Nvidia Sinks Moon Landing Hoax Using Virtual Light

schwit1 writes Using its new top-shelf graphics processing unit, Nvidia tackles one of the most persistent conspiracy theories in American history: the veracity of the 1969 to 1972 Apollo moon landings. From the article: "'Global illumination is the hardest task to solve as a game company,' Scott Herkelman, Nvidia's GeForce general manager, said in an interview. 'Virtual point lights don't do a bad job when the environment stays the same, but a game developer has to fake shadows, fake reflections...it's a labor-intensive process.' So when a Nvidia research engineer used the company's new dynamic lighting techniques to show off a side-by-side comparison between an Apollo 11 photo and a GeForce-powered re-creation, the company knew it had a novel demo on its hands. 'We're going to debunk one of the biggest conspiracies in the world,' Herkelman said."

Comments

There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many other flaws that are obvious to the skeptical observer, too numerous to list here. I'm guessing there are a governmental 'suggestion' to nVidia that influenced the way this analysis went.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[ledow]

"But what about the..." is a never-ending argument between conspiracy theorists and debunkers.

Unfortunately, each one that gets knocked down on its face means it's statistically more likely that the debunkers are right and the theorists wrong. We can go to infinity, but after ten or even 5 assertions wiped out with only basic experimentation, the chances of you having been right in the first place go beyond minuscule.

Scientific principle starts with "here's a hypothesis, does it fit the facts?" and goes BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD whenever any element of it is wrong. Conspiracy theorists just keep on pounding ignoring all their previous incorrect assertions until people get bored dealing with them and then "Ah ha! They won't answer!".

If you were wrong about the shadows, and the film, and the radioactivity, and this, that and the other? Chances are you're wrong about all the other minor crap too. And to prove otherwise requires more than just "it's obvious" or flaws are "too numerous to list".

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[saloomy]

You can point a strong telescope at the moon and see the tracks, footprints, and leftover hardware. It would have been more expensive at the time to send machines to false-place those articles of evidence on the surface. See for yourself, they are on the earth-facing side. Something NASA colt have saved money on if it was a conspiracy by claiming the landing was on the far side.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a famous photograph where NASA screwed up and allowed a US flag to flutter in the breeze. There is no air on the moon, and therefore there cannot be a breeze. They couldn't retract the photograph once it got out in the wild and it serves to this day as evidence of their fakery.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[thechemic]

I'm not totally sold on the "moon landing conspiracies", but I agree that there are numerous other bizarre factors that may point to conspiracy to consider other than just the lighting aspect of the moon landings.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[DrXym]

"But what about the..." is a never-ending argument between conspiracy theorists and debunkers.

Exactly. It's essentially whack-a-mole but with paranoid and stupid people.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Flags still "fly" in a vacuum.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[boristdog]

Wow, this old idiocy? Even during the first moon landing when I was only 5 I heard Walter Cronkite explain about the stiff wires holding the flag out.

Dude, you are dumber than a 5 year old.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the only thing it is evidence of is your stupidity.

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

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[suutar]

And there is tension and torsion in the metal frame that holds up the flag, because with (as you mention) no breeze, they needed something else to hold it out. Because of the tension and torsion, the supporting arm vibrated a little at first, like a spring, and that makes waves in the flag material. They'll fade out eventually from friction, but if you already have the shot, well, there they are.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[halivar]

What's amazing to me is that you believe an indoor breeze can fly a flag.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[UnknowingFool]

Unfortunately moving the goal posts is not unusual for the conspiracists. One of the evidence that counters the hoaxers' claims is that the lunar sites and equipment still exist on the moon and can be seen with probes and telescopes and a laser. To which the hoaxers then claim unmanned spacecraft could have placed them there. So therefore hoaxers claim that NASA created a massive conspiracy in faking manned missions but also maintained a secret side project to place objects using unmanned spacecraft. Of course when confronted with basic logistical quandaries like how NASA would have to build craft massive enough to place a lunar rover as well as place tracks, they have no real answers. To every answer they come up with any possible but unlikely scenario. Occam's Razor does not seem to be a favorite of this group.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no, you can't do this. There is no telescope on Earth with the necessary resolution for that, nor can Hubble do it.

But IIRC a few years back they got such pictures from a Moon orbiter.

And of course there are the reflectors...

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[ihtoit]

uh... no you couldn't, the angular resolution of even the largest telescopes coupled with elementary physics would prove that.

The best you could ever hope for is catching a shadow on the terminator straight across the centreline of a pixel.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Sique]

You misunderstand the basic principle of the Moon landing hoax conspiracy. At first, prima causa, is the premise that the Moon landings didn't happen. Everything else has to fit this. There are pictures of the landings? The pictures are fake. There are people working at the Moon landings project? The people are liars. There are contemporary reports of the Moon landings? They are fabricated by a concerted propaganda blitz etc.pp.

The idea that you can topple the prima causa by attacking the conclusions is naive. The premise is all that's about it. The Moon landings have to be fake. Everything else is just a corollary.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Myself, I don't believe that WWII ever happened. I mean seriously, I'm supposed to believe radar, jet aircraft, computers, encryption, proximity fuzes, voice encryption and nuclear bombs were all invented in less than a decade?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[radtea]

Unfortunately, each one that gets knocked down on its face means it's statistically more likely that the debunkers are right and the theorists wrong. We can go to infinity, but after ten or even 5 assertions wiped out with only basic experimentation, the chances of you having been right in the first place go beyond minuscule.

The problem is that conspiracy nuts don't understand statistics, or science. They are always asking for "proof" or "certainty" and in the the face of its lack they default to their own crazy idea.

But knowledge is not certain: it can always be updated in the face of new (possibly currently-unimaginable) evidence. So science, which creates knowledge, cannot create certainty of any kind. Not even falsification is certain, and people who ask for certainty are like alchemists of old, who rejected mere chemistry because it didn't give them the impossible capability of turning base metals into gold.

All that said, I have found it useful to ask Moon-landing-deniers who say, "The only source of light is the sun", "Then how can I see the ground?" If they acknowledge they can see the ground in the photos, they are pretty much forced to admit there is reflected light from the ground so they start looking pretty foolish when they repeat (as they often do) "The only source of light is the sun". It doesn't convince them of anything, but it does shut them up and make them go away.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

How does a flag "flutter" in a photograph?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[vux984]

uh... no you couldn't, the angular resolution of even the largest telescopes coupled with elementary physics would prove that.

And even if we could, say via a flyby with a satellite or some futuristic hubble 2.0... the only people who could afford such a 'telescope' would clearly be in on the hoax, so you can't trust them.

The only solution is to take the hoaxers and send them to the moon to see it first hand with their own eyes. Something I am entirely in favor of.

If that doesn't convince them, fine, this wasn't really for them, it was for me. And I was satisfied the minute they were out of earths orbit and don't see any reason why we should bring them back.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[I'm New Around Here]

In addition to all the above, how does "a photograph" show fluttering?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[LWATCDR]

What is every idiots answer? "You never know."
Yea they will never know anything of worth.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[suutar]

Pitch it as a reality show ("Utopia: Moon") and you can probably get funding :)

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[gman003]

Go ahead. List them. I guarantee you there is an answer to every single one of them that doesn't involve a worldwide conspiracy.

Conspiracies do happen. But if you want to prove one happened, you need to a) identify all the conspirators, and b) identify their goal. If you just handwave the former as "oh, it was the government" or invent or co-opt some secret society that ran it, you're not doing an investigation, you're creating a cult. If you just handwave the latter as "oh, it was to prove that they had control of the planet" or some other vague goal, your rantings have no more weight than the average paranoid schizophrenics. Specific members. Specific goals. Can you do that?

Conspiracies that actually happened can easily meet those. The Gunpowder Plot? We know every member of the conspiracy, and their goals, while unlikely to be achieved, were realistic and real. Same for dozens, even hundreds of other actual conspiracies, from the Reichstag Burning to everyday criminal plots.

If you agree that those two conditions must be met to even consider a conspiracy theory plausible, I can disprove the Moon Hoax Theories right here, right now. Two words: Soviet Union.

