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n.b: this is all contingent on the belief that the Lunar landings weren't a conspiracy.

Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: SPOILERS: Review: Deep Impact

Bad: Minutes before final impact, the astronauts blow up the second comet, and we are treated to a spectacular light show.

Good: Aaaaarrgg! This was the Biggest Baddest Astronomy in the movie. Blowing up a comet does no good at all, and might even make matters worse. Just because the pieces are smaller doesn't mean you have changed anything. If every piece still impacts the Earth (by that I mean actually is stopped by the Earth or its atmosphere) you are still dumping all the kinetic energy of The Comet into the Earth's atmosphere! That's a HUGE amount of energy, dumped in practically all at once. It would still create a massive explosion, dwarfing all of our nuclear bombs combined. Even if you could somehow soften the blow, all that heat would wreak havoc with our weather. Some people actually think it might be better to simply let a big one hit rather than blow it up, because the Earth itself can absorb the energy of impact better than the atmosphere can. This is still argued, though. I'd prefer not to try any experiments!

When someone driving a car pulls into a parking spot, do they do it at 100 kilometers per hour? Of course not. They slow down first, easing off the accelerator. The astronauts did the same thing. Sure, the rocket on the lander was capable of 10,000 pounds of thrust, but they had a throttle. They fired the rocket hard to deorbit and slow enough to land on the Moon, but they didn't need to thrust that hard as they approached the lunar surface; they throttled down to about 3000 pounds of thrust.

Now here comes a little bit of math: the engine nozzle was about 54 inches across (from the Encyclopaedia Astronautica), which means it had an area of 2300 square inches. That in turn means that the thrust generated a pressure of only about 1.5 pounds per square inch! That's not a lot of pressure.

Assuming this is accurate (and it's more likely to be accurate than the conspiracy theories) it pretty well explains the thrust thing.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

This site is always a lot of fun. The linked page goes through much of the "evidence" used in a Fox TV show about the Apollo moon hoax, and debunks the evidence step-by-step.

One of the things that has fascinated me in the past when reading stuff on the site, is that the way things often work in space often seems to contradict common sense and intuition, even for the scientifically minded.

You can't put the conspiracy theories to rest. They already believe you're covering something up, so if you release a report that shows...

• No reliable evidence of alien spacecraft has been found, ever.
• The Cydonia region on Mars (the "face") appears to be a natural formation, and not ruins of an ancient Martian civilization.
• We really did land astronauts on the moon.
• An airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, not a missile.

...the conspiracy theorists will just claim you've fabricated or altered the "new" evidence.

I think you have been reading too much Yahoo! news.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/news/index.html

So eventually you develop a crap filter and say "these, these, and these points indicate this is probably bogus" and move on. There's limited time in the day--you have to work on things that seem most promising. You simply can't follow every single possible idea. And if the originator of an idea is known for a conceptual framework that's highly suspect (at best), it's usually not worth much attention. Building on a bad foundation and all that. Weinberg's book Dreams of a Final Theory has some great parts on this process (has lots of other great parts, too).

Well, the footprints may have already been erased by a sort of wind that disturbs dust along the day/night line on the Moon.

Don't you mean Wolf-Beiderman?

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/di2.html

Thomas Dz.

I'm sure many people avoided Armageddon as much as they could; unfortunately I was one of those suckered in by the trailers full of blinkenlights and Liv Tyler shots. Damn you, Bruckheimer and Bay, damn you all to hell!

As for the "science bit", Phil 'Bad Astronomy' Plait rips the movie to shreds quite succinctly, putting paid to the notion that it includes usable science. Read his review with spoilers, or if you're one of the lucky few never to have seen it, read the spoiler free summary. What would be "easier" would be to catch the object early and gradually change the orbit using electric ion engines or similar to nudge it out of our way.

I'm sure many people avoided Armageddon as much as they could; unfortunately I was one of those suckered in by the trailers full of blinkenlights and Liv Tyler shots. Damn you, Bruckheimer and Bay, damn you all to hell!

As for the "science bit", Phil 'Bad Astronomy' Plait rips the movie to shreds quite succinctly, putting paid to the notion that it includes usable science. Read his review with spoilers, or if you're one of the lucky few never to have seen it, read the spoiler free summary. What would be "easier" would be to catch the object early and gradually change the orbit using electric ion engines or similar to nudge it out of our way.

Uh, no. I suggest you go read Bad Astronomy's Moon Hoax stuff. It explains where there were no flames from the rocket and how the dust thing.

Yes, but this resignation, is very, very good news indeed. The outrage in the scientific community is not something NASA could long tolerate.

http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm
Bush: 50,456,002 47.87%
Gore: 50,999,897 48.38%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_ele ction,_2000
Due to the way our electoral system works, it went Bush's way due to the 537 vote victory in Florida, getting him the needed votes to surpass the 271 count electoral vote requirement. The issue at hand was that the Gore camp called for a recount in 4 counties in Florida, 4 counties which were heavily Democratic, but the final margins didn't indicate that heavy bias.

