Regular people--and in this context, regular Ekosians--weren’t Nazis too.

Overall, the episode was okay. Very awkward though. Very blunt. I think it would have been better off not using the Nazi symbology so literally. Like the idea that a human would come into a society and purposefully create something from our history is interesting (and “what if Earth but alien?” is certainly something TOS likes doing and finds various ways to do--like the gangsters in A Piece of the Action or Neo-Rome in Bread and Circuses or even literal Greek Gods in Who Mourns for Adonais?) but not worth it given which society was being emulated. It seemed to be too much an excuse to dig out the old WWII movie costumes (and put Jewish actors in Nazi regalia which... is very... distressing) and not so much an excuse for some kind of commentary along the lines of what I said above re: the hubris of historians, the hubris of time. That aspect leaves a bad taste. It had some good ideas but I think, again, it was hindered rather than helped by how literal it insisted (for some reason) on being. Compare it to A Private Little War, which was just about as obvious a Vietnam allegory as you can get, and yet still didn’t literally transport anyone to Vietnam, and this ep looks all the more clunky. I’m probably judging it more harshly than I have on previous viewings, but I really feel like... you can use sci fi to make a commentary on the rise of authoritarianism, but the delicacy of the subject matter requires you to be particularly thoughtful in the way you do it and the actual statements you’re making.

Anyway, the Enterprise Defeats Nazis is a good episode summary at least.

I think in my last attempt at a whole rewatch I stopped at around this point. I seem to have watched the next two episodes, according to Amazon, but I have a weird feeling I only watched one, the next one, By Any Other Name, and then stopped. I don’t remember either of them so we’ll see how that goes! Will they seem familiar or not?

[alternative-eyes]

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ueayIkT5Tfw/VOfJNs9RfqI/AAAAAAAAaq8/I_PWfJ8LoIU/s1600/How%2Bthe%2BCIA%2BViews%2Bthe%2BUFO%2BPhenomenon.png

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book, Flying Saucers From Beyond the Earth: A UFO Researcher’s Odyssey, by Gordon Lore, scheduled for publication on October 1, 2018, by BearManor Media-FW

The CIA Connection

Sometime after I became the NICAP Assistant Director during the Summer of 1967, Stuart Nixon, a cocky young man, came to

By Gordon Lore The UFO Chronicles 6-22-18

NICAP as a new staff member. (Keyhoe later told me that Nixon had been hired as “a favor” to “a friend.” As he continued, I got the idea that the friend may have been Colonel Joseph Bryan, Chairman of NICAP’s Board of Governors.) During his first week at work, Stuart approached my desk and, with a somewhat stumbling aura of authority, announced: “Gordon, I am here to coordinate some changes that will need to be made.” Suddenly, he drew back, as if he had said too much. “What changes are you talking about, Stuart?” I asked. “Who sent you here?” “Oh, never mind,” he nervously replied. “Sorry…. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m just here to help you guys through the rough times.” A red flag had been sent up. Shortly after that, Stuart told me that the NICAP photographer, William (“Bill”) MacIntyre—who had also mysteriously come into the picture at about the same time as Nixon—had been shot down in his helicopter in Vietnam in 1965. He was supposedly on a secret mission with the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), Stuart openly remarked with some degree of admiring glee. It didn’t take me long to wonder if Nixon may have been sent there to recruit me for a possible C.I.A. takeover of NICAP. I had heard from Dick Hall that two of the agency’s operatives had visited the NICAP office before I came on board and spent several hours scrutinizing the sighting reports. I soon realized that Don Keyhoe himself may have opened the door for that eventuality by appointing Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first Director of the C.I.A., Chairman of the NICAP Board of Governors. The Admiral and Keyhoe had been friends since their days long ago as cadets at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Other board members—including Colonel Joseph Bryan and Dewey Fournet—had also been C.I.A. operatives. They were among the many contacts Keyhoe had established in the military, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. They would serve him well in obtaining UFO reports he could use in his books and at NICAP. I was also beginning to realize that this infiltration would serve them well if they really had the goal of taking over control of the world’s largest UFO organization.