They had the tech to put stuff into space (we're still using it). They launched probe after probe to the Moon. They had the means to monitor our launches and our communications (during Apollo 13, they made a gesture of ordering their people off any frequencies near the NASA ones, to prevent any interference). In short, if it were faked, the Soviets would have known. Why, then, would they have remained silent? Unless they were "in" on the conspiracy, they would not have.

What possible conspiracy could have counted both sides of the Cold War among their conspirators? What possible goal could they have had that would have justified it not just to the Americans, but to their mortal enemies? The purpose of the conspiracy, as most tell it, was to cheat at the space race and win it for America. Why would the USSR go along with it? What did they gain from it that was worth so much of a loss?

I can come up with nothing that can explain Soviet participation in this conspiracy. And so I am forced to conclude that the initial premise was wrong - the moon landings happened, as supported by literal tons of evidence.

Interestingly, if you theorize that Soviets started to spread lies and misinformation that the Apollo landings were faked, to reduce American prestige and regain their own, you can easily meet both the two conditions I had for a plausible conspiracy theory. They had the means - it's simple propaganda, through word-of-mouth. Get it started and the paranoid will parrot it for you. They had the motivation, obviously enough. This isn't proof that it did happen that way, of course, but it's a much more plausible theory than the one you subscribe to.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[camperdave]

The reflectors aren't proof of anything. There could be naturally occurring retro-reflective crystals on the moon, and NASA's just claiming they landed there. Now, if you had evidence that there was nothing retro-reflecting BEFORE the Apollo missions, then you might have something.

Note: just pointing out the flaw in the argument, not participating in the hoaxer camp.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[ColdWetDog]

You photoshop it, of course.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger question with the waving flag is why is the top on the flag dead straight but the bottom is waving. honestly how is that no so obviously held up by a wire that a child could spot that. what is the gain of faking the moon landing vs the gain that came from technology advancements that came from actually flying to the moon and back.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[viperidaenz]

All we need is a really big hammer.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[preaction]

gr8 b8 m8! Caught some fish with that one!

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[viperidaenz]

An animated GIF?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[UnknowingFool]

Pretty much all the lighting aspects can explained by someone who has a background in photography. Some of them are just basic sense. For example, you can't see stars in the photos because of light exposure. It's why you can't see stars in the daylight here on Earth. It's why visible light telescopes are located away from cities. Other aspects can be explained away with someone with knowledge about the subject.

Hoaxers also seem to disregards factors like budget and logistics and like to twist things. Today NASA will not recreate the technology that was used in the 1960s. Now the important words there are "will not" not "cannot". NASA has a much smaller budget than in the 60s to achieve the same goal. Since NASA has not done a manned lunar mission since then it is easier for NASA to do it from scratch than to recreate things.

For example, to launch such a vehicle NASA will need a big rocket on par with the Saturn V. Why not simply use a Saturn V? There are no working ones available (there are museum pieces) and the manufacturing facilities were decommissioned decades ago. NASA could recreate the facilities and the rockets but that what would be the point? That would be using technology from 50 years ago instead of using newer technology.

That would be like if someone decided to resurrect the Studebaker automotive company. Would you expect the new company to use plans from the 1960s to make new cars. Barring the fact that regulations have changed, car technology has changed. The engine would be fuel injected not a carburetor system. Anti-lock braking, electronic control, entertainment centers are much different than 50 years.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Jason Levine]

I see conspiracy theorists as an example of believing in a very unlikely scenario to boost your ego.

Suppose for a second that the Moon landing was faked. The level of conspiracy needed to do this and fool most of the people (including the Russians who would have called us out on it had we obviously been filming on a sound stage) would have been massive. You'd need engineers, scientists, government workers, astronauts, etc. All of them dedicated to pretending that we went to the Moon when we didn't. This would have to be a VERY well organized conspiracy. (Which alone should debunk this theory. Government is too inept to pull something like this off.)

Now, your normal person buys into the "faked Moon landing", but you are special. You are more intelligent and perceptive than they are. You see through the conspiracy and spot the flaws. In fact, you are so brilliant that the flaws seem stupidly obvious to you - which only elevates you more above the sheeple who buy the official story.

Of course, this also makes it nearly impossible to have a conspiracy theorist admit that he's been debunked. To admit this, the conspiracy theorist must lower his mental image of himself from "stands tall above all those stupid masses" to "actually a bit below those masses." This is unacceptable so any proof that the conspiracy theorist is wrong is rationalized away as being a) planted by the conspiracy to trick the foolish, b) irrelevant enough to ignore completely, or c) not proof debunking $MOVED_GOAL_POST.

You could load the conspiracy theorists into a rocket, send them to the moon, and they would still claim it was all faked just to preserve their mental image of themselves.

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Facebook? That can't be real. I mean people wouldn't be stupid enough to use such a service, right?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems ridiculously easy to disprove your flaw, just point the laser elsewhere on the Moon. But then again, I seem to recall you're a serious Space Nutter, so clear thinking isn't your strong suit.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Jason Levine]

You get the same thing with the anti-vaccine folks who either move their goal posts constantly as to why "vaccines cause autism" (mercury, # of shots, mysterious unnamed "toxins") despite tons of studies proving that this isn't true. They've taken to claiming that they are pro-vaccine but simply want all vaccines removed from the market until they are 100% safe with no side effects. If we required this of all medicine, we would need to recall every single medical treatment there is. They don't seem to understand the difference between a vaccine with a tiny risk of minor side effects and a disease (rare only because of herd immunity) with a very large risk of moderate to severe side effects.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Pitch it as a reality show ("Utopia: Moon") and you can probably get funding :)

That show is great in the same way that the Real World/Road Rules challenges were/(are?) great. The casting is done to create conflict. The whole "They get to rent the place out to tourists and US infrastructure supplied water, electrical power, medical support and police access all make it a crock as a social experiment. Those people would all be dead in two month. Except Red, who'd scout, then realize he needs to bring a bunch of water and travel by night to get out of the desert they built that place in.

Red may not be city smart, but he ain't country stupid either.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[wwphx]

My answer to these conspiracy idiots, aside from ignoring them, is to look at the numbers. The moon landings required INTERNATIONAL cooperation of thousands of people, if not tens of thousands, from around the world. So what you're saying is that all of these people agreed to tell the same story for five decades, and no documentary evidence has been uncovered in that time that shows this conspiracy being set up. Look at Snowden, the Pentagon Papers, Manning, etc.: governments CANNOT KEEP SECRETS.

Obligatory plug: my wife was the final segment of the 2008 Mythbusters episode that explored that myth, she bounces a laser off the moon shot through a 3.5 meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory. There are five retroreflectors on the moon, three from Apollo and two on Russian Lunokhod rovers, and there's a clear signal difference between hitting a reflector and bouncing off the bare lunar surface. I also did a ten minute video on this program at waynewestphotography dot com.

Of course, this just means that some incredible hackers were able to fool the software that my wife uses to show different results while the laser is shining, depending upon where the laser is pointed. The Apollo laser reflectors were aimed specifically at the Earth, the Russian ones are quasi-random as there was no way to know where the rovers' batteries would fail, so their final orientation is not known and produces a noticeably weaker signal.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Jason Levine]

The Moon Landing deniers will be forced to live on a crashed rocket on the Moon. Naturally, they will deny that they are on the Moon. As they accept that they are actually on the Moon, they'll be kicked off of Utopia: Moon (sent via rocket back to Earth). The last one to deny he/she is on the Moon wins!*

* First prize is absolute proof that you are on the Moon via the opening of an air lock.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[sribe]

And there is tension and torsion in the metal frame that holds up the flag, because with (as you mention) no breeze, they needed something else to hold it out. Because of the tension and torsion, the supporting arm vibrated a little at first, like a spring, and that makes waves in the flag material.

In fact, if you've ever done the high-school physics experiment where you generate a standing wave in a tray of water... If you compare the motion of the flag in the video to a flag fluttering in the breeze vs a standing wave, it's blindingly obvious that what you're watching in the video of the flag on the moon is a standing wave. The two motions are quite different and easy to tell apart.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[sribe]

In addition to all the above, how does "a photograph" show fluttering?