Do I think we would have been better off with Gore? Now, maybe. Short term, no. Long term, yes. But that's just my particular view.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/02/04/outr age-at-attacks-on-nasa-science/
And yes I do consider Bush a dictator. Suppression of science based on religious views speaks loudly to that effect.

Do I lean left? Absolutely. Bush cut taxes to stimulate the economy. Reagan showed that cutting taxes works great to stimulate the economy. But then Bush spends and spends like there's no tomorrow (increasing national debt).

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2006/ 0206.html
Basically Japan did in the 90's what we're doing now (ultra low rates and print money as fast as it can). They still haven't recovered and are under a huge pile of debt as a result. The only reason they're climbing out now is because they can export product that they can create because of the pool of cheap labor. Here in the US, we do not have that cheap labor.

To paraphrase, we in the US are on a downward trend to equalizing our standard of living with the rest of the world. It's only natural of those in power to fight it, but it's a losing battle. Remember, finite resources...

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.htm l

The show on Fox was utterly wrong and stupid. http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html Do not bother answering without reading linked information.

Yeah. But until we get there, whether its again or not, we will never know for sure. Of course you could have asked Buzz Aldrin, just be sure to duck.

Wouldn't a really powerful telescope be able to see the landing sites and the assorted stuff left behind? I would think that would be enough to convince all but the nuttiest "moon landing hoax" advocate.

No. Not one that any reasonable person could build. The aperature of a telescope large enough to spot the flag on the moon would have to be on the order of 10,000 inches, and it would further have to be situated above the Earth's atmosphere for the image to settle down enough for it to be discernable -- thus rendering many of the doubters' questions moot. Even then, the image obtained would be just one pixel high on most CCD chips.

It would be easier to spot the landers and other equipment, but if you think about their angular sizes, not a whole lot.

I don't have a link for this -- it was in an astronomy magazine I read about 12 years ago.

10,000 inches is 833 feet (254 meters for those in the modern world), give or take. The weight of a mirror that size would probably collapse itself, and grinding a perfectly-figured mirror out of rock or dirt would be an engineering marvel on par with putting a man on the moon in the first place.

Moon hoax believers are just going to have to be nuts for now. Their claims have been thoroughly debunked and only those with the patience of a saint, or the same bull-headed idiot stubbornness would want to waste time arguing with them. People have better things to do with their time.

um, no, it's not that bad, you seen too much movies!
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/thecore_rev iew.html

having said that, question is what would happen to birds and other animals that navigate by the magnetic field. anyone know?

dude read this:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

1. The camera is a "Hasselblad".

2. This "NASA faked moon landings" is old-hat and has been debunked ad-nauseum See http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
  or see...
  Aw phooey- why don't you just (re-)take a high-school physics course.
  And PASS it this time! No sleeping in class!

    Sorry- perhaps they don't offer this type of course in the US (at least not in Kansas anymore, Dodo)

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

I think this is what you are looking for.

Well, let me see. There was a) the complete and utter disregard for the basic laws of physics and large chunks of biology (see Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site for more), b) the retread of plot elements from 2001:A Space Odyssey and many other places, c) the plot holes (Why would the aliens go to another Galaxy when Mars was threatened? Why not go live on Earth, instead of just stopping by to drop spores all over it? Also, why have an astronaut killing defense system at all?) d) the aforementioned poor acting (with the honorable exception of Don Cheadle who gave it the old college try) -- it's not that the cast are bad actors per se, but these weren't great performances -- and e) stodgy dialogue.

So, there you go, just those five things. :)

May 5, 2004,

"The entire solar system - not just our one small planet -- is currently undergoing profound, never-before-seen physical changes.

[...]

Here are some highlights:

        Sun: More activity since 1940 than in previous 1150 years, combined

        Mercury: Unexpected polar ice discovered, along with a surprisingly strong intrinsic magnetic field ... for a supposedly "dead" planet

        Venus: 2500% increase in auroral brightness, and substantive global atmospheric changes in less than 30 years

        Earth: Substantial and obvious world-wide weather and geophysical changes

        Mars: "Global Warming," huge storms, disappearance of polar icecaps

        Jupiter: Over 200% increase in brightness of surrounding plasma clouds

        Saturn: Major decrease in equatorial jet stream velocities in only ~20 years, accompanied by surprising surge of X-rays from equator

        Uranus: "Really big, big changes" in brightness, increased global cloud activity

        Neptune: 40% increase in atmospheric brightness

        Pluto: 300% increase in atmospheric pressure, even as Pluto recedes farther from the Sun

I have seen irefutable evidence that proves the landing was shot in a government sound studio located in NASA's secret moon base.

