Disinformation » Moon

Newt Gingrich Is Right About Having A Permanent Moon Base

ralph — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:19:35 +0000

Yes, “Gingrich” and “right” in the same sentence is very strange: Saturday Night Live managed to successfully mock this derided idea in a recent well received sketch (which I thought was reminiscent of that show’s style from the ’70s). Here is a differing perspective presented by Robert T. Gonzalez on io9.com:

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has promised us a permanent Moon base by 2020. Many people have been calling Newt’s vow a publicity stunt, while others have chimed in by attacking the idea of a lunar base in and of itself, with assertions like “real scientists know [a Moon base] is fantasy.” We won’t speak to Newt’s political maneuverings, but we’re sure as hell not going to sit idly by while people bash the feasibility or scientific potential of a lunar settlement. In fact, we’ve got 185 reasons we should set a course straight away …

An Off-World Energy Source: We spoke to astrophysicist Michael Shara — curator of the astrophysics department at the American Museum of Natural History — about the scientific potential of a permanent Moon base, and one of the first things to come up was lunar resource utilization.

“Lunar geology is in its infancy,” he explained. “Helium 3 and rare earth element mining would be a major industry.” What is Helium-3? Remember the stuff they were mining in Duncan Jones’ Moon? That was helium-3 — a non-radioactive isotope of helium with huge potential in nuclear fusion research and alternative energy applications. Yes it really exists, yes it really is rare on Earth, and yes it really could make a one-way-trip to the Moon totally worth it. Not only would it make for a great off-world alternative energy source, it would also provide on-site support for expansion and development on the Moon itself.

Read More from Robert T. Gonzalez on io9.com

Gingrich’s Path To Statehood For A Space Colony

JacobSloan — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:54:53 +0000

Wondering if the Constitution still applies when gravity does not? Newt Gingrich believes so. Buzzfeed dug up Newt’s 1981 bill laying out rules of governance for a future 20,000-person U.S. colony on the moon or Mars. At the moment he’s being bashed from all sides for this, but I think it’s fantastic:

Yesterday Newt Gingrich revealed his “weirdest idea ever” — to provide a path to statehood for a hypothetical lunar colony.

With the help of the skilled research librarians in the Library of Congress Law Library, BuzzFeed tracked down the bill, which Gingrich called the “Northwest Ordinance for Space,” or formally the “National Space and Aeronautics Policy Act of 1981.”

“The Congress declares that the United States is committed to the expansion of free people and free institutions into space,” the bill stated, calling for an array of near earth and solar space travel vehicles to be completed by 2010.

It also called for the creation of “an environmentally acceptable space to Earth power capability that is economically competitive with power generation on Earth,” by the year 2000.

Earth Always Has Two Moons

JacobSloan — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:22:54 +0000

A group of Cornell astrophysicists say that at any given time, Earth always has a very small second moon orbiting. That’s the moon I like most. Phenomenica writes:

The Earth has always had a temporary second moon, new study has claimed. When astronomers caught sight of a mysterious titanium white object circling around the Earth in 2006, they assumed it was a spent rocket. But it was actually a small asteroid captured by the Earth’s gravitational field that rotated around the Earth until June 2007.

In the new study, astrophysicists at Cornell claim that this little moon was not an anomaly as these asteroids come and go so often it means our planet always has a temporary second moon.

According to Cornell University’s Mikael Granvik, Jeremie Vaubaillon and Robert Jedicke, they have calculated the population of “irregular natural satellites that are temporarily captured” by Earth.

In their study, researchers say that while these moons are small, the scientific implications of this discovery are phenomenal. Instead of having to send crews to asteroids astronomers can wait until they come closer to Earth to intercept and learn more about the origins of our solar system.

Earth (Usually) Has Two Moons

HAL9000 — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 03:18:50 +0000

So reports MIT’s Technology Review:

Back in 2006, the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona noticed that a mysterious body had begun orbiting the Earth. This object had a spectrum that was remarkably similar to the titanium white paint used on Saturn V rocket stages and, indeed, a number of rocket stages are known to orbit the Sun close to Earth.

But this was not an object of ours. Instead, 2006 RH120, as it became known, turned out to be a tiny asteroid just a few metres across–a natural satellite like the Moon. It was captured by Earth’s gravity in September 2006 and orbited us until June 2007 when it wandered off into the Solar System in search of a more interesting neighbour.

2006 RH120 was the first reliably documented example of a temporary moon …

Who Stole The Moon?

majestic — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:12:16 +0000

Olivine basalt collected by Apollo 15. Photo: Wknight94 (CC)

Dan Vergano writes in USA Today:

NASA hauled back loads of rocks and dust from the moon, but apparently hasn’t kept good track of those samples on Earth. The space agency has lost or misplaced more than 500 pieces of the lunar rocks and other space samples, NASA’s inspector general reported Thursday, making the case for better inventory controls.

Astronauts on the Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972 returned 842 pounds of lunar rock and soil to Earth. The space agency now loans samples, along with meteorite and comet dust, to about 377 researchers worldwide.

The space agency now lists 517 moon rock samples as missing or stolen. However, the inspector general audit suggests much more is missing, based on inquiries to a sample of 59 scholars loaned moon rocks, comet dust or meteorites. The audit found 19% could not locate all of their samples.

It isn’t a new problem. NASA Administrator Thomas Paine threatened “waving heavy cudgels” at researchers who lost samples in a 1970 Congressional hearing…

[continues at USA TODAY]

Large Asteroid 2005 YU55 to Pass Earth — Closer Than Moon

HAL9000 — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:07:33 +0000

Edward Lovett and Ned Potter Report on ABC News:

We have a visitor — a large asteroid called 2005 YU55 that is expected to come within approximately 201,700 miles of Earth on Tuesday, according to NASA. That’s slightly less than the distance from Earth to the moon.

Asteroids often pass this close, but most are tiny. Countless thousands of pieces come plunging into the atmosphere, but they burn up without doing any harm. If they’re as large as grains of sand, we may, if we’re lucky, see them in the night sky as shooting stars.

But 2005 YU55 is at least 1,300 feet wide — larger than an aircraft carrier, according to radar measurements. The last time an asteroid this big passed by was in 1976, and the next one scientists know of won’t be until 2028, NASA says. (There have been some rude surprises in between, but not involving anything remotely as large.)
Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif., said this fly-by is an opportunity to learn more about c-type — that is, carbon-based — asteroids, to find “clues as to what it was like when our solar system was forming.”

More: ABC News

Before War of the Worlds, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835

Haystack — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:55:52 +0000

Lunar man-bats, unicorns, bipedal beavers and a triad of mysterious solar temples featured in a sensational hoax perpetuated by the New York Sun in 1835. This from Victorian Gothic:

Imagine that you wake up one morning, sit at your computer, and you are bombarded with links to a developing story from a major news outlet: Stephen Hawking, by making novel use of Cambridge University’s new quantum supercomputer to analyze data from SETI’s telescope array, has discerned that the universe is awash with signals from intelligent life. It reads like a regular science story, at first, but soon it is revealed that Hawking and his colleagues have tapped into an extra-terrestrial television transmission, and are even now watching, breathless, as the first, dream-like images of alien civilizations display themselves on the Q-computer’s tiny monitor.