Well, there's actually video; the conspiracy dumbass either misspoke when he called it a photograph, or he's actually seen a still photo with wrinkles in the flag and assumed it was fluttering. Either way, there's video, and the flag is obviously not "fluttering in the breeze" in any normal way--in fact, if you know what a standing wave looks like, that's exactly what it's doing in the video...

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[sribe]

...but I agree that there are numerous other bizarre factors that may point to conspiracy...

No, there are not. None whatsoever. All of the "other bizarre factors" are equally as ridiculous.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[man bear nerd]

This not so hard to understand why people believe this when you take a fleeting glance at the other idiocy's people believe like any religion especially the king of all religion Scientology (sorry Mormons you get second place )what a great example of the bigger the lie the easier the sell. one question for lunar loons what where all the rockets for just to convince all the idiots who believe they went to the moon for what gain?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[BlackPignouf]

If you want to help fight the conspirationists, it would help if you could stop using bullshit arguments.
http://curious.astro.cornell.e...
You'd need a 25m telescope to see the lander base being represented by 1 pixel.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[digitalPhant0m]

It's obviously those were planted there to support the hoax..... duh.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems ridiculously easy to disprove your flaw, just point the laser elsewhere on the Moon.

All that will prove is that that portion of the moon is not retro-reflective.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[NatasRevol]

Like the aliens that Armstrong saw?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[qvatch]

well yeah, it's been 50 years. With today's technology we can easily go back and fake the landing sites on the moon directly. Since we won the spacerace by faking out the russians.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[BadDreamer]

Please, provide a few of those "bizarre factors". Your own listing, and not a link to a time cube site, please. It would be interesting to see what it takes to convince you.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Your logic is based entirely on assumptions. Try again.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like Space Nutters. They believe fervently that space is a kind of Wal Mart full of resources and food. Everything has to fit this. There is data of how fucking empty and deadly space is? They are Luddites.
There is more data about how dead and empty and hostile the rocks are? They are just people who don't understand that computers got better, therfore everything will.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[wonkey_monkey]

It's why you can't see stars in the daylight here on Earth.

Is it? I thought it was because the daylight completely drowns out the miniscule amount of light from the stars, not that the exposure is way off.

You could have opened the shutter or extended the exposure on the Moon and seen some stars, but you couldn't do that during daytime on Earth.

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

> Government is too inept to pull something like this off.

So, the government is too inept to pull off a hoax of this magnitude, but actually performing the real feat was within its scope of capabilities? I think the conspiracy theorists have more well-thought out arguments...

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[shutdown -p now]

(including the Russians who would have called us out on it had we obviously been filming on a sound stage

FWIW, most Moon landing conspiracy theories claim that Soviets were in on the scam, either because they were bribed (a common theme claims food shipments were the bribe, thereby "explaining" why the USSR didn't have any more devastating famines),

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[davydagger]

>There are many other flaws that are obvious to the skeptical observer, too numerous to list here.

you mean paranoid, and seeing what they want to see. Most moon hoax'ers have a very obvious political agenda, to the point they've sold themselves on the concept of a moon landing hoax, then looked for proof, which at best is circumstanial evidence, but generally, misintepreting data.

> I'm guessing there are a governmental 'suggestion' to nVidia that influenced the way this analysis went.

guessing. No you just pulled it out of your ass, because it didn't agree with the conclusion you wanted to see.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[penandpaper]

obligatory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[jabuzz]

Point of note, a retroreflector does not have to be oriented at the earth. Any incident light is reflected back down the path it came. The Soviet reflectors have a noticeably weaker signal because they are physically smaller. This is important because the laser beam by the time it gets to the moons surface is no longer a thin pencil beam, so the physically smaller retoreflectors of the Soviet Lunokhod rovers reflect less light than the Apollo ones. It is also possible that the Apollo retroreflectors are better than the Soviet ones, aka they reflect more of the incident radiation, but I am speculating on the that point.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[gman003]

Dodging the question, I see. List your "obvious flaws", or I will be forced to conclude you were making them up.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[CohibaVancouver]

and can be seen with probes and telescopes and a laser

I thought the argument from the idiots was not that the unmanned gear was launched up there, but rather that the pictures from the probes had been doctored.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[CohibaVancouver]

Of course, this just means that some incredible hackers were able to fool the software that my wife uses to show different results while the laser is shining

The conspiracy nutbars don't argue that the reflectors aren't there - They argue that they weren't placed there by humans BECAUSE RADIATION.

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It only takes one insider to admit it was a giant conspiracy, no matter how organised the scheme is.

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Conspiracy bait: the Soviets wanted to lose the space race because they couldn't afford it anymore. They couldn't even afford their own hoax, and the U.S. had already done theirs anyway, so they let the U.S. "win" to end the contest.

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[gman003]

Perhaps, but unless they were faking some of their achievements as well, they would still have nothing to lose by revealing the American landings as a hoax. Coupled with a rational explanation of "it's not possible with current technology", that would suffice to let them bow out gracefully while still humiliating their enemies. They might not even need to explain why they hadn't succeeded - they could still say they were working on it, and just keep running the probe series and space stations they were working on.

And if the Soviets *were* faking some of their missions, that again raises the question of why the Americans didn't call them out on it, with all the same reasons I listed above, just swap "Soviets" for "Americans".

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

This would have to be a VERY well organized conspiracy. (Which alone should debunk this theory. Government is too inept to pull something like this off.)

Two words: Manhattan Project. Government was able to keep that under wraps for as long as was needed.

But yes, we most definitely went to the moon.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

There's already a well organized and massive conspiracy around Santa Clause. Even the US post office, a government agency, is in on it. When there's one...

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[MrKaos]

"But what about the..." is a never-ending argument between conspiracy theorists and debunkers.

Unfortunately, each one that gets knocked down on its face means it's statistically more likely that the debunkers are right and the theorists wrong. We can go to infinity, but after ten or even 5 assertions wiped out with only basic experimentation, the chances of you having been right in the first place go beyond minuscule.

Unfortunately this is human nature - the desire to not be humiliated when proven wrong. The phenomenon is called "Social Proof" and is, effectively, the evangelization of a particular point of view or assertion in absence of evidence. Social Proof is responsible for many human failures, the Jonestown massacre being one example.

Scientific principle starts with "here's a hypothesis, does it fit the facts?" and goes BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD whenever any element of it is wrong. Conspiracy theorists just keep on pounding ignoring all their previous incorrect assertions until people get bored dealing with them and then "Ah ha! They won't answer!".

The issue with Social Proof is that when presented with evidence contrary to the belief system the beliefs become *more* entrenched. Nvidia's simulation will in fact cause the moon hoaxers to be *more* convinced that the landing were a hoax. Watch for the new "arguments" like finally we know how the pictures were generated in the first place.

In fact the best way to challenge Social Proof is to agree and go deeper than they do. I like pointing out that despite this and that evidence, this study, those artifacts it is a great pity that they are right and that such an achievement is in fact a fake and terrible lie. Letting them experience and explore the depths of their disappointment at being right about the "moon hoax" all along is, I've found, the best way to leave them feeling defeated and deflated. It consumes less of my energy and marvel at such an event while they entertain me at the same time. Planet Xers are also great fun to play with, chemtrailers the list goes on.

Perhaps it's arrogant but it's obvious to me that we went to the moon because that's where the transmission signals came from, "moon hoaxers" can believe what they will and so will I.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[MrKaos]

"But what about the..." is a never-ending argument between conspiracy theorists and debunkers.

Exactly. It's essentially whack-a-mole but with paranoid and stupid people.

Absolutely! It's obvious that we went to the moon because that is where we met Aliens for the first time!!!

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone around here sounds arrogant, full of themselves, and on a high horse, it's you.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Megol]

People with narcissistic personality + paranoia explains most conspiracy theories.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that's not true at all.

