Skip to main content

Why do some people think the moon landing didn’t happen?

The moon landing conspiracy involves the belief that American astronauts (Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin) never landed on the moon in 1969. Instead, conspiracy theorists believe that the men only acted out their moon landing on a set somewhere.


The main reason some people don't think the moon landings happened is an ideological distrust in authority. These people have lost faith in the institutions they were taught to trust. Conspiracy theorists extrapolate that they have the facts to back up their claims of government malfeasance. First, they assert that there are no stars in any of the moon landing photographs.


Conspiracy theorists believe that set designers simply "forgot" to include the stars. The reality is a little less exciting: the immense light of the sun hitting the surface of the moon probably blocked out the stars from human vision. Next, conspiracy theorists argue that there is a stray rock in the picture marked with the letter 'C.' Scientists claim that the 'C' may have just been a photographic anomaly, possibly a stray hair or a piece of string.


Conspiracy theorists also argue that the shadows of the astronauts seem to be of different lengths, even when they are standing side by side. Scientists debunk this claim by arguing that the scientists were standing on hilly landscapes, and such irregular terrain is notorious for playing havoc with shadow lengths.


Not to be deterred, conspiracy theorists put forth the hypothesis that the flag in the moon landing picture appears to be flapping. They argue that since there is no air on the moon, it would be impossible for a breeze to disturb the flag in this way. However, scientists explain the "flapping" by pointing out that it was caused by the astronauts' rough handling of the flag as they planted it on the moon's surface.


Last, but not least, conspiracy theorists claim that NASA duplicated the astronaut moon walk by using wires and camera manipulations to make it appear as if the astronauts were on the moon. Meanwhile, scientists point out that the evidence does not support this claim. If the astronauts were on earth, clouds of dust would have formed as they disturbed the surface of the ground in the act of walking. In the NASA photographs, there is no cloud of dust that accompanies the astronauts' movements along the moon's surface.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more