You and your friends refresh your browsers compulsively, talking over each new description that emerges of strange alien races and the exotic landscapes they inhabit, as gleaned from upon the wacky sitcoms and low-budget reality shows that they are indiscriminately beaming into space. Then, questions are raised, skepticism emerges. You begin to have doubts. Eventually, you realize that you have been taken in by a clever hoax—you ought to have known better than to trust Fox News, after all—but despite the deception, you find that you cannot help but appreciate how, for one shining moment, people everywhere had set aside their petty rivalries and believed in marvels from above.

Such is how the people of New York City must have felt during the summer of 1835 when the New York Sun published a series of articles describing the startling lunar discoveries that had recently been made by the famous astronomer John Herschel from his observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. Using cutting-edge “hydro-oxygen magnifiers,” Herschel had developed a powerful new telescope that could achieve an astounding magnification of 42,000x—enough to resolve objects on the lunar surface as small as 18 inches in diameter—and project the images onto the wall of his observatory. Purporting to be a reprint from a supplement to the (non-existent) Edinburgh Journal of Science penned by Herschel’s assistant, Dr. Andrew Grant, it contained just the right mixture popular science buzzwords and technical minutia to render itself plausible.

The first images to resolve themselves onto the wall of Herschel’s observatory were of basaltic rock, and then, tellingly enough, a poppy field. The telescope next swept over lunar forests, populated by what looked like massive yew trees, by beaches of “brilliant white sand, girt with wild castellated rocks, apparently of green marble,”and clusters of resplendent crystalline spires and pyramids, lilac in hue. Finally, it came to rest on an oval valley, surrounded by crystallized hills of “purest vermilion,” with cascading waterfalls pouring from their cliffs, where they discovered, nestled in among its lush trees and vegetation, a herd of diminutive lunar bison…

[Full Article at Victorian Gothic]

Former NASA Employee Claims Alien Moon Cities Exist

phunkychic666 — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:09:52 +0000

Via Before It’s News:

Former National Aeronautics and Space Administration Data and Photo Control Department manager, Ken Johnston, who worked for the space agency’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory during the Apollo missions has been fired for telling the truth.

Johnston asserts NASA knows astronauts discovered ancient alien cities and the remains of amazingly advanced machinery on the Moon. Some of the technology can manipulate gravity. He says the agency ordered a cover-up and forced him to participate in it. Over the past 40 years other scientists, engineers and technicians have accused NASA of cover-ups and obscuring data.

The growing number of accusers’ allegations range from hiding information about anomalous space objects and lying about the discovery of artifacts on the surface of the Moon and Mars, to denying the evidence of life reported back by the Viking lander during the mid-1970s.

Moon to Have No-Fly Zones

phunkychic666 — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 17:47:14 +0000

R. Prasad writes in the Hindu:

No-fly zones will come into effect on the moon for the very first time by the end of this month! Why, even buffer zones that spacecraft may have to avoid will come into existence. The reason: avoiding any spraying of rocket exhaust or dust onto certain historical sites and artifacts on the moon.

The historical sites are of course the Apollo landing sites and artifacts present on the moon. And the “recommendations” are for preserving and protecting these historical sites. There are currently more than three dozen historical sites that preserve the more than four-decade-old remains.

“Apollo 11 and 17 sites [will] remain off-limits, with ground-travel buffers of 75 meters and 225 meters from each respective lunar lander,” states the July 20 guidelines of NASA. Science journal had obtained the guidelines.

According to Science, by the end of this month NASA is expected to come up with a set of “recommendations” for spacecraft and astronauts visiting the “U.S. government property on the moon.” Of course, these recommendations will not be legally binding as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty makes it clear that the lunar surface has no owner.

Despite the lack of ownership, NASA is hopeful that other countries will respect the U.S. sentiments. Incidentally, the restriction list contains more than the historical sites. For instance, the list includes studying discarded food and abandoned astronaut feces.

Lunar Orbiter Find Footprints On The Moon

Pelliciari — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:41:58 +0000

Some people were in awe as they watched to first men walk on the moon in 1969. Others still remain in skepticism of the lunar landing. Taken by NASA’s lunar orbiter, new photographs have been released of landing sites, including footprints left on the surface. Via Reuters:

The Apollo 18 Moon Conspiracy

majestic — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 13:21:13 +0000

It’s probably just hype around the release of the “documentary” Apollo 18 that just opened in theaters across America, but Space.com is reporting on a purported conspiracy about the astronauts finding signs of alien life and that being the reason we never again sent humans to the moon:

Apologies to anyone whose bubble will burst, but “Apollo 18,” the film opening Friday (Sept. 2), is fictional.

The film, purporting to be produced from footage kept secret by NASA and leaked to the media, chronicles a NASA mission to the moon that went awry when astronauts encountered signs of alien life there.

Whether because the studio actually believes anyone will be fooled or simply because it makes for a fun marketing angle, the Weinstein Co., which produced the picture, is calling it a “documentary.”

“Decades-old found footage from NASA’s abandoned Apollo 18 mission, where two American astronauts were sent on a secret expedition, reveals the reason the U.S. has never returned to the moon,” reads the movie’s official tagline.

The premise does begin in fact. NASA originally planned an Apollo 18 mission to the moon (along with Apollo 19 and 20), but those flights were canceled in 1970 due to budgetary constraints. The last NASA mission to the moon was Apollo 17, in December 1972.

The studio has been pushing the “reality” aspect of the film, going so far as to offer up a “famous scientist and researcher of UFO phenomena,” Stanton Friedman, for interviews.

“People ask why was there no Apollo 18 mission,” Friedman said in press materials. “I ask, what happened to Apollo 18 and Apollo 19? They were both paid for and astronauts were trained. What happened to these missions?”

Friedman hasn’t been allowed to view the film yet, according to the Los Angeles Times, but said he’s open to the possibility that the Apollo 18 mission did occur and that NASA’s been covering it up.

“One of the things the secret keepers take advantage of is ego,” Friedman told the L.A. Times. “I’m not saying that this footage exists. I’m saying it’s possible that there’s a whole classified side to this and that it would make sense. I allow for that possibility.”…

[continues at Space.com]

After Earth: Where Will Humanity Go?

JacobSloan — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:58:06 +0000

If and when Earth is no longer able to sustain human life, where should we go? NASA says that a colony could be dug several feet below the surface of our moon (with a cover to protect residents from high-energy cosmic radiation, which can damage our DNA and lead to cancer).

Or we could head for the resource-rich moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Mars is very Earth-like, with enough carbon in its soil to grow plants, and daytime temperatures that reach 70°F. And that’s only the start of our options. Popular Science explores:

Earth won’t always be fit for occupation. We know that in two billion years or so, an expanding sun will boil away our oceans, leaving our home in the universe uninhabitable—unless, that is, we haven’t already been wiped out by the Andromeda galaxy, which is on a multibillion-year collision course with our Milky Way. Moreover, at least a third of the thousand mile-wide asteroids that hurtle across our orbital path will eventually crash into us, at a rate of about one every 300,000 years.