Are you sure about that?

You might want to have a good look around this site. The Wikipedia page on the subject is quite good too.

Also, if you can, check out the episode of Penn & Teller's show "Bullshit" on conspiracy theories.

No, it's not

I for one believe, that would be the only logical explanation

Then you aren't very good at using either logic, or independent thinking or research.

Take, for instance, one of the first sentences in the link you posted: "How can the flag be fluttering?" the 47 year old American kept asking himself when there's no wind on the atmosphere free Moon?.

I remember in those days, how the news gave coverage on the wire and the little motor in the mast that would keep the flag extended and fluttering. Those people at NASA wanted to show the flag, not let it hang lifelessly in the airless moon. That was pretty well covered by the press in 1969, how come the people who went to such great effort to make a website about the subject never read about it?

Or, how about The astronauts took thousands of pictures, each one perfectly exposed and sharply focused. Not one was badly composed or even blurred.

Well, the astronauts took thousands of pictures, that's a fact. How many of those were released by NASA? Only those that came perfectly out! That's a "logical explanation", isn't it? And They managed to adjust their cameras, change film and swap filters in pressurized suits. It should have been almost impossible with the gloves on their fingers. Yes, there were ads by Hasselblad, the camera manufacturer about that. Those ads described how the cameras had been specially designed to worl perfectly in that environment.

I need to read no further to come to the conclusion that the hypothesis of fraud, as described in the site you mentioned, is one of many non-logical explanations one could give to the moon landings. There is absolutely no sense to that POS. If, drawing from my own memories from 1969 alone, I can completely debunk the first page of that site, I need read no further.

For those who lived in a cave for a while and haven't been here yet.

I reallly shouldn't answer you, since it looks like everyone else has followed the advice of "don't feed the trolls" here, but... if you haven't read one that suggests some basic facts which can be used to debunk the claims of the article, then you just aren't looking. And I'm sorry, why does your B.S. meter not go off the scale when you read about "interstellar electric transmission lines" ?!? I'm afraid your B.S. meter isn't as good as you think.

Why not just go check out the badastronomer link like everyone says to ? Oh, be cause you're obviously trolling, that's why. Hey, don't get me wrong- especially when looking at some of the more interesting structures, thinking of *magneto*-electric fields involved does help explain those structures... but electric fields aren't the only ones that create some of these structures, and *everything* in cosmology can't be explained in such terms. There's *matter* and *fusion* involved in a lot of it.

Here is an excellent debunking of the "electric sun" theory, which is really a basis for much of the electric universe quackery, erm postulation. Until you can justify the inaccuracies and illogical arguments contained in that theory, everyone else will continue to consider the sum of the 'electric universe' theory to be, as Tim Thompson says, "devoid of merit". We don't reject it out of hand, we reject it because it doesn't fit measurable, observed reality, and reaches to explain things that are more easilty explained.

Here is a thread on the topic on the "Bad Astronomy and Universe Today" forum. Have fun trolling, but take it there. Most of us don't think it's worthwhile to debate pseudoscientists looking for publicity.

Jim,

You are the idiot.

You say this guys' science is science because he invents theories about how things work. You have obviously not read any of them.

Let's take his theory that Comets are hot and dry; not cold balls of dirty ice. Taken from Badastronomy

You use a spectroscope, you can measure the temprature of an object. Object of different tempratures have a different spectrum. Also using a stectrascope you can also tell what an object is made of. Different materials have a differnet spectrum.

In something is observed in nature, then a theory do describe it. They that theory is tested and/or modeled. The people practicing pseudoscience skip the last part. Comets emit light, therefore they must be hot? You have a theory there. Now show me the rest of your evidence? McCanney does a bunch of technobabble, but he's never pointed a stectrascope at one and actually measured the temprature. He just babbles on about magnetism.

It is unscientific to ignore observations, and just keep making stuff up.

I think I prefer the Bad Astronmer's term antiscientist... it tells it more like it is.

http://www.fixedearth.com/electric.html

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/mccanney/inde x.html

Yeah, these people are total crackpots

Correct. If you have the sun or anything reflecting large amounts of sunlight in the camera's view, it will overwelm the faint light given off by the stars. It's a simple matter of contrast.
Phil Plait has a bit on his site about it.

Phil Plait, the 'Bad' Astronomer puts the smackdown on that whole radiation thing:

Debunking the Hoax Believers: Radiation

actually, start at the top and read the whole thing, he goes through every single argument of the HB's and explains why they're wrong.

Phil Plait is one of the best science bloggers out there (if not THE best).

Emphasis on kooky. Refer to this site for a nice debunking of some of Hoagland's claims. Of course, not everything is debunked (the man seems to come up with a new conspiracy theory every week), but it's enough to kill his credibility.