An Early CI.A. Infiltration?

NICAP may have been infiltrated by the Central Intelligence Agency from its very beginning. According to a UFO Updates article by early NICAP supporter, Jan Aldrich, during the group’s first year under the original Director, T. Townsend Brown, “several mysterious persons managed to fit themselves into NICAP’s structure.” One of these was Nicolas de Rochefort, a Russian immigrant who was a French and Russian script writer for Voice of America. Rochefort was also a member of the C.I.A.’s Psychological Warfare Staff. Another earlier NICAP staff member during its first year of operation was Bernard J.O. Carvalho, from Portugal, who was “involved in C.I.A.-owned companies.” By the end of 1956, Brown’s leadership came to an end due to his inability to successfully handle the NICAP funds. Don Keyhoe took over as the Director and started to beef up NICAP’s prestige by appointing some prominent individuals to the group’s Board of Governors. Meanwhile, Admiral Hillenkoetter began making a number of positive statements on UFO reality. Don Keyhoe was happy about this, but Hillenkoetter’s position on the board became tentative when Keyhoe became a fierce opponent of government secrecy and pushed for Congressional hearings during the early 1960s. Hillenkoetter quickly resigned from the NICAP Board. He later said that the group had gone as far as it could and “no further criticism should be aimed at the Air Force for its handling of UFOs.” There was also speculation that, as a former Director of the agency, his pro-UFO statements were causing “considerable embarrassment" to the CIA. Had the stage been set for NICAP’s eventual downfall? It seems that was the case. That evening, I called Don Keyhoe at his home in Luray, Virginia, and told him what Nixon had related to me. There was an uneasy period of silence. “What do you think, Major?” I asked. “Could Stuart Nixon be a C.I.A. operative?” “No, he’s too stupid for that,” Keyhoe told me. “He hasn’t got the brains.” I wondered if either Hillenkoetter or Bryan had asked the Major to pipe Nixon aboard the NICAP ship of UFO state. But further pressing by me on the matter yielded nothing more from Keyhoe.

The Final Days

Following the public release of the Condon Report, the prospects for NICAP continuing as a viable UFO organization quickly took a downward spiral. Adding fuel to the fire, unfortunately, was Keyhoe himself. Being an organizational and money manager was not his cup of tea. Some had even compared him to “a second Townsend Brown.” In a secret meeting on December 3, 1969, the NICAP Board with Colonel Joseph Bryan III presiding, fired both Keyhoe and myself. It soon became apparent that I had to be terminated as a convenient “scapegoat.” Dick Hall quickly came to my defense. On December 9, he wrote a lengthy letter to the Board of Governors explaining why I had consulted with him in my attempt to help put NICAP back on a safe financial footing. Hall wrote:

Gordon has consulted with me at critical times in taking the steps which have now led to his being summarily fired…. Until now, I have kept silent about internal NICAP matters in the hope that quiet reforms could be made and a constructive program continued. Now I am incensed both by the injustice of what has been done and by the crude manner in which it was done. On December 5, Gordon was informed by telegram… that his services were no longer required. He was given no advance notice. Furthermore, when he walked into the office to collect his personal effects, he discovered that they had been searched, his desk had been rifled and all the door locks had been changed by Stuart Nixon… allegedly acting under instructions from [NICAP Board Member J.B. Hartranft]. Exposure of such Gestapo-like tactics is sufficient commentary on them. What grave sins did Gordon commit which resulted in his being treated like a common criminal? Over recent months, quietly to avoid a damaging uproar, he discreetly approached members of the Board to inform them of the seriously deteriorating situation, hoping they would intervene and lead the way in making long overdue reforms. In my view, he was very conscientiously and properly attempting to correct long-standing problems and to save NICAP from the scrap heap…. It is anger over the injustice that has been done, and the fateful decisions made in secret, which now motivate me to alert the entire Board to the tragic state of affairs. I fought many of the same battles as Gordon… and have some feeling for what he has gone through…. On more than one occasion, I recognized the need for the Board to be kept informed and drafted detailed reports to [them]. These were always pigeon-holed by Major Keyhoe. When that approach failed, I initiated the Affiliate/Subcommittee Newsletter, with copies to the Board so that you would at least have some general indication of how things were going. But it could not include the same detail as would private reports. Gordon went further because the situation and times called for it, but now he has been made a scapegoat…. I can assure you that both Gordon and I have, on the one hand, been very reluctant to hurt or thwart Major Keyhoe in any way or, on the other hand, to see NICAP reach the state that it presently has. Some present and former staff members have been after Major Keyhoe’s scalp, but Gordon and I have always argued for systematic reform through the Board…. Gordon found himself in the unfortunate position of mediating between an unhappy staff and an adamant Major Keyhoe who had lost his grip on things and who remained remote from the office. For the man in the middle, this can be an extremely frustrating position. As funds declined, staff members were laid off…. As debts increased , office space was cut in half. Virtually all research and writing ground to a halt. Gordon had only two staff members…. The situation became truly critical. The need for rebuilding was obvious, so Gordon approached two members of the Board in confidence and sought their help…. Gordon’s role was to alert and involve the Board without causing a panic because he was dedicated to the continuance of NICAP on an improved basis…. I am saddened by the deterioration of NICAP and see no hope for its future. In firing Gordon Lore, the Executive Board has removed the last hope for a gradual change-over to a publications program which might put NICAP back on its feet financially….