Let's use an analogy. Take Enron, for example. Here's a complete, large company with tens of thousands of employees. And it was a scam. Who knew? Arguably, less than 5 people. The point is this: as long as you split up the job functions and keep your friends close, you can keep some massive secrets with a small group.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Golden_Rider]

Whenever people talk about "the fake moon landing", I like to point them to one of the many youtube videos which explain how DIFFICULT it would have been to fake the moon landing, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... It actually would have been easier to just send people to the moon instead of faking it.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Black Parrot]

I see conspiracy theorists as an example of believing in a very unlikely scenario to boost your ego.

I recently saw an article (here?) about a study that found that subscribing to conspiracy theories correlates strongly with a low self-image.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

5 guys in white hooded suits show up and burn your house to the ground?

Some big conspiracy against you?

Who are these conspirators?

"Guys in hooded suits" isn't good enough.

Specific identities please.

Pics or it didn't happen!

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Black Parrot]

Your wife, like all other scientists and amateurs with sufficiently powerful telescopes, is in on the conspiracy.

(Is she evil, or did they threaten to kill her cat if she didn't cooperate?)

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[sexconker]

By producing sequential photograms of different points in time.

Telegraph = machine that writes telegrams.
Photograph = machine that writes photograms.
Etc.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[sexconker]

I saw one episode of that show, and that Red guy is clearly the smartest and most decent among them. I particularly liked his comments on the other guy's letter to home.

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[FatLittleMonkey]

So, the government is too inept to pull off a hoax of this magnitude, but actually performing the real feat was within its scope of capabilities?

They still had to build the giant rocket and land something on the moon in order for the telemetry to work. So they had all the complexity of building Saturn V and the Apollo stack but in addition they had to seamlessly pull off the greatest hoax in history with the greatest concentration of pedantic nerd geniuses in the world watching.

Apollo succeeded in spite of its failures. The Apollo 1 fire, the Apollo 13 explosion. Apollo 12's repeated lightning strikes and then the astronauts destroying their only video camera, etc etc. All with thousands of experts watching over them. Going back to the various cluster-fucks during Mercury and Gemini when they were trying to learn EVAs and later docking; but they could keep trying until they got it right. And once it was done, it was done. It didn't matter if new people came in and went through the archives, didn't matter if people looked at the hardware. There was nothing to hide.

A giant conspiracy to fake the moon landings had to get everything right the first time, with a skeleton crew, and it was not only vulnerable to a single major leak or screw-up at the time, it has continued to be vulnerable for 50 years. The hoaxers can never stop the cover-up.

For example, the LRO imaged the Apollo landing sites, showing tracks and vehicles. Was that faked? A brand new cover-up during the LRO program, adding a whole new conspiracy they had to seamlessly pull of under the noses of the LRO science team, and then keep secret forever.

And each layer of cover-up adds more things to go wrong, more people able to leak now or in the future. With every single person involved, every astronaut and technician, knowing that they are sitting on the greatest secret in history. It just needs one person, diagnosed with terminal cancer, conscience, or greed, to say, "Fuck it..."

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[FatLittleMonkey]

Two words: Manhattan Project. Government was able to keep that under wraps for as long as was needed.

For about three years? With the program itself being hidden at remote locations, out of public view, during a war. With every American, every journalist, who accidentally stumbled onto the program being easily convinced to keep the secret "from those sneaky Krauts."

And a program which was for the country, for the common defence, doing something that they believed in. (Either out of loyalty to the US, fear of Nazis, or just because they were giant nerds playing with nuclear fire.) And since then, many of those scientists changed their loyalties and joined the anti-nuclear movement. (And pretty much everything that could leak, in the 60 years since then, has leaked.)

A moon landing hoax would have been the opposite. It would betray their own people, betray their friends at NASA, betray their own beliefs and morality, and they didn't get to go to the moon. For what? Why keep that secret for decade after decade after decade...?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[FatLittleMonkey]

Pretty sure that article was a hoax.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

As Benjamin Franklin said, "two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead."

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ku Klux Klan faked the moon landings?

Curiouser and curiouser.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[UnknowingFool]

The government was not able to keep it secret from the Russians. Stalin knew about the program.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[UnknowingFool]

My point is when you are trying to see the a dimly lit source you cannot have another light source that is brighter in the same exposure. With the moon pictures, it might have been possible to see some stars in the background; however, the foreground exposure would have been so high as to wash out everything. You couldn't take a picture of an astronaut and the stars at the same time and see both clearly.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Bob the Super Hamste]

That would be like if someone decided to resurrect the Studebaker automotive company. Would you expect the new company to use plans from the 1960s to make new cars.

Why not, Morgan does that.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[UnknowingFool]

And how long did the Enron scam last? Maybe 5 years. Even then people on Wall Street who knew finance were beginning to question how Enron earned their money. This supposed moon conspiracy is going on for 50 years. The only people that are proclaiming hoax are people who don't seem to know photography or science.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Agares]

I'd mod you up, but you already are at max. A lot of the flaws people point out are pretty easy to debunk when you think about it. Even someone in grade school could probably figure them out if they are smart enough. The best one I know is how people point out you cannot see the stars. Well of course you can't see them because the sun is out and the light from it is drowning out their light. Also people try to argue about the dust not flying up into the air and just falling straight to the ground. Well that’s because there is not atmosphere on the moon so obviously the dust has nothing to float around in before it finally settles. Which explains why it falls straight to the ground. I could say more, but like you said the evidence to support that the moon landing is real is pretty strong. Especially when some of the so called flaws is actually evidence that helps to show that they were actually in space on the moon.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[PPalmgren]

They become so invested in their delusions that their delusions are what make up a significant portion of their identity. When they think about themselves, they think about their stance on the conspiracy first and foremost. For them to recant is to recant a portion of their identity. This same behavior happens with severe addiciton and in some cases depression where they grow to embrace their dark/morbid personalities. Its also why its practically impossible to discuss religion with the religious.

The further you go down the rabbit hole, the harder the walls of the echo chamber become.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[UnknowingFool]

Does todays Morgan use the exact same engine as the 1960s version? Also other parts of the car have not been updated for safety regulations? No. The Morgan has not updated their styling, but the components have been upgraded to modern times.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[tehcyder]

This would have to be a VERY well organized conspiracy. (Which alone should debunk this theory. Government is too inept to pull something like this off.)

Knocking "the government" without evidence is itself a fairly paranoid thing to do.

I would say that governments were actually pretty good at covering things up, so your argument is not a strong one.

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[tehcyder]

So on that basis, there are no secrets whatsoever in the world?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[tehcyder]

I see conspiracy theorists as an example of believing in a very unlikely scenario to boost your ego.

I recently saw an article (here?) about a study that found that subscribing to conspiracy theories correlates strongly with a low self-image.

Well, I love a good conspiracy theory, but I also think I'm fucking wonderful, so that's your theory blown out the water.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Jason Levine]

To some degree governments are good at keeping secrets (example: anything that is Classified), but these secrets tend to either leak out over time (whether via a Snowden-style leak, via someone writing their memoirs thirty years later, or via de-classification). The size and scope that a Moon Landing Hoax would have required, all of the separate people and institutions contributing to it with full knowledge of the hoax and yet never revealing it, combined with the longevity of maintaining the hoax would have been enormous. I don't believe that the US Government would have been able to pull that off. Actually going to the Moon would be simpler.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I was going for one of the many long running British car jokes but it fell flat. Although the new Morgan 3 wheeler is probably very similar to the original Morgan 3 wheelers since they are classified as a motor cycle and don't have to comply with modern safety and emissions requirements.

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but there are probably few if any MASSIVE secrets, such as the moon landing hoax would require. Hundreds of people were involved.