Indeed, in 1989 a far smaller asteroid, the impact of which would still have been equivalent in force to 1,000 nuclear bombs, crossed our orbit just six hours after Earth had passed. A recent report by the Lifeboat Foundation, whose hundreds of researchers track a dozen different existential risks to humanity, likens that one-in-300,000 chance of a catastrophic strike to a game of Russian roulette: “If we keep pulling the trigger long enough we’ll blow our head off, and there’s no guarantee it won’t be the next pull.”

Many of the threats that might lead us to consider off-Earth living arrangements are actually man-made, and not necessarily in the distant future. The amount we consume each year already far outstrips what our planet can sustain, and the World Wildlife Fund estimates that by 2030 we will be consuming two planets’ worth of natural resources annually.

None of the threats we face are especially far-fetched. Climate change is already a major factor in human affairs, for instance, and our planet has undergone at least one previous mass extinction as a result of asteroid impact. “The dinosaurs died out because they were too stupid to build an adequate spacefaring civilization,” says Tihamer Toth-Fejel, a research engineer at the Advanced Information Systems division of defense contractor General Dynamics. “So far, the difference between us and them is barely measurable.”

Read the rest at Popular Science

Volcanoes On The Moon

majestic — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:08:55 +0000

You knew there was more on the far side of the Moon than we were told. First up: volcanoes. From International Business Times:

Among mysteries lying on the far side of the Moon, which cannot be seen from Earth, are volcanoes as well, new photos from a NASA orbiter have revealed.

The volcanoes that litter the Moon’s ‘other side’ are of the rare silicate types, not the basaltic volcanoes seen on the visible side of the moon.

According to researchers, the new findings reveal that the Moon is home to more complex geological activity than initially thought. The findings also reveal that the Moon has not stopped throwing surprises after all!

A team led by Bradley L. Jolliff, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, has reported the latest findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.

According to Jolliff, the primary author of the report, most of the volcanic activity on the moon has been found to be basaltic in nature. He told space.com that the new findings show the complexities of the Moon’s geological activities. “Finding other volcanic types is interesting as it shows the geologic complexity and range of processes that operate on the moon, and how the moon’s volcanism changed with time.”

According to researchers, the region where rare volcanic activity has been found is thought to have a concentration of radioactive element thorium.

“We’ve known for awhile that the Compton-Belkovich had an unusually high thorium content … Now we can positively say that that thorium is related to these silicic volcano materials,” said study co-author Timothy Glotch of Stony Brook University, according to space.com…

[continues at International Business Times]

How Buzz Aldrin Answers Moon Landing Conspiracy Theorists (Video)

vulcan — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:18:14 +0000

42 years ago today Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, and Buzz doesn’t enjoy anyone saying otherwise:

Here’s more on what got Buzz so worked up.

Super-Long Lunar Eclipse Today!

majestic — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 13:33:49 +0000

Schematic diagram of the shadow cast by the Earth. Within the central umbra shadow, the Moon is totally shielded from direct illumination by the Sun. In contrast, within the penumbra shadow, only a portion of sunlight is blocked.

The longest lunar eclipse in a decade is going to happen later today, but unfortunately it won’t be visible in North America. If you’re in other parts of the Northern Hemisphere, though, you can spend nearly two hours viewing it. National Geographic has the details:

Wednesday night the full moon will plunge into the longest and deepest total lunar eclipse in more than a decade.

Sky-watchers across most of the Eastern Hemisphere will be able to watch the lunar disc turn stunning shades of orange and red as the moon becomes engulfed within the darkest part of Earth’s shadow for almost two hours.

“The path that the moon is taking through Earth’s shadow is almost directly through [the shadow's] center, making for the longest possible path and so the longest duration,” said Ben Burress, staff astronomer at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California.

“The last eclipse that was as long as this one was in 2000, while the next won’t be until 2018, so this makes it a somewhat rare event.”

Lunar Eclipse to Last a Hundred-Plus Minutes

Because of the tilt of the moon’s orbit around Earth, the moon usually passes slightly above or below Earth’s cone-shaped shadow, so no lunar eclipse occurs.

Sometimes, however, the geometry is just right for the moon to cross Earth’s orbital plane—always during a full moon. As all three bodies line up, the moon passes through Earth’s shadow and we see a lunar eclipse.

Partial eclipses happen when the moon grazes Earth’s shadow, while total eclipses occur when the whole moon passes through the shadow.

On June 15 Earth’s shadow will start to darken the moon around 18:22 universal time, or UT (2:22 p.m. eastern time).

The total lunar eclipse will begin at 19:22 UT and will last for more than a hundred minutes. The deepest part of the eclipse will occur at 20:12 UT, as the moon plunges into the umbra, the dark center of our planet’s shadow.

The last hint of Earth’s shadow will slip off the moon around 22:02 UT…

[continues at National Geographic]

Woman Selling Million-Dollar ‘Moon Rock’ Arrested

JacobSloan — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:10:17 +0000

The wackiest part of this chain of events? That NASA has undercover agents who orchestrate stings to crack down on space crimes. Via the Guardian:

A woman who tried to sell what she said was a rare piece of moon rock for $1.7 million was detained when her would-be buyer turned out to be an undercover NASA agent, officials said Friday.

The gray rocks, which are considered national treasures and are illegal to sell, were given to each U.S. state and 136 countries by then-President Richard Nixon after U.S. moon missions and can sell for millions of dollars on the black market.

NASA investigators and Riverside County sheriff’s deputies detained the woman after she met Thursday with an undercover NASA investigator at a restaurant in Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles, the sheriff’s office said. The investigation was conducted over several months.

NASA planned to conduct tests to determine whether the rock came from the moon as the woman claimed. “We don’t know if it’s lunar material,” said Gail Robinson, deputy inspector general at the space agency.

Space Adventures Offers Moon Tourism At $150 Million Per Seat

JacobSloan — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:45:12 +0000

What are you doing this summer? Via io9:

If you’ve got a lust for space travel, a desire to go where only a couple of dozen people have gone before, and $150 million to spare, Space Adventures needs you.

The space tourism company—it’s the one that organizes the ISS trips via the Russian Soyuz—has mapped a potential tour around the moon that could lift off within five years.

The company has already secured a nine-digit commitment from one customer for a potential lunar sightseeing tour. And the logistics are already in place as well: aboard a three-seat Russian Soyuz spacecraft (the third seat is for a Russian mission commander), the tourists would launch into orbit where they would rendezvous with a separately-launched unmanned rocket, which would jet them the rest of the way to the moon.

Round trip: eight or nine days.

Silicon Valley Start-Up To Mine The Moon

JacobSloan — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:15:14 +0000

A new lunar gold rush? Via Phenomenonica:

A Silicon Valley start-up, founded by an Indian-American entrepreneur, plans to mine the moon and is in the process of building robotic rovers that will search the lunar surface for precious metals and rare metallic elements.

Moon Express Inc or MoonEx, co-founded by Naveen Jain, is building the robotic rovers alongside scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Centre near San Jose, a report in the Los Angeles Times said. “MoonEx should be ready to land on the lunar surface by 2013,” Jain said.

While there is no guarantee that the moon is “flush” with these materials, MoonEx thinks it “may be a gold mine of so-called rare earth elements.”

“From an entrepreneur’s perspective, the moon has never truly been explored,” the report quoted Jain, chairman and company co-founder, as saying. “We think it could hold resources that benefit Earth and all humanity.”