And don't forget http://badastronomy.com/

Note that this is not Sedna, and this is not Nibiru.

As a followup to my previous post, I've done some more googling. I found one of the biggest proponents of this wackjob theory happens to be one Jim McCanney, whose other claims include such gems as "weather is being manipulated". For a good thorough debunking of this crackpot, you might want to check out one of my favorite sites, Bad Astronomy.

The best part about the internet is, it's given everyone a voice.

The worst part about the internet is, it's given people like this a voice.

I wonder if the ZetaKooks will use this event to predict more doom and gloom?

Some people are idiots. Other people are not.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/dark_side.htm l

...by the Bad Astromer. Still, I can never get enough of nitpicking sessions on Hollywood science. :-)

The difference between bitching about, say armageddon, which had some bad physics and a watchable plot (It was an oil driller movie rather than an asteroid movie after all.. kinda like abyss was actually a trucker movie) and 'the core' is that the core didn't just have SOME bad physics. it had ALL bad physics and was a formula movie to boot. It's the shiniest example of hollywood's willing violation of the laws of thermodynamics (for no good reason... many of these movies could've been made with reasonable physics without changing the plot all that much) - a case study if you will. In fact, by some accounts it deserves the title of worst movie phyics ever. (which is why I watched it. It's so bad, it starts people talking about good physics. check out http://www.badastronomy.com/ sometime to see what I'm talking about.

so what? if you have a galaxy-spanning spacefaring civilization, you're going to need a way to describe the spatial relationships of star systems, why not N, S, E, W?
if you still think this is a bad idea, read what Phil Plait has to say:
Bad Astronomy

The moon has a far side, but not a dark side.

Unfortunately the vast majority of movies from Hollywood that have anything remotely to do with science tend to also ignore the sceince. For some examples, check out Bad Astronomy.

I couldn't agree more. I could think of a reason why every argument on that website is not correct... a good website to take a look at is http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html It doesn't specifically debunk the questions on the Clauvius website, it still debunks a lot of the general misconceptions on the site. Other arguments on the site can be de-bunked by thinking about simple scientific facts such as the lighting on the moon (reflected lighting from the surface of the moon) and perspective... these conspiracy theorists just need to learn about some really simple scientific facts.

It's just like the possible methane - people are letting their imaginations run *way* ahead of the evidence.

Just a footnote: It turned out that this previous story regarding life on Mars turned out to just be shoddy journalism. The supposed "private meeting with space officials" was actually just a party. The researchers had no idea there was a reporter there, and the entire story was basically based on second-hand party gossip.

More details here:

http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p= 418683#418683

A statement from one of the supposedly-quoted researchers:

A story has appeared in Space.com which quotes us
inaccurately and without permission. The story is based on hearsay
and is factually incorrect.

Here are the facts:

1. On Sunday night we were attending a private party
of space exploration enthusiasts in which there was a
discussion about the possible meaning of the results
from recent Mars missions. We engaged in the
discussion and expressed thoughts and opinions as
individual scientists on our own time and did not
represent ourselves as speaking for NASA.

2. No one at the party identified themselves as a
reporter, and in fact no reporters were present. This
article is based on hearsay about what somebody at the
party thought they heard us say. We think this
represents extremely poor journalistic standards.

3. No Nature paper has been submitted with Rio Tinto
results. This claim is simply wrong and we did not
make this claim. The MARTE project has several papers
in preparation that describe the work we are doing at
Rio Tinto and the first results of that work, but
nothing has been submitted yet. Preliminary results
have been published in abstract form at various
scientific meetings. If you want to see what the MARTE
team has actually said about results from Rio Tinto
drilling and its relevance to life on Mars, go to
www.marteproject.com and click on publications. All
our REAL publications are posted there.

4. The work at Rio Tinto is relevant to finding life
in a subsurface terrestrial environment and can't be
used to infer anything about life on Mars, directly.
The Rio Tinto work by its very nature can't tell us if
there is life on Mars, but certainly helps formulate
the strategy for how to search for life on Mars. One
approach to searching for extant life on Mars is by
drilling. Partly for this reason, the MARTE project
was selected for funding by NASA's ASTEP program, out
of the Science Mission Directorate and is a joint
project between NASA and Spain's Center for
Astrobiology

You're probably just a troll, but you bring up some of the most common and worst arguments against the Apollo missions.

For those interested, Bad Astronomy has some good explanations and links. Not that it matters, because if you believe we didn't land on the Moon, then hard facts arn't going to change your mind. :)

Also, if the missions were faked, the Russians would have called us out since they were our biggest (and only) competition to the Moon.

Here are some interesting ideas on why it might fail
http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t= 18178&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=huygens+p robe&start=0/