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaving aside the moon landing stuff it does seem to me the soviets faked the first EVA film. Being a paranoid i suspect they did the EVA but faked the film. But this story immediately died. With That In Mind I Think CItIng To the russians is weak. Try observing the the Chinese and know there is your best proof that we did do SOMETHING with Apollo. Was it more than just having world tech domination for a generation? I think so.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[doom]

I only believe in the best conspiracy theories, myself.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[gman003]

While I suppose it's not impossible that there's a second group that uses that disguise, uses those methods and hates anyone who isn't a white protestant, Occam's Razor suggests that those five were most likely the KKK. While we would of course want to identify those five specifically when pursuing legal action, "5 as-yet-unidentified klansmen" would suffice for my criteria of a plausible conspiracy. Remember, *you're* the one who said that wouldn't be good enough, not I.

As an aside, you really need to work on your debate skills. A word of advice, if I may?

If you're going to fight by using reductio ad absurdum, you might as well go all the way. How can I prove that there were only five of them? How can I prove that five is a number? How can I prove that they were people? How can I prove that *I* am a person?

If you want to ignore every precept of reality, go all the way! Argue that reality doesn't exist! Question whether or not truth is true! Prove basic logic fundamentally inconsistent! Everything else you believe is completely detached from reality anyways - arguing that the moon landings could not have happened because we're all just minds with unprovable senses that may or may not be lying to us, is just as plausible as arguing that they could not have happened because the lighting is wrong.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[Anonymous Coward]

"Today NASA will not recreate the technology that was used in the 1960s"
Unfortunately the case is more cannot than will not. Due to insane schedule at the time, "getting things done" was the focus, while documentation was of no importance. NASA probably couldn't find half the documentation today if they tried to, let alone all the specific production know-how that by now has ended up in graves or retirement homes.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[UnknowingFool]

My point is on the why would NASA use technology from the 1960s at all. For example, the Apollo navigation computers were quite primitive and analog. Why would NASA recreate them to use in any new missions?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[romons]

a) NASA and the Air Force
b) Scare the Russkies

There were well known 'scams' run by the Air Force to play up to UFO guys, making them think that their evidence of black projects (stealth technology) was actually UFOs. They did this because they wanted to own the UFO researchers, in case the russians were using them to spy on their black projects.

In WWII, the Allied ground assault was helped by disinformation campaigns, which included inflatable tanks and trucks. They had fake transmitters, broadcasting as if they were particular command centers, so the NAZIs could triangulate their (wrong) position. Lying to the enemy is a very cost effective way to win.

On the other hand, NASA landed unmanned vehicles on the moon. Why couldn't they land a radio repeater and a laser reflector?

I don't buy the conspiracy theories for a minute, but they aren't inconsistent. They are just far less likely than the possibility that people landed on the moon.

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[UnknowingFool]

It is hard to doctor the fact that you can bounce a laser from the moon if you aim at the spot where the astronauts left mirrors. But this is how hoaxers' logic works:

Me: There are mirrors on the moon that will bounce back a laser signal.
Hoaxer: That proves nothing. If you use a powerful enough laser, you can bounce a signal from any surface. All you have to do is get a really powerful laser.
Me: No, there is an upper limit to laser power. At some point the laser will burn the surface. Only reflective material will bounce back a signal. Like a mirror.
Hoaxer: That proves nothing. The entire moon surface is reflective enough for any laser.
Me: If that were true then why doesn't the laser bounce back when not pointed to an Apollo mirrors?
Hoaxer: That proves nothing. NASA could have used unmanned spacecraft to put the mirrors there.
And so on . . .

Re: There are numerous other obvious flaws

[wwphx]

Two true stories about LRO. First, the Russians dropped two Lunakhod rovers equipped with laser retroreflectors. Along with retroreflectors left by Apollos 11, 14, 15 that makes a total of five on the lunar surface, but for a long time my wife was only able to hit four with the 3.5 meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory. And the landing sites for all five landers was well known -- the thing that wasn't known was where one of the Lunakhod rovers ended its journey. We could ping one of them with the laser, not the other. The popular theories as to what happened to the other rover centered around it either wandering off in an unknown direction or it possibly having had toppled in a crater and the retroreflector was not visible. My personal theory was that the moon men had hijacked the rover to go joy riding and had repositioned the retroreflector to use as a rear view mirror.

When the LRO imagery came out, the location of the lander for the missing rover was identified, but the meters per pixel resolution was high enough to see the path that the rover drove! The rover itself was too small to see, but by studying the path we could see that the rover did not end up where it was expected: it had driven out a certain distance (west, IIRC) and then doubled-back towards the rover! Once we knew that, my wife was able to ping the rover on her first try. Since then, when the laser is cooperating, she can ping all five retroreflectors during one evening run.

Second LRO story. The LRO is equipped with a laser detector and also a small retroreflector. Lots of laser ranging stations on Earth are able to ping the detector, though Apache Point has to dial-down the power of their laser to the point that it's not visible to the naked eye. But my wife hasn't been able to ping the retroreflector. It was a last-minute add-on to the orbiter and it's located under the main communications dish, they have to swing it out of the way for it to be accessible, making the orbiter silent during the attempt, I guess the command for swinging the dish back in to place is on a timer command. The problem is that the orbiter is on a circumpolar orbit and is only visible for about 45 minutes before it swings around to the dark side, and only about half that time is usable. She just hasn't been able to get a bead on it in the limited window and I think they've given up on it.

But I think it's a pretty amazing thing just to hit LRO's detector. You've got the earth's motion, the moon's orbit, and this satellite circling the moon. All from 220,000 miles away and they're able to ping this satellite that's moving at how many thousands of miles an hour?

Re:There are numerous other obvious flaws

[wwphx]

Oh, she's certainly evil, she's also twice the American National Scottish Harp Champion. She's allergic to cats though, we're on our third Standard Poodle. And his name is Dante. We know evil.

Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[drinkypoo]

nVidia technology fell into the past through a wormhole.
Luckily it was properly static-bagged, because it actually went back to 1912 and had to be stored until a computer could be developed to interface to it

Re:Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[ledow]

Problem is, technology fast enough to talk to a PCI-Express card wasn't generally available in the 60's. Or 70's. Or probably even 80's. Even with supercomputers of the age.

More likely, nVidia has a wormhole through which they took orders for images to fake, then sent them back into the past.

Re:Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[Anonymous Coward]

Which explains the rapid growth in computer tech at the time.

Re:Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. Even though semiconductors able to generate picosecond-risetime pulses existed in the 1960s, it would not have been possible to encode large amounts of information in the pulses.

For example, terabit-level storage existed in the 1960s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

but this would not be able to sustain the bandwidth of a PCIe bus.

Re:Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[Mal-2]

No wormholes were necessary, they just used chains of thiotimoline reactions.

Re:Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[tlhIngan]

Problem is, technology fast enough to talk to a PCI-Express card wasn't generally available in the 60's. Or 70's. Or probably even 80's. Even with supercomputers of the age.

More likely, nVidia has a wormhole through which they took orders for images to fake, then sent them back into the past.

Had to be that - didn't you see the comparison between the real and the generated? That looked a bit TOO close, and we know the second image was faked, so the first one must be too.

Re:Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it's just nobody has the originals anymore so it's easy to replace them with remastered versions.

inb4 some youtube video

Re:Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[Anonymous Coward]

The ground in the computer generated one (the first one) lacked contrast due to the low resolution textures used. They used much better textures in the second one (the other computer generated one).

Re:Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[Anonymous Coward]

" It was the first storage device designed from the start to hold a terabit of data (about 160 GB)."

huh?

Re:Well, that's how they faked them to begin with

[samwichse]

8 bits to a byte, or possibly 7, this was the 60's :).

PROOF

[halivar]

That Nvidia is in on the hoax!!!1!!one!!!!

Re:PROOF

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you being a moron on purpose? Is that the best you can offer? Was it supposed to be funny?

Re:PROOF

[I'm New Around Here]

Screw you. I thought it was funny.

Re:PROOF

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You did? You must be new around here.

Re:PROOF

[Obfuscant]

That Nvidia is in on the hoax!!!1!!one!!!!

Ummm, I really don't understand this. Nvidia was able to recreate an allegedly faked photograph, therefore proving the photo was not a hoax? Finding yet another way to create a hoax proves the first way of making that hoax didn't happen? Nvidia dropped a highly reflective astronaut suit into the CGI program to get the right lighting; NASA couldn't have dropped a key light onto the terrestrial "lunar" film set to do the same thing?