MoonEx’s machines are designed to look for materials that are scarce on Earth but found in everything from a Toyota Prius car battery to guidance systems on cruise missiles, the report added.

Will March 19 ‘Supermoon’ Trigger Natural Disasters?

phunkychic666 — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:11:36 +0000

Natalie Wolchover asks some disturbing questions at Space.com:

On March 19, the moon will swing around Earth more closely than it has in the past 18 years, lighting up the night sky from just 221,567 miles (356,577 kilometers) away. On top of that, it will be full. And one astrologer believes it could inflict massive damage on the planet.

Richard Nolle, a noted astrologer who runs the website astropro.com, has famously termed the upcoming full moon at lunar perigee (the closest approach during its orbit) an “extreme supermoon.”

When the moon goes super-extreme, Nolle says, chaos will ensue: Huge storms, earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disasters can be expected to wreak havoc on Earth. (It should be noted that astrology is not a real science, but merely makes connections between astronomical and mystical events.)

But do we really need to start stocking survival shelters in preparation for the supermoon?

The question is not actually so crazy. In fact scientists have studied related scenarios for decades. Even under normal conditions, the moon is close enough to Earth to make its weighty presence felt: It causes the ebb and flow of the ocean tides…

[continues at Space.com]

Phil Plait: No, The “Super-Moon” Didn’t Cause the Japanese Earthquake

ralph — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:30:27 +0000

Moon's Apogee and Perigee.

The ever lucid Phil Plait writes on Bad Astronomy:

Japan suffered a massive earthquake last night, measuring nearly magnitude 9. This is one of the largest quakes in its history, causing widespread and severe damage. Before I say anything else, I’m greatly saddened by the loss of life in Japan, and I’ll be donating to disaster relief organizations to help them get in there and do what they can to give aid to those in need.

While there isn’t much I can do to directly help the situation in Japan, I do hope I can help mitigate the panic and worry that can happen due to people blaming this earthquake on the so-called “supermoon” — a date when the Moon is especially close to the Earth at the same time it’s full. So let me be extremely clear:

Despite what a lot of people are saying, there is no way this earthquake was caused by the Moon.

The idea of the Moon affecting us on Earth isn’t total nonsense, but it cannot be behind this earthquake, and almost certainly won’t have any actual, measurable affect on us on March 19, when the full Moon is at its closest.

So, how can I be so sure?

Read More from Phil Plait writes on Bad Astronomy

Two Planets Found Sharing One Orbit

ralph — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 19:58:45 +0000

It really is a strange universe out there. Marcus Chown writes in New Scientist:

Buried in the flood of data from the Kepler telescope is a planetary system unlike any seen before. Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would bolster a theory that Earth once shared its orbit with a Mars-sized body that later crashed into it, resulting in the moon’s formation.

The two planets are part of a four-planet system dubbed KOI-730. They circle their sun-like parent star every 9.8 days at exactly the same orbital distance, one permanently about 60 degrees ahead of the other. In the night sky of one planet, the other world must appear as a constant, blazing light, never fading or brightening.

Gravitational “sweet spots” make this possible. When one body (such as a planet) orbits a much more massive body (a star), there are two Lagrange points along the planet’s orbit where a third body can orbit stably. These lie 60 degrees ahead of and 60 degrees behind the smaller object. For example, groups of asteroids called Trojans lie at these points along Jupiter’s orbit.

Earth’s Precession Changes Zodiac Signs: Are You Now An Ophiuchus?

ralph — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:02:24 +0000

The interwebs have been going crazy with a supposed change to the zodiac that has added a new sign called Ophiuchus and changed all the other signs’ dates.

It’s world-changing (well if you believe in this sort of thing : ) If you’d like to read what’s really going on here behind the hubbub and learn a bit about astronomy not astrology, Charlie Jane Anders over at io9.com has an excellent post:

What on Earth is going on? And why does everybody suddenly have to work with a new version of the completely meaningless zodiac?

It seems to have started with this article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last weekend, in which one astronomer made some statements about the zodiac. Parke Kunkle is on the board of directors of the Minnesota Planetarium Society and teaches astronomy at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Kunkle told the Star-Tribune the Earth’s relation to the sun had changed since the Babylonians first created the zodiac.

We got in touch with Kunkle and asked him what he actually told the Star-Tribune. He said he was asked by the Star-Tribune to give them a few bits of information about astronomy, not realizing the article would become a huge discussion of astrology and the relationship between astronomy and astrology. And the main stuff he talked to the Star-Tribune about has to do with the phenomenon of “precession.”

NASA Reveals That Moon Has Liquid Core

majestic — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 14:08:21 +0000

Could it really be that sensors placed on the Moon by Apollo astronauts in 1971 only just revealed this information about the structure of the Moon, or has NASA been holding information back? The Daily Mail reports:

It’s an unlikely marriage between state-of-the-art and 40-year-old technology that has yielded extraordinary results.

Signals from seismic sensors left on the lunar surface by Apollo astronauts in 1971 have revealed that the Moon has a liquid core similar to Earth’s.

Scientists at Nasa applied contemporary seismological techniques to the data being emitted from sensors placed by their colleagues during the U.S. space program’s heyday.

The new research suggests the Moon possesses a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles.

Where it differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles…

[continues in the Daily Mail]

The Real 12 Stages of A Lunar Eclipse

ralph — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 23:04:37 +0000

John Rennie writes on PLoS:

Skywatchers are excitedly awaiting the total lunar eclipse that will occur tonight between 2:41 a.m. and 3:53 a.m. EST, and if you intend to stay awake to watch this amazing sight, then by all means read the Space.com description of the 12 stages of the eclipse. Joe Rao’s article thoughtfully explains what you will see as the moon transits through different portions of the earth’s shadow. I wholeheartedly recommend it — if you want to wallow in astronomical nonsense.

Oh, I’m sure Joe Rao’s piece is backed up by an abundance of scientific facts and observations, if you care to put your faith in such things. But those of us well-versed in the ancient wisdoms know that the real 12 stages of a lunar eclipse are as follows:

1. Faint penumbral dimming of the moon’s disk.
2. Pervasive creeping sensations of unease.
3. Howling of wolves.
4. Unclean things walk the earth; Dick Cheney rises from the grave.
5. Contortion of the zodiac.
6. Intrusion of strange dimensions.
7. Universal gibbering madness.
8. Cthulhu.
9. A glimmer of sanity in the chaos.
10. Restoration of Euclidean geometry.
11. Fungal Mi-go from Yuggoth return captive brains to their rightful owners.
12. Applause, followed by waffles for breakfast.

[Image: An interpretation of Cthulhu in the sunken city of R’lyeh. By Dominique Signoret via Wikimedia Commons.]

NASA Discovers Oasis on the Moon

Pelliciari — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:54:15 +0000

It’s not a mirage, it may actually be an oasis. From The New York Times:

The Moon, at least at the bottom of a deep, dark cold crater near its south pole, seems to be wetter than the Sahara, scientists reported Thursday.

In lunar terms, that is an oasis, surprisingly wet for a place that had long been thought by many planetary scientists to be utterly dry.