A couple of years later, I learned through Just Cause that Colonel Bryan was, indeed, an active CIA agent even as he led the charge to fire Keyhoe and I. To this day, as 2017 draws to a close, I am still saddened by the collapse of NICAP. During its years under Keyhoe’s direction, the organization had been responsible for bringing a high degree of scientific credibility to the well-documented and investigated UFO sightings. And it had been the linchpin in persuading many scientists such as Jim McDonald to continue their own efforts in keeping the well-documented and investigated sighting reports in the eyes of both the public and the scientific community. Additional information concerning NICAP’s final year is included in Chapter Four of my book Connections: A Lifetime Journey Through the World of Celebrity (2017), also published by BearManor Media.

[This excerpt is from the book Flying Saucers From Beyond the Earth: A UFO Researcher’s Odyssey, by Gordon Lore, scheduled for publication on October 1, 2018, by BearManor Media. Gordon was the Assistant Director/Vice President of NICAP from 1965 to 1970 and the President of UFO Research Associates (UFOR) from 1970 to 1980. He worked directly with Major Donald E. Keyhoe, Richard H. Hall and Dr. James E. McDonald, among others such as Francis Ridge and Barry Greenwood, and considered them close friends and mentors. Gordon is also the senior author of the best-selling Mysteries of the Skies: UFOs in Perspective (Prentice-Hall, 1968) and the sole author of Strange Effects From UFOs (NICAP, 1969). He is also the author of The Earle Family of Newfoundland and Labrador (DRC Publishing, 2015), The Priest of Kali: A Novelized Biography Based on the Life and Spiritual Ecstasies of Sri Ramakrishna (Amazon, 2017) and Connections: A Lifetime Journey Through the World of Celebrity (BearManor Media, 2017). Gordon may be contacted at Gordon.lore@gmail.com and www.gordonlore.com.]

See Also: Congress, UFOs, NICAP and The CIA "Congressional Committees Have Conducted Super-Secret Hearings on Flying Saucers [UFOs]," says Former CIA Chief Admiral R.H. Hillenkoetter (Ret) | UFO CHRONICLE (10-16-1957) The CIA's Secret Counterintelligence Project

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The CIA's Infiltration of NICAP (The National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena)? http://www.theufochronicles.com/2018/06/the-cias-infiltration-of-nicap-national.html

[badbackgroundscience]

Time-traveling sorcerer mummy defeated by butterfingers

This week, we get to see Tony Stark travel back in time 2,000 years (So, 37 BCE*) and save Cleopatra from both a Roman invasion and “the mad pharoah [sic]” Hatap. You probably weren’t expecting that. I was not expecting that. I would have placed my bets on the baddie being a Commie, because this is 1963 and Marvel heroes fight a surprising number of communists no matter their schtick. But hey, time travel!