It is a wonderful publicity stunt, but as proof of anything other than how great the Nvidia renderers are it's meaningless. Will they next produce a CGI of bigfoot, thus proving that bigfoot exists?

Re:PROOF

[I'm New Around Here]

:^D

Re:PROOF

[badboy_tw2002]

No, they demonstrated that the conspiracy theorists claims that the photograph was fake because there wasn't enough illumination given the position of the sun and lunar module are incorrect. The additional "light source" is the reflection off Armstrong's suit, and not some sound stage. The claim is "there's no possible way this could have happened", and they showed one plausible way, thus negating the assertion.

Re:PROOF

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody's ever going to convince a conspiracy theorist that a cg video can fully and accurately recreate real-moon conditions. Hell, it's not like they can replicate real-world conditions with 100% accuracy with the best of programming, so the people behind this may as well have billed it as "Watch us shoot down a fantasy with fiction!"

Re:PROOF

[Obfuscant]

'We're going to debunk one of the biggest conspiracies in the world,' Herkelman said."

No, they demonstrated that the conspiracy theorists claims that the photograph was fake because there wasn't enough illumination given the position of the sun and lunar module are incorrect.

No, they didn't actually do that, and they had much grander claims about what they did, as I quoted from the summary. "We managed to create a fake photograph" doesn't disprove anything about any other photograph.

The additional "light source" is the reflection off Armstrong's suit, and not some sound stage.

The light source in their photo was from an astronauts hyper-reflective suit (they mention all the layers that go into it, as if anything below the first one or two would reflect much. If the top layers were so reflective, then there wouldn't be anything for the lower layers to reflect.) This does not prove that the light source in some other photograph was not a key light. Or, the photographer taking the photo on the sound stage was also wearing such a reflective suit -- they had one guy in a real astronaut's suit, they could just as easily have had two.

The claim is "there's no possible way this could have happened", and they showed one plausible way, thus negating the assertion.

The claim was actually that "this could only happen if". Claiming that something that did happen (the lighting) couldn't possibly happen at all is obviously incorrect, so it would have been trivial to disprove that claim forty years ago. Just show the photo!

Using modern technology to fake a photograph does not contradict the claim "this could only happen if" when that technology didn't exist, and it only shows that there is, indeed, yet another way to fake such a photograph.

It's a publicity stunt. It doesn't "debunk one of the biggest conspiracies in the world", it may potentially call into question one claim about one photograph. It is like saying that the conspiracy theory that JFK is still alive, or was shot by the CIA, or any number of related theories, are disproven because someone used a different style of rifle, or used a bullet made of tantalum instead of lead, while making the same kind of shot today.

This kind of argument is the same kind of erroneous argument that The Amazing Randi uses to debunk psychic phenomena. That he can duplicate those allegedly psychic phenomena using modern technology or magician's slight of hand tricks doesn't prove anything about the original phenomena other than there could be another explanation. To prove that Uri Geller was bending spoons using magic tricks and not his mind actually requires catching Uri Geller using magic tricks. To claim that it is LIKELY he is using magic requires a lesser amount of evidence, which is what Nvidia has accomplished here.

Nvidia saying "hey, look, we faked a moon landing photograph" using our fancy new hardware" is nice, but it doesn't prove the authenticity of any other.

Re:PROOF

[DrJimbo]

I'd mod you up if I had points.

Yes, it is a publicity stunt, and yes, it won't convince people who are invested in the conspiracy theory, and yes, it does not prove the original photo was authentic. But as you said, it does give a plausible explanation for the lighting in the original photo.

Re:PROOF

[Anonymous Coward]

Randi's trick for disproving psychic phenomena is blind and double-blind testing. The people competing for his money are allowed to set pretty much any conditions they want, provided that the result actually measures the phenomenon in question. All participants must agree that it is a fair test, and Randi used to publish the correspondence with these people. For the most part it was fantastically boring, with a fair amount of pathetic insanity. I don't know what he's publishing these days. You should read more before assuming that trickery is required to disprove charlatans.

The big disproof of Uri Geller btw, was when he was handed a perfectly normal spoon on Johnny Carson's show and couldn't do shit with it.

Re:PROOF

[narcc]

Randi's trick for disproving psychic phenomena is blind and double-blind testing.

Randi's trick is convincing you that that's what he does.

How he gets away with his nonsense when all his followers are (admittedly, self-described) skeptics is beyond me.

Speaking of ... why isn't he in jail? Why hasn't Pena been deported?

Re:PROOF

[SirSlud]

Obviously it's for publicity, but their claim is clearly tongue in cheek. Let me put it this way. Everyone is taking this way more seriously than Nvidia is.

Re:PROOF

[gstoddart]

How he gets away with his nonsense when all his followers are (admittedly, self-described) skeptics is beyond me.

Nonsense? Followers?

These are a bunch of people who debunk claims of supernatural phenomenon which are either:

1) Magic undocumented things, which nobody has been able to prove yet, and for which no physical laws would apply
2) Active scams and hoaxes

Are you suggesting there is some dishonesty in Randi's willingness to give you $10 million dollars if you can give repeatable evidence under controlled circumstances that you can do something amazing?

Because I'm afraid you're going to need to provide some evidence for that claim. That nobody has claimed that prize means that so far anybody who claims to have supernatural powers is full of shit.

Which is the expected outcome.

Re:PROOF

[Obfuscant]

Are you suggesting there is some dishonesty in Randi's willingness to give you $10 million dollars

I thought I was pretty clear when I talked about the kind of debunking that consists of simply duplicating an alleged psychic phenomenon using magic tricks and then claiming that this proves that the psychic version was also a magic trick. I guess I wasn't clear enough.

I remember from years ago where Randi would do just that -- do the same things people who claimed paranormal powers did and then he'd reveal the magic trick or slight of hand. One example was someone who could move cigarettes (IIRC) laying on a table with his mental powers. Randi showed how he could do it by cupping his hands just right and blowing. That was his proof that the other guy was a fraud.

That nobody has claimed that prize means that so far anybody who claims to have supernatural powers is full of shit.

No, that just means that nobody has claimed the prize. It proves nothing else. Just as Uri Geller's failure to perform upon command for Carson doesn't prove anything.

Re:PROOF

[david_thornley]

I saw Randi do psychic surgery on Johnny Carson quite some time ago. Fascinating. Took me a few minutes to figure out what he was doing.

pfft.

[Anonymous Coward]

as any TRUE audiophile will tell you, the highest-quality fake historic events from the 1960s were done with vacuum tube technology.

high-end graphics card swill lacks the warmth and nuance of a true conspiracy.

Re:pfft.

[Anonymous Coward]

KT-88 rules!

Re:pfft.

[halivar]

Also, they lack $100 wooden screws to hold the card in for hi-fi magnetic resonance.

Not gonna matter

[linuxgurugamer]

Conspiracy theorists won't care. They will always believe that there is a conspiracy. Debunk one, and they will merely find another. For this, even if you were to fly them up there, they would find some way to disbelieve it.

Re:Not gonna matter

[Matheus]

This is just advertising anyway... nVidia doesn't care either.

Re:Not gonna matter

[Ravaldy]

True. They are still looking for big foot. LOL!!!

Re:Not gonna matter

[Anonymous Coward]

The most pernicious trait of conspiracy theorists is that any evidence to the contrary simply gets recasted as evidence of the conspiracy itself. In this article's case, the moon landing conspiracy theorists would merely say that nVidia has been paid off by the same people who orchestrated the hoax to lend some credence to the conspiracy. This makes it impossible to debate with them, because there is literally nothing you can do to convince them of the facts.

Me, I just point and laugh at them.

Re:Not gonna matter

[mSparks43]

I've generally been of the opinion for a while that quite a good chunk of moon landing material was "faked".
In so much as they were burning a ton of cash doing all that stuff, but didn't get good material to show off - and by then it was already all a media game.
Don't think there is anything particularily troublesome in that concept.
Don't know why anyone cares.