If astronauts were to visit this crater, they might be able to use eight wheelbarrows of soil to melt 10 to 13 gallons of water. The water, if purified, could be used for drinking, or broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel — to get home or travel to Mars.

“That is a very valuable resource,” said Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator of NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — or Lcross, for short — which made the observations as it, by design, slammed into the Moon a year ago. “This is wetter than some places on Earth.”

Continues at NY Times …

20 Percent of UK Kids Believe Buzz Lightyear Was First to Walk on Moon

majestic — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 13:17:52 +0000

OK, so maybe in the UK Neil Armstrong isn’t quite the folk hero he is in the United States, but still! From the Daily Mail:

One in five British children thinks Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story films was the first person to walk on the moon, researchers found.

And although twice as many knew it was actually a man called Armstrong, they thought he was called Lance – the seven-time Tour de France winner – rather than Neil.

The figures emerged in a study of 2,000 children aged six to 12 which revealed that while many know all about celebrities, there are worrying gaps in their knowledge of key events in history.

[continues in the Daily Mail]

Who Parked Our Moon?

Jim Marrs — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:31:15 +0000

Editor’s Note: This essay from Jim Marrs exploring a number of controversial ideas about the Moon was originally published in Above Top Secret: Uncover the Mysteries of the Digital Age (Disinformation, 2008).

Despite six announced visits by U.S. astronauts between 1969 and 1972, the Moon remains a riddle to scientists in many regards. The solutions to these riddles could indicate an alien aspect of our familiar Moon.

Called “the Rosetta Stone of the planets” by Dr. Robert Jastrow, the first chairman of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Committee, scientists had hoped by studying the composition of the Moon, to resolve some of the mysteries of how our planet and solar system came into existence.

However, six Moon landings later, science writer Earl Ubell declared, “… the lunar Rosetta Stone remains a mystery. The Moon is more complicated than anyone expected; it is not simply a kind of billiard ball frozen in space and time, as many scientists had believed. Few of the fundamental questions have been answered, but the Apollo rocks and recordings have spawned a score of mysteries, a few truly breath-stopping.”

Among these “breath-stopping” mysteries or anomalies as scientists prefer to call them is the fact that the Moon is far older than previously imagined, perhaps even much older than the Earth and Sun. By examining tracks burned into Moon rocks by cosmic rays, scientists have dated them as billions of years old. Some have been dated back 4.5 billion years, far older than the Earth and nearly as old as the solar system.

The Moon has at least three distinct layers of rocks. Contrary to the idea that heavier objects sink, the heavier rocks are found on the surface. And there is a definite disparity in the distribution of minerals. Ubell asked, “If the Earth and Moon were created at the same time, near each other, why has one body got all the iron [the Earth] and the other [the Moon] not much?” asked Ubell. “The differences suggest that Earth and Moon came into being far from each other, an idea that stumbles over the inability of astrophysicists to explain how exactly the Moon became a satellite of the Earth.”

The Moon is extremely dry and does not appear to have ever had water in any substantial amounts. None of the Moon rocks, regardless of where they were found, contained free water or even water molecules bound into the minerals. Yet Apollo 16 astronauts found Moon rocks that contained bits of rusted iron. Since oxidation requires oxygen and free hydrogen, this rust indicates there must be water somewhere on the Moon.

Furthermore, instruments left behind by Apollo missions sent a signal to Earth on March 7, 1971, indicating a “wind” of water had crossed the Moon’s surface. Since any water on the airless Moon surface vaporizes and behaves like the wind on Earth, the question became where did this water originate? The vapor cloud eruptions lasted 14 hours and covered an area of some 100 square miles, prompting Rice University physicists Dr. John Freeman, Jr. and Dr. H. Ken Hills to pronounce the event one of “the most exciting discoveries yet” indicating water within the Moon. The two physicists claimed the water vapor came from deep inside the Moon, apparently released during a moonquake.

NASA officials offered a more mundane, and questionable, explanation. They speculated that two tanks on Apollo descent stages containing between 60 and 100 pounds of water became stressed and ruptured, releasing their contents. Freeman and Hills declined to accept this explanation, pointing out that the two tanks — from Apollo 12 and 14 — were some 180 kilometers apart yet the water vapor was detected with the same flux at both sites although the instruments faced in opposite directions. Skeptics also have understandably questioned the odds of two separate tanks breaking simultaneously and how such a small quantity of water could produce 100 square miles of vapor.

Moon rocks were found to be magnetized—not strong enough to pick up a paper clip, but magnetic nevertheless. However, there is no magnetic field on the Moon itself. So where did the magnetism come from?

The presence of maria, or large seas of smooth solidified molten rock, also presented a mystery. These maria indicate nothing less than a vast outpouring of lava at some distant time. It has now been confirmed that some of the Moon’s craters are of internal origin. Yet there is no indication that the Moon has ever been hot enough to produce volcanic eruptions. Another puzzle is that almost all — four-fifths — of the maria are located on the Moon’s Earthside hemisphere. Few maria mark the far side of the Moon, often erroneously referred to as the “dark side.” Yet the far side contains many more craters and mountainous areas.

In comparison to the rest of the Moon, the maria are relatively free of craters suggesting that craters were covered by lava flow. Adding to this mystery are the mascons — large dense circular masses lying 20 to 40 miles below the center of the Moon’s maria. The mascons were discovered because their denseness distorted the orbits of our spacecraft flying over or near them. One scientist proposed that the mascons are heavy iron meteorites that plunged deep into the Moon while it was in a soft, formable stage. This theory has been discounted since meteorites strike with such high velocities, they would vaporize on contact.

Another mundane explanation is that the mascons are nothing more than lava-filled caverns, but skeptics say there isn’t enough lava present to accomplish this. It would seem these mascons are huge disk-shaped objects possibly of artificial construction. It is unlikely that large circular disks located directly under the center of the maria like a giant bulls-eye happened by accident or coincidence.

Between 1969 and 1977, Apollo mission seismographic equipment registered up to 3,000 “moonquakes” each year of operation. Most of the vibrations were quite small and were caused by meteorite strikes or falling booster rockets. But many other quakes were detected deep inside the Moon. This internal creaking is believed to be caused by the gravitational pull of our planet as most moonquakes occur when the Moon is closest to the Earth.

An event occurred in 1958 in the Moon’s Alphonsus crater, which shook the idea that all internal moonquake activity was simply settling rocks. In November of that year, Soviet astronomer Nikolay A. Kozyrev of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory startled the scientific world by photographing the first recorded gaseous eruption on the Moon near the crater’s peak. Kozyrev attributed this to escaping fluorescent gases. He also detected a reddish glow characteristic of carbon compounds, which “seemed to move and disappeared after an hour.”

Some scientists refused to accept Kozyrev’s findings until astronomers at the Lowell Observatory also saw reddish glows on the crests of ridges in the Aristarchus region in 1963. Days later, colored lights on the Moon lasting more than an hour were reported at two separate observatories.

Something was going on inside the volcanically dead Moon. And whatever it is, it occurs the same way at the same time. As the Moon moves closer to the Earth, seismic signals from different stations on the lunar surface detect identical vibrations. It is difficult to accept this movement as a natural phenomenon. For example, a broken artificial hull plate could shift exactly the same way each time the Moon passed near the Earth.