This is not BadBackgroundHistory, so I won’t be addressing how Hatap was not a real pharaoh, or that Cleopatra was not as attractive as you - or the writers of this issue - think she was (Your vision of her stems from Roman propaganda reducing a very intelligent female ruler to nothing more than a seductress.**). 

You might be wondering how Tony ended up in Ptolemaic Egypt. That’d be the work of the afore-mentioned Hatap, who took a suspended animation potion upon defeat in battle, got buried by his enemies (i.e. Cleopatra’s minions), and awoke after Tony’s friend Paul opened his tomb.

Hatap gives everyone at camp some sort of plague, promising to cure them if and only if Tony agrees to travel back to the past and help him defeat Cleopatra. How do they travel back? A magic chariot. Let’s leave it at that.

They land on a sand dune and Tony throws himself over the edge, rolling to get away from the magic man (Clearly he’s magic because how else would he be fluent in English? Oh, Cleopatra and the Romans all speak perfect English, too? Apparently everyone’s magic...). He then puts on his Iron Man suit, and scares the bajeezes out of said magic man.

Hatap flees in terror, and Tony flies off to assault a Roman legion besieging Cleopatra’s walled palace; he then sinks a galley with the power of a single attachable propeller.

Tony tells Cleo all about Hatap not being dead, and then he goes off to fight him. He defeats all of "the mad pharoah [sic]’s” forces with magnetic wheels.

Hatap attempts to flee to the future (by rubbing his mini golden chariot), but Tony squirts some oil at him to make it slip through his fingers. Hatap leaps to grab his magic charm, completely ignoring the sword that’s sticking out of the ground, blade skyward, in front of him.

We do not see him skewered.

The comic ends with Cleopatra madly in love with Iron Man, begging him to stay and rule by her side (Admittedly, this would be an improvement from having to marry her own brothers, which is what she did in real life.). Apparently all foreign female royalty must fall in love with Iron Man - Queen Kala of the Netherworld did the same thing just last issue. 

So there’s all the plot out of the way - let’s get to the science. We have to go back to the beginning of our story, before Paul opened the tomb and got everyone in trouble. Paul asks for Tony’s help to scan behind a bunch of stone walls to see where his team needs to dig to access the tomb. Tony tells the man Iron Man would be much more help, and just happens to be in Cairo on a secret mission.

Iron Man arrives (Tony not at all suspiciously absent) and pulls out some goggles that’ll supposedly do the job. He finds the tomb on the first try, and starts digging.

It’s Iron Man’s “fluoroscope” we’re talking about, today. 

For those of you not in the know (I admit I had never heard this term until reading this comic - I’m an astrophysicist, not a doctor), a fluoroscope is essentially a movie version of an x-ray. That is, instead of being exposed to a very brief pulse of x-rays to get a single image that a doctor slaps onto a light box to point out what’s wrong with you, you stand in front of a fluorescent screen and are exposed to x-rays long enough to observe some amount of animation. Like swallowing:

There’s a very important difference between real fluoroscopes and the goggles Iron Man claims to be a fluoroscope. Fluoroscopy requires a patient stand/sit between the source of the x-rays and the ‘film’.*** Hard x-ray photons are so energetic that they travel through soft tissues (bones less so) and hit the screen behind the person.**** The parts of the body that are made of heavier elements - like bones and teeth - more easily absorb the x-rays, preventing them from making it to the screen. Thus, an image is produced revealing your dense, mineral-ly innards.

Meanwhile, Iron Man’s x-ray glasses would need to operate in one of two ways:

Filter out all light but/only detect x-ray radiation (like thermal cameras detect infrared radiation), then convert the received information into a false color image Tony can see (again, like thermal cameras do). X-rays are emitted by the Sun (and other astronomical sources), but are blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere, so essentially none of the photons reach the surface. Some unstable elements emit x-rays, but we’re not in a pit of frequently-decaying radioactive rocks.

Generate x-ray photons, shoot them in the direction of the wall, have the x-ray photons travel through the stone wall, hit the objects inside the tomb, then bounce all the way back - through the wall again - to some sort of receiver in the goggles, which is then converted into some sort of image.