Re:Not gonna matter

[Anonymous Coward]

The best "Proof" I have heard is this.

The Moon landings happened at the height of the cold war. Russian had the ability (and the desire) to monitor the whole thing.
IF a disaster happened you would be assured that Russian would have been broadcasting it quicker than the Americans would have.
IF the moon landings were faked, the Russians would have been there too shouting it out loud and clear for the world to hear, it would have been a huge propaganda coup.

However, to this day nothing has been heard from Russia about the landing being faked.

Re:Not gonna matter

[steelfood]

even if you were to fly them up there, they would find some way to disbelieve it.

If we did that, I think they'd have better stuff to do than create conspiracy theories. Like figure out how to get back for one.

Re:Not gonna matter

[BarbaraHudson]

The best "Proof" I have heard is this.
The Moon landings happened at the height of the cold war. Russian had the ability (and the desire) to monitor the whole thing.
IF a disaster happened you would be assured that Russian would have been broadcasting it quicker than the Americans would have.
IF the moon landings were faked, the Russians would have been there too shouting it out loud and clear for the world to hear, it would have been a huge propaganda coup.

However, to this day nothing has been heard from Russia about the landing being faked.

And the loonies will next say that the Russians were in on the whole thing. The two countries, by engaging in a fake "space race", were able to funnel bazillions of rubles and dollars into their military-industrial complexes, which provided a great way to skim off money^W^W^Wmodernize their economies. And if you ask for proof, they'll say that Obama and Putin are cooperating over the whole Ukraine thing, again for money. And that "isn't it a strange coincidence that since we haven't gone to war over the Ukraine, ebola has suddenly gotten out of control?"

In Soviet Russia, Conspiracy Theorists Moon YOU!

Re:Not gonna matter

[Anonymous Coward]

90% of conspiracy theories older than 30 years have already been proven to be true.

People don't just do random things - things take effort to do.

Re:Not gonna matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether you believe or not, it is undeniable that the cost in dollars to actually go to the Moon is several orders of magnitude more than faking it. It is also true that the space race would give motive to getting there first, which at the time faking would have been faster than actually doing the science. Neither facts prove anything, but do lead to suspicion.

Re:Not gonna matter

[spoot]

Been there done that...

The Day After Roswell - Colonel Philip J. Corso

Re:Not gonna matter

[Neil Boekend]

Stop looking. I am big foot.

Re:Not gonna matter

[Anonymous Coward]

It was funny watching the video. You could see the engineers stoked about how they were showing interactively that they could faithfully replicate the moon landing.
Then they would be interspersed with some marketing drone who kept mentioning the company and technology by name, and how this type of stuff wasn't possible in the past and bla bla bla.

It's clear that for nVidia it was a marketing stunt by how many resources they put into it (it can't have been easy replicating every small detail from the moon landing), and it seems to have worked.
However, it's also really cool that they did something pretty awesome and worthwhile with the marketing budget instead of blowing it on regular ads.
This is the type of marketing I can get behind. Show me something interesting and cool, and promote science while you're doing it.

Re:Not gonna matter

[Anonymous Coward]

They cared enough, when thinking about how to market their new cards, to actually go and put a lot of money into carefully restoring the lighting at the scene, in order to test, whether claims about the fakeness of the lighting was true.

Even if it is just an advert, they used a scientific experiment to disprove a theory. That way they have achieved a lot more than most other ads.

Re:Not gonna matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, just maybe Cold war didn't actually exist either :)

Re:Not gonna matter

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm sorry but i fail to see the conspiracy here. of course a war is necessary. we lost half a billion worth of tanks and now got to blow them up so they can be recycled into war drones that after the service can then deliver amazon packages and prescription meds to the 'people' left after we move our war elsewhere... this is a dystopian technological expansion of highly militarized civilization.

how many petabyte computers did china roll out to make their great firewall work? all the major players have rolled out massive tech infrastructure for a great cyber war... too close to home?

wars should only be fought when absolutely necessary, but that isn't how civilization is working out now.

Re:Not gonna matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the possibility that the landing was fake, but we did go to the Moon soon after.

I thought this was long ago debunked

[NotDrWho]

Aren't there still those mirrors on the moon they set up that are reflecting laser light?

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[CurryCamel]

A-ha!
The nVidia rendering surely didn't take the reflection of these mirrors into account when rendering this "proof"!
It is a hoax! q.e.d.

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[ihtoit]

yep, you could do it with a college HeNe laser and a laptop. (worn that t-shirt, even had the idiot start screaming that I was about to blow up the moon when I fired the laser! (yeah, that bit on TBBT when Penny's BF expressed concern about the safety of the planet and the wisdom of firing a great green laser at the Moon, that shit happens, man)).

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[camperdave]

Oh, they've got that covered as well.

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[Jason Levine]

This has been debunked dozens, if not hundreds, of times in many different ways. The problem is that the Moon landing conspiracy folks ignore when they're debunked or hand wave it away as just being "part of the conspiracy." You can't actually prove them wrong in their eyes so they'll continue to parrot the same, long-ago debunked "reasons why the Moon landings were faked" while the rest of us groan "not THIS again."

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[Major Blud]

Unfortunately (er, fortunately?) the Soviets put the same laser reflectors on their unmanned rovers. Conspiracy theorist offer this as "proof" that the reflectors used during the Apollo missions were actually placed there by unmanned missions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[camperdave]

Oh, come now! The existence of a retroreflection is not proof of the existence a *man-made* retroreflector, let alone one placed there by astronauts using 1960s technology.

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[BarbaraHudson]

Aren't there still those mirrors on the moon [wikipedia.org] they set up that are reflecting laser light?

Denier: "It was fake. They used (wait for it) MIRRORS!"

... or magnets, cuz they're, like,. MAGIC!

Both deniers and haters have two characteristics in common

• 1. They are so far mentally invested in their world view that any evidence to the contrary must be denied at all cost.
• 2. The more time that passes, the shriller and wider-reaching their attacks. If you keep on refusing to be a true believer, eventually it must be because YOU are part of the conspiracy.

If a lot of them sound more than a bit paranoid, it's probably because they ARE paranoid.

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[DanielRavenNest]

There are many rational lines of evidence that the Lunar missions happened. My own personal ones include that I went to work at Boeing's space systems division in 1981, and the people who worked on the Saturn V and Lunar Rover *were still there*, as well as the project data. I've also visited the NASA repository where the two million microfiche cards with all the drawings are stored.

The problem is the conspiracy nuts are not rational. No amount of evidence will convince them, any more than you can convince a young Earth creationist that their holy book is bunk. Fortunately, science and technology doesn't depend on their belief. If a few well reasoned arguments don't convince someone, their mind is too closed to bother with. Just get on with your life. The conspiracy nut will still be able to get their satellite TV based on the same fucking technology that got us to the Moon :-) (big rockets).

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[ihtoit]

what would constitute "proof", Sparky?

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[camperdave]

what would constitute "proof", Sparky?

Retroreflection is accomplished by having three mutually perpendicular reflective surfaces forming a hollow corner. Natural cubic crystal formations can easily develop hollow corner retroreflectivity. So, to show that it was the Apollo lunar ranging experiment, and not a natural crystal formation, you'd at least have to have before and after shots showing the difference.

Re:I thought this was long ago debunked

[gstoddart]

So, your assertion is that either:

1) A retro-reflector naturally formed, is perfectly aligned, and we stumbled on it without having been there and have been able to use it for decades in experiments
2) Aliens placed it on the moon, and we've somehow discovered it's there (again, without having been there), and that it's properly aligned, and have been using it for lunar ranging experiments for the last 45 years or so

You're either good at humor, or terrible at science.

Because the ONLY way there is a retro-reflector on the moon, that we know about, and that is aligned properly, and which has been used in lunar laser ranging experiments for decades ... is that we put it there.

Unfortunately, joke or not, to the people who believe it was a hoax ... no amount of facts or evidence will do. Because they're always going to believe this bit of stupidity.

Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It will just create a new hoax, where the Moon Landing was faked using NVidia GPUs.

Already been done

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mythbusters beat you to it years ago...