There is evidence to indicate the Moon may be hollow. Studies of Moon rocks indicate that the Moon’s interior differs from the Earth’s mantle in ways suggesting a very small, or even nonexistent, core. As far back as 1962, NASA scientist Dr. Gordon MacDonald stated, “If the astronomical data are reduced, it is found that the data require that the interior of the Moon be less dense than the outer parts. Indeed, it would seem that the Moon is more like a hollow than a homogeneous sphere.”

Apollo 14 astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, while scoffing at the possibility of a hollow moon, nevertheless admitted that since heavier materials were on the surface, it is quite possible that giant caverns exist within the Moon. MIT’s Dr. Sean C. Solomon wrote, “The Lunar Orbiter experiments vastly improved our knowledge of the Moon’s gravitational field … indicating the frightening possibility that the Moon might be hollow.”

Why frightening? The significance was stated by astronomer Carl Sagan way back in his 1966 work Intelligent Life in the Universe, “A natural satellite cannot be a hollow object.”

The most startling evidence that the Moon could be hollow came on November 20, 1969, when the Apollo 12 crew, after returning to their command ship, sent the lunar module (LM) ascent stage crashing back onto the Moon creating an artificial moonquake. The LM struck the surface about 40 miles from the Apollo 12 landing site where ultra-sensitive seismic equipment recorded something both unexpected and astounding—the Moon reverberated like a bell for more than an hour. The vibration wave took almost eight minutes to reach a peak, and then decreased in intensity. At a news conference that day, one of the co-directors of the seismic experiment, Maurice Ewing, told reporters that scientists were at a loss to explain the ringing. “As for the meaning of it, I’d rather not make an interpretation right now. But it is as though someone had struck a bell, say, in the belfry of a church a single blow and found that the reverberation from it continued for 30 minutes.”

It was later established that small vibrations had continued on the Moon for more than an hour. The phenomenon was repeated when the Apollo 13’s third stage was sent crashing onto the Moon by radio command, striking with the equivalent of 11 tons of TNT. According to NASA, this time the Moon “reacted like a gong.” Although seismic equipment was more than 108 miles from the crash site, recordings showed reverberations lasted for three hours and 20 minutes and traveled to a depth of 22 to 25 miles.

Subsequent studies of man-made crashes on the Moon yielded similar results. After one impact the Moon reverberated for four hours. This ringing coupled with the density problem on the Moon reinforces the idea of a hollow moon. Scientists hoped to record the impact of a meteor large enough to send shock waves to the Moon’s core and back and settle the issue. That opportunity came on May 13, 1972, when a large meteor stuck the Moon with the equivalent force of 200 tons of TNT. After sending shock waves deep into the interior of the Moon, scientists were baffled to find that none returned, confirming that there is something unusual about the Moon’s core, or lack thereof.

Dr. Farouk El Baz was quoted as saying, “There are many undiscovered caverns suspected to exist beneath the surface of the Moon. Several experiments have been flown to the Moon to see if there actually were such caverns.” The results of these experiments have not been made public.

It seems apparent that the Moon has a tough, hard outer shell and a light or nonexistent interior. The Moon’s shell contains dense minerals such as titanium, used on Earth in the construction of aircraft and space vehicles.

Many people still recall watching our astronauts on TV as they vainly tried to drill through the crust of a Moon maria. Their specially designed drills could only penetrate a few inches. The puzzle of the Moon’s hard surface was compounded by the discovery of what appeared to be processed metals.

Experts were surprised to find lunar rocks bearing brass, mica and amphibole in addition to the near-pure titanium. Uranium 236 and Neptunium 237 — elements not previously found in nature — were discovered in Moon rocks, according to the Argone National Laboratory. While still trying to explain the presence of these materials, scientists were further startled to learn of rust-proof iron particles in a soil sample from the Sea of Crisis. In 1976, the Associated Press reported that the Soviets had announced the discovery of iron particles that “do not rust” in samples brought back by an unmanned Moon mission in 1970. Iron that does not rust is unknown in nature and well beyond present Earth technology.

Undoubtedly the greatest mystery concerning our Moon is how it came to be there in the first place. Prior to the Apollo missions, one serious theory as to the Moon’s origin was that it broke off of the Earth eons ago. Although no one could positively locate where on Earth it originated, many speculated the loss of material explained the huge gouge in the Earth, which forms the Pacific Ocean. However, this idea was discarded when it was found that there is little similarity between the composition of our world and the Moon.

A more recent theory had the Moon created out of space debris left over from the creation of the Earth. This concept proved untenable in light of current gravitational theory, which indicates that one large object will accumulate all loose material, leaving none for the formation of another large body. It is now generally accepted that the Moon originated elsewhere and entered the Earth’s gravitational field at some point in the distant past.

Here theories diverge — one stating that the Moon was originally a planet which collided with the Earth creating debris which combined forming the Moon while another states the Moon, while wandering through our solar system, was captured and pulled into orbit by Earth’s gravity. Neither of these theories are especially compelling because of the lack of evidence that neither the Earth nor the Moon seem to have been physically disrupted by a past close encounter. There is no debris in space indicating a past collision and it does not appear that the Earth and the Moon developed during the same time period.

As for the “capture” theory, even scientist Isaac Asimov, well known for his works of fiction, has written, “It’s too big to have been captured by the Earth. The chances of such a capture having been effected and the Moon then having taken up nearly circular orbit around our Earth are too small to make such an eventuality credible.”

Asimov was right to consider the Moon’s orbit — it is not only nearly a perfect circle, but stationary, one side always facing the Earth with only the slightest variation. As far as we know, it’s the only natural satellite with such an orbit.

This circular orbit is especially odd considering that the Moon’s center of mass lies more than a mile closer to the Earth than its geometric center. This fact alone should produce an unstable, wobbly orbit, much as a ball with its mass off center will not roll in a straight line. Additionally, almost all of the other satellites in our solar system orbit in the plane of their planet’s equator. Not so the Moon, whose orbit lies strangely nearer the Earth’s orbit around the Sun or inclined to the Earth’s ecliptic by more than five degrees. Add to this the fact that the Moon’s bulge — located on the side facing away from Earth — thus negating the idea that it was caused by the Earth’s gravitational pull — makes for an off-balanced world.

It seems impossible that such an oddity could naturally fall into such a precise and circular orbit. It is a fascinating conundrum as articulated by science writer William Roy Shelton, who wrote, “It is important to remember that something had to put the Moon at or near its present circular pattern around the Earth. Just as an Apollo spacecraft circling the Earth every 90 minutes while 100 miles high has to have a velocity of roughly 18,000 miles per hour to stay in orbit, so something had to give the Moon the precisely required velocity for its weight and altitude … The point—and it is one seldom noted in considering the origin of the Moon — is that it is extremely unlikely that any object would just stumble into the right combination of factors required to stay in orbit. ‘Something’ had to put the Moon at its altitude, on its course and at its speed. The question is: what was that ‘something’?”