While not fluoroscopes, both these methods do exist - number 1 is how we do x-ray astronomy, though it needs to be done in space because of the whole atmosphere thing. Number 2 exists as “Backscatter X-ray technology”, which you may have heard of with regards to airport security. 

Organic material, which is made out of lighter elements (most importantly, carbon), allows x-rays to pass right through it relatively unscathed (but with a drop in energy) compared to compounds made of heavier elements, like minerals and metals. But it also scatters x-rays more readily, too. So, if I’m trying to look at the inside of a truck I think has an IED in it (which would be chalk full of carbon and other light elements - most importantly for its purpose, nitrogen), I can shoot a bunch of x-ray photons at the side of the truck, have them penetrate the thin metal side with relatively little attenuation (by being absorbed), and have them bounce off any organic material that might be inside and come back to me.*****

But will this work with a foot of stone, as Tony boasts? We have no idea what the chemical composition of these rocks are; let’s assume they’re limestone (like the pyramids). Limestone is made up of different crystal forms of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), and according to this paper, one foot (30.48 cm) of it would block about 96% of x-rays with an energy of 60 keV (”Hard” x-rays range between 10 and 100 keV). On the other hand, this rather old document (pg 13) tells us that 18.7% of 1000 keV photons (gamma rays) are lost per centimeter of limestone they travel through; this implies that one foot of limestone would block 99.67% of the gamma rays. In reality, the higher energy photon should block less, but I’m going off two completely different datasets so I can’t say which one is more accurate - maybe they were different varieties of limestone. That being said, they’re both blocking most of the high energy photons trying to get through the stone, which would then have to successfully bounce off of the matter inside the tomb, and travel back through the wall to let Tony know what’s on the other side.

His equipment would have to be super sensitive to see anything (And it certainly wouldn’t look like the image in the panel above).

I’d suggest switching to what we use all the time to find holes through earth - ground-penetrating RADAR - which uses wavelengths of light on the opposite side of the visual spectrum. 

Or maybe the correct answer is to use none of the wavelengths and leave all the creepy magic “mad pharoah [sic]” mummy tombs undisturbed. How’s that for an idea?

* BCE  (“Before Common Era”) and CE (“Common Era”) replaced BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, “Year of the Lord”, not ‘after death’) in historical circles for more than one reason. One of them, of course, is inclusivity, but there’s also the fact that scholars are pretty sure Jesus was born between 6-4 BC...not 1 AD. 

Some have made the argument that everyone should adopt a new calendar system based around when humans switched over from hunting/gathering to farming - there’s no exact date for this of course, so the idea is just to add 10,000 years to our current calendar. This video has a good rundown of how such a change puts history into a new (and perhaps better) context.

** Don’t get me wrong, she had affairs with Julius Caesar (producing her eldest son) and Marc Anthony (three more kids) - both of which were politically advantageous to her - but it wasn’t because she was so drop-dead gorgeous that men couldn’t resist her. She was a charismatic politician; her presence was supposedly irresistible, not her face.

*** Or in the case of dental x-rays, they shove the ‘film’ right behind your teeth by making you bite down on those annoying wing things that dig into the sides of your mouth. I don’t know what they’re technically called, but I hate them.

**** X-ray images are often kept and analyzed as negatives - the black areas indicate where photons hit the screen, the white is where they were absorbed. (The animation above is the inverted version of this.) This is because the photon causes a chemical reaction when it hits the ‘film’, changing its color from transparent to black-ish. Black and white cameras work the same way, except the light hitting the film is in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. 

***** Remember that this is how we see in general - photons with wavelengths in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum originate from some source, like the Sun, bounce off an object then enter our eyes. Photons with wavelengths outside the visible part do, too, but they don’t activate the rods and cones that actually allow us to see.

Tales of Suspense #44 - Writers: Stan Lee & Robert Bernstein, Art: Don Heck

Photo Credits:

Barium Swallow: Images By Normaler Schluck, animated by Anka Friedrich

Backscatter x-ray image from AS&E’s Z Backscatter Van (ZBV)