If the precise and stationary orbit of the Moon is seen as sheer coincidence, is it also coincidence that the Moon is at just the right distance from the Earth to completely cover the Sun during an eclipse? While the diameter of the Moon is a mere 2,160 miles against the Sun’s gigantic 864,000 miles, it is nevertheless in just the proper position to block out all but the Sun’s flaming corona when it moves between the Sun and the Earth. Asimov explained: “There is no astronomical reason why the Moon and the Sun should fit so well. It is the sheerest of coincidences, and only the Earth among all the planets is blessed in this fashion.”

Is it merely coincidence? How does one explain this and many other Moon mysteries?

In July 1970, two Russian scientists, Mikhail Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, published an article in the Soviet journal Sputnik entitled “Is the Moon the Creation of Alien Intelligence?” They advanced the theory that the Moon is not a completely natural world, but a planetoid that was hollowed out eons ago in the far reaches of space by intelligent beings possessing a technology far superior to ours. Huge machines were used to melt rock and form large cavities within the Moon, spewing the molten refuse onto the surface. Protected by a hull-like inner shell plus a reconstructed outer shell of metallic rocky junk, this gigantic craft was steered through the cosmos and finally parked in orbit around the Earth.

In their article Vasin and Shcherbakov wrote, “Abandoning the traditional paths of ‘common sense,’ we have plunged into what may at first sight seem to be unbridled and irresponsible fantasy. But the more minutely we go into all the information gathered by man about the Moon, the more we are convinced that there is not a single fact to rule out our supposition. Not only that, but many things so far considered to be lunar enigmas are explainable in the light of this new hypothesis.”

Outrageous as the spaceship moon theory might first appear, consider how this model reconciles all of the mysteries of the Moon. It would explain why the Moon gives evidence of being much older than the Earth and perhaps even our solar system and why there are three distinct layers within the Moon, with the densest materials in the outside layer, exactly as one would expect of the “hull” of a spacecraft. It could also explain why no sign of water has been found on the Moon’s surface, yet there is evidence it exists deep inside. This theory also would explain the strange maria and mascons, perhaps the remnants of the machinery used to hollow out the Moon. The idea of an artificial satellite could explain the odd, rhythmic “moonquakes” as artificial constructs reacting the same way during periods of stress from the Earth’s pull. And artificial equipment beneath the Moon’s surface might be the source of the gas clouds that have been observed.

Intelligent “terraforming” of the Moon could prove the solution to the argument between “hot moon” and “cold moon” scientists — they are both right! The Moon originally was a cold world, which was transformed into a spacecraft by artificially heating and expelling vast quantities of its interior. This theory also could explain the seeming contradictions over the question of a hollow moon. If the Moon originally was a solid world which was artificially hollowed out, there would be evidence of both phases—exactly what we have with current Moon knowledge.

An artificially hollowed-out Moon would explain why the satellite rings like a bell for hours after struck and why specimens of tough, refractory metals such as titanium, chromium and circonium; “rust-proof” iron; Uranium 236 and Neptunium 237 have been found there.

In fact, the spaceship moon theory may come closer than any other in reconciling the questions over the origin and amazing orbit of the Moon.

But we are not supposed to consider this thesis. The circular logic of modern science regarding the origins of the Moon runs something like this: We know that extraterrestrials don’t exist but we do know that the Moon exists and has been mentioned throughout human history. We humans did not create it or place it in Earth’s orbit, so it must have been done by extraterrestrials. But since we know they don’t exist, we will simply call it an anomaly and will not publicly say anything more about this.

Darryl Cunningham Investigates Various So-Called “Moon Hoaxes”

ralph — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:17:17 +0000

There are many things to question is this world, but that people landed on the Moon forty-one years ago today (July 20th) isn’t one of them. Very informative explanation in comic strip form from Darryl Cunningham:

Lunargate!

Alex Burns — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:25:27 +0000

Disinfo.com editor’s note: This classic report by former editor Alex Burns was originally published on this site on Aug. 13, 2002. Some external links may have changed.

In a now infamous 1961 speech, US President John F. Kennedy pledged that America’s space program would “place a man on the moon before the decade’s close.”

At the heart of cold war battles for geopolitical supremacy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs also became the vehicle for inculcating domestic populations with American values and belief systems.

NASA’s growing power, its protection by the Kennedy administration, and the rise of the Right Stuff astronaut as celebrity hid the steady growth of the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower had warned about.

These anxieties–of monolithic social institutions controlling information, and the decline of US global empires–are the core of conspiracy theories claiming the historic Apollo moon landings were elaborately faked. The world was hoaxed.

Anatomy of a Faked Hoax?

Conspiracy theorists like Bill Kaysing and Ralph Rene claim that:

The Nazis built a small moon base.
Strange geological structures are evidence of alien life.
NASA photos were ‘doctored’ and transmissions were censored.
NASA “stage managed” astronaut interviews and press conferences.
NASA “conditioned” astronauts by Nazi-derived mind control techniques.
The Van Allen Belt’s high radiation levels prevented the astronauts from leaving Earth.
Apollo 1 astronauts Grissom, Chaffee and White were going to reveal NASA’s conspiracy to the world, so they were murdered in a 1967 launchpad fire.

Perhaps the most believable part of Kaysing and Rene’s scenario is their analysis of the space industry as a political economy. The authors contend that, in a climate of lucrative multimillion dollar industrial contracts and public euphoria, the Military-Industrial Complex fueled the conspiratorial imperative for creating Lunargate.

The Medium is the Space Age

These hoax theories can teach us much about the Paranoid Style (Richard Hofstadter) of post-Watergate American politics. The fascination with decoding NASA photographs for clues and analysing suggestive scenes in films like Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Capricorn One (1978) echo Marshall McLuhan’s media models and postmodern theorists’ fascination with ambiguous texts and the limits of knowledge.

When Bill Kaysing claims that the Apollo 13 debacle was a “simulation within a simulation,” or anonymous theorists suggest that director Stanley Kubrick filmed the historic Apollo 11 moon landing (July 20, 1969) on a Nevada soundstage, they offer scenarios that closely resemble postmodernist Jean Baudrillard’s concept of American culture as hyperreal:

People’s imagination demands the real thing, but in order to get it, they have to create fakes.

A Dark History, Indeed

NASA’s verifiable history has had some questionable aspects:

The use of Nazi V2 rocket scientists saved by Operation Paperclip.

Several key Apollo astronauts were 33 Masons.

The questionable management decisions by Morton Thiokol Inc that indirectly caused the Challenger space shuttle disaster.

The real concern of these conspiracy theorists, maybe, is the longterm fate of NASA’s space program. Resource allocation pressures have made it difficult over the past thirty years for a largescale population the Overview Effect (comprehending Earth as a single integrated system that is post nation-state/tribal band) consciousness change that astronauts experienced.

US Congress passed a bill in 1999, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing . . . and then cut NASA’s annual budget by over $1 billion.

Maybe the real conspiracy is one of institutional infighting and bureaucratic stupidity. We have faith in fakes after all.

The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.

More Information:
The Wrong Stuff
Very indepth article by Wired writer Rogier van Bakel surveying the ‘moon hoax’ theories prevalent on the Internet and as American folklore: Alternative 3, Bill Kaysing, Ralph Rene, movie portrayals of moon hoaxes and a reply from NASA officials.

NASA
Search the NASA network for the latest space news, scientific research, photos, archives . . . and maybe the truth about the Apollo program?

The Moonlanding A Hoax?
Danny van Senten has compiled a definitive collection of NASA hoaxed moon landing resources, including essays, photos, links and more. Highly recommended!

The Lunar Anomalies Homepage
Mike Bara has assembled an incredible resource on moon anomalies with great navigation. Topics include: the 12th Planet search, unusual lunar structures, psychological effects of lunar eclipses and more. A must view!

The Enterprise Mission
Richard Hoagland’s controversial but detailed site is more well known for the Martian Case for the Face, but he has assembled an enviable resource on Moon anomalies, and their role in The Plan, an intriguing memetic engineering hypothesis implicating NASA, the Hollywood-12 and possible future global catastrophes.

Man on Moon or Pie in Sky?
Wired reporter Katie Dean talks with Lunargate! conspiracy theorists Ralph Rene and David S. Percy during the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Excellent rebuttal by NASA officials is included in the article text.

The Apollo Moon Landings – Were They All A Hoax?
Excellent skeptical Lunargate! site examines the theories of Bill Kaysing and the irrationality of conspiracy researchers. Contains indepth analysis of NASA photos and other relevant documents.

Mike Bara’s Lunar Anomalies
Mike Bara traces Lunargate and Lunar Anomalies across occult history, covering everything from John Dee to Hyperdimensional Physics. Seek the mysteries!

Narduar vs. Bill Kaysing
Narduar The Human Serviette gets the scoop from Bill Kaysing about the alleged murder of Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom; ex-Ghelen Nazis working for NASA under Operation: Paperclip; faked photos and Nevada desert soundstages; the Apollo 13 film as propaganda and the legendary TV confrontation with astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

We Never Went to the Moon!
Frederick ‘Fog’ Horne’s controversial site features basic introductory information on Lunargate conspiracy theories. Make sure you check out his other columns.

Who Mourns For Apollo?
Many Lunargate believers use photo and document analysis techniques to “prove” their arguments. This article, written by Mike Bara with Steve Troy and Richard C. Hoagland, shows why these arguments are wrong, and in many cases, just plain stupid. “While we remain fiercely critical of the NASA hierarchy in general and certain members of the Apollo team in particular, we should not let that get in the way of our undying admiration for the rank and file men and women, scientists and engineers, who pulled off the most amazing feat in human history — the Apollo program.”

Aulis Publishers
Publishers of the excellent book Dark Moon: Apollo and The Whistle-Blowers, this site includes book excerpts, an online shop, reviews and links.

Was It Only A Paper Moon?
The late James Collier was a leading proponent of Lunargate. Learn about his research and purchase his video here.

Moon Shot: The Apollo Page and Links
An interesting collection of NASA photos and “anomalous” images. Suggests that Lunargate is evidence of intertextuality: multiple different “readings” of a text, and a media culture that relies on montage.

World of the Strange
MJ-12, the Men in Black and Hollow Earth theories: excellent background to moon hoaxes and NASA conspiracies. Check out other issues of this excellent newsletter.

Apollo Oxygen and Two-Gas Environment Problems
David Wozney has compiled materials relating to the aftermath of the Apollo 1 spacecraft fire that killed astronauts Grissom, Chaffee and White. Other anomalies Wozney explores include exhaust, crosshair and photographic image inconsistencies.

Global Shadow Government Masonic New World Order Conspiracy
Excellent list of links to articles on the proposed Illuminati-Masonic-NASA hoaxed moon landing conspiracy. Topics include John Glenn, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and the Sirius-Orion-Giza connection.

The Groom Lake Desert Rat
NASA, Groom Lake, Alpha Draconis, Hungarian UFOs, Alien Hygiene and more. With an explosive cocktail of memes like this, who could resist?

The Dark Side of the Moon Landings
This Fortean Times article (#94), by David Percy, analyzes NASA photos and footage, taken during 1969-72, and finds them wanting.

Percy and the Astro-Nots
This Fortean Times article (#97), by Bob Pickard, examines the Fortean mail received after David Percy analyzed NASA photos and footage. James Oberg, a flight operations engineer with the Shuttle program, says, “It’s always a delight to see the latest variation on the Moon fake myth and to examine the creative ways people can mislead themselves and others.”

Aliens on the Moon?
A subgenere of the Lunargate! conspiracy theories is the possibility that certain moon geological structures may have been artificially created. This site features substantial links and photographic image analysis by specialists of regions, including Clementine, Sinus Medii, Mare Crisium and the Sea of Tranquility.

NightWatch: Faked Moon Landings?
Clear discussion of the NASA photograph anomalies that conspiracy theorists claim prove that the Apollo moon landings were faked.

Libery Exposure: Nasa And The Moon
Interesting collection of documents relating to Van Allen Belt radiation; Masonic Apollo mission astronauts; Richard Hoagland’s Mars conspiracy and suggested links between NASA and military “black projects.”

Luna: Our Mysterious Neighbour
JJ Mercieca’s Malta UFO Research page includes an informative list of links to sites and reports examining the possible existence of artificial (alien) geological structures on the lunar surface. Includes revealing coverage of the infamous ‘blacked out’ conference by Richard Hoagland at the National Press Club: were the astronauts among alien ruins?

An Out of This World Conspiracy
Considers the theories of Bill Kaysing, Rene and Richard Hoagland. Useful summary or introductory material. Check out the rest of the ‘Bogus Science’ topics.

NASA Masonic Conspiracy: Apollo Missions Masonic Symbols
Thoughts from controversial conspiracy theorist William Cooper on Masonic links with NASA and the Apollo moon missions. Never let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory!

Half a Century of The German Moonbase: 1942 to 1992
“Everything NASA has told the world about the Moon is a lie and it was done to keep the exclusivity of the club from joining by Third World countries. All these physical conditions make it a lot more easier to build a Moon base. Ever since their first day of landing on the Moon, the Germans started boring – and tunnelling under the surface and by the end of the war there was a small Nazi research base on the Moon.”

Reporter Says E.T. Life Exists
Posting from the Free Republic site on UFO researcher Linda Moulton Howe, and her allegations about cover-up by government officials.

Bill Kaysing Lawsuit
Information from the Houston Press newspaper about Bill Kaysing’s unsuccessful lawsuit against NASA astronaut James Lovell, who labelled him a “wacko.”

Battle of the Harvest Moon
Details imaginary Cold War battles between the US and USSR. on the lunar surface with particle beam weapons.

Fake Moon Landings: A Hoax
Site devoted to the writings of NASA Mooned America author Rene. Basically, an advertisement for his books, and ordering details.

The Most Detailed View of the Dark Side of the Moon

ralph — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 01:51:56 +0000

Awesome. Jesus Diaz writes on Gizmodo:

This is the hidden face of the moon like you’ve never seen if before, as captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s LOLA instruments. Despite its appearance, the picture wasn’t processed by NASA scientists taking LSD while listening to Pink Floyd.

The rainbow colors correspond to the elevation of the terrain, going from 20,000 feet (red) to -20,000 feet (blue). The beautiful coloring, combined with the unique sharp view of the craters — the largest in the solar system — makes me want the whole Moon to be exactly like that all year around.

The image is part of an article on ten cool things discovered in the first year of the LRO, which includes the Moon landing sites but not this amazing close up of its surface.