And they don't even have a graphics card for sale!
(perhaps a t-shirt though)

Re:Already been done

[NotDrWho]

And they did a pretty thorough job too, going through most of the major conspiracy allegations one-by-one.

Re:Already been done

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the CNN interview of Jamie and Adam regarding their moon landing debunk episode, the highlight is Aldren punching out a douchebag that got in his face calling him a liar.

Nvidia sold out.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

That is what the conspiracy buffs would say. So would you, if your meal ticket is selling conspiracy theories to credulous folks. They are not bound by rhyme nor logic, and they don't even care all the conspiracy theories are mutually exclusive and self contradicting. To think some argument about global light source is going to sway them is ridiculous.

You can't sink a conspiracy

[DrXym]

People such as moon landing hoaxers, 9/11 truthers etc. are so far gone that you could methodically tear down each and every one of their assertions, employing evidence, science, logic to beat it to a pulp and they'd still start right up with the first one again.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[UnknowingFool]

The problem will never be that there isn't evidence. The problem will be that their faith in the conspiracy is stronger than any "evidence" that some has. Many of them have invested so much into the conspiracy that it would destroy their world view if they had to accept the evidence. Even things that are seemingly obvious will never be accepted. ie. "We can't see stars in the photos!" can easily be answered by someone with a small amount of photography experience. Some people I know who are birthers because they want to believe Obama was never legitimately elected. It is far easier for them to believe this than accept that in life, things don't always go to their wishes.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[Jason Levine]

This is the same phenomenon that keeps people sending money to the Nigerian scammers. When you've sent $10,000 to the scammers you have two choices:

a) Admit that you were tricked and you've lost $10,000

b) Keep believing that this is real and that this $1,000 you are sending will finally unleash millions of dollars on you.

The deeper you get in, the harder it is to escape by picking A. Conspiracy theorists are very deep (mentally, not monetarily).

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[Kjella]

You forgot young earth creationists, probably the most popular conspiracy theory around. Evolution, geology, paleoclimatology, dendrochronology, astronomy, radiocarbon dating, fossil record and probably a dozen other sciences I forget all a hoax. A false flag operation by either god himself as a test of faith or the devil playing tricks, you don't have to go to the 1% nutters - who mostly lack sanity - to find total rejection of evidence, science and logic.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[DrXym]

Young earth and old earth creationists. And holocaust deniers. And climate change deniers. They all play the same tricks - quote mining & simile abuse, nitpicking, cherry picking of facts, pseudo science etc.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

The clearest sign that there is a conspiracy is that there is no evidence for a conspiracy.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

People such as moon landing hoaxers, 9/11 truthers etc. are so far gone...

They're so far gone, that they really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

lol 9/11 truthers. Only a complete retard would be stupid enough to actually believe every lie told to them about how it was the "turists" and "Al Qaeda" and the "Taliban" who orchestrated those events. Especially given the irrefutable evidence and the fact that any inquiries and investigations into that day have been utterly blockaded and crushed from day 1. If you want to make fun of truthers, make fun of Obama birthers or whatever they're called.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[barc0001]

Yup. They have a special mindset. Reminds me of a podcast of This American Life I heard a few months back:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/293/a-little-bit-of-knowledge

If you listen to Act Three, you hear this in full effect. Bob Berenz the electrician is CONVINCED he has found a problem with the understanding of physics and anyone who tries to prove otherwise is not paying attention to what he says, "doesn't get it" or is in on maintaining the "big science" status quo. The reality is he's made several basic errors in his own version and is unwilling to accept any explanation of them.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Operation Northwoods was a hoax and the NSA definitely doesn't spy on citizens. Qualitatively difficult to discern from the other conspiracies. I really hate it when my conspiracies don't line up the way I like.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[pitchpipe]

People such as moon landing hoaxers, 9/11 truthers etc. are so far gone that you could methodically tear down each and every one of their assertions, employing evidence, science, logic to beat it to a pulp and they'd still start right up with the first one again.

Sounds like a substitute for religion.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[Altrag]

Climate change deniers are a bit out of place in that group. While its pretty obvious to any sane person that climate change will (and in fact is) happening, we aren't yet to the point where it HAS happened (at least not in a big enough way to be obvious to anyone who wants to ignore science in the first place.)

Also, strongly suspect (and this may just be my own personal conspiracy theory) that most of the biggest/loudest climate change deniers are in league with the large energy and similar companies who stand to lose a lot if climate change regulation comes into play. Of course the loud (but "sane", in the selfish-I-just-want-money way) ones spark the idea in the actual crazies and it builds from there.

On the other hand, there is no such monetary incentive for anyone giving any fucks whether the universe was blinked into existence by a supernatural being 6k years ago or a multidimensional brane fart 14b years ago. People who choose to deny the evidence in favor of some arbitrary (and officially denied, assuming these folk are Catholic-derived and not some other Christian branch) interpretation of a 2000 year old book have no reason for their views other than being legitimate nutters.

Same with the holocaust. Except some of those people are still alive so the deniers are pretty much telling the people that watched their friends and families being abused, tortured and killed that its all in their heads. But the last of them will only be around another couple of decades at most and then there will be nothing but a terrible tale in the history books that hopefully future generations will take to heart and not repeat. The only people with any real incentive to deny the holocaust are those who might be called out for war crimes during that period.

Re:You can't sink a conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the whole bag of thoughtlessness... call it a conspiracy and you feel superior ..actually a good scientist should try to find alternative explanations... if it was not for the 'conspiracy theorists' we would not know how Big Tobacco poisoned people for a start.. it is healthy fro any society to have doubters and cynics and scientist are not always right.... the 'nutters' said when they saw photos of Mars 'they are rivers' and the scientists ALL denied it ..but now everyone accepts yes, they were rivers... so what if some conspiracy theories are wrong so are many scientific theories .. and proponents of unpopular scientific theories are just as die hard trying to defend their theory ...wake up and stop feeling so superior.. after all we all know that there was never any conspiracy to sell arms to Iran and use those funds to support the contras ..that is such a silly idea because it would have been illegal and an impeachable offence so no President would have authorised it ... ;-)

Sadly, it won't achieve anything. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

These moon-hoax wackjobs are so off the charts that they'll probably come up with some lame excuse to explain how Nvidia 'gamed' the system. . .

*sigh*

NVidia - The Way WE Were Meant To Be Played!

[Anonymous Coward]

NT

ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[Thud457]

I can't help but notice that Wikipedia STILL doesn't have a list of people Neil Armstrong has punched.

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[LWATCDR]

Actually Neil Armstrong never punched anybody he was always known to be a real gentleman and always seemed to live to a very high standard.
Buzz Aldrin is the one that punched the idiot Lunar Loon.
Frankly I am really torn over who, out of the two I admire most.

BTW Adam Curry should never been seen or heard from again in the tech community IMHO.

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Armstrong was so cool that he had people to punch other people for him! His best pal Buzz, for example. :-D

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[LWATCDR]

Let's all be honest Armstrong should be the ultimate tech poster boy. After walking on the Moon he became a college professor.

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[spire3661]

“I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow.” Neil Armstrong

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[chipschap]

Neil Armstrong was a 100% class act.

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[Curunir_wolf]

BTW Adam Curry should never been seen or heard from again in the tech community IMHO.

He's a radio personality and an MTV VJ. What do you expect?

He is, especially with his latest partner John C., far too entertaining to be banned from the "tech community" - even when there are no new phones (and, thus, no "tech news").

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[davydagger]

Buzz, hands down.

at least for being an 80 year old man still capable of knocking out fucking retard still in what should have been his prime if his brain wasn't rotten.

And he did an AMA on reddit, and has otherwise adapted to net culture quite well.

There was a nice pic of him with his stingray 'vette right before he shot up in space.

You might be cool, but you'll never be Buzz Aldrin cool.

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[Citizen of Earth]

Buzz never punched anybody! The tape was faked! You can see that the shadows are all wrong!

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[rioki]

+1 funny

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[LWATCDR]

I expect better from the tech community. If the tech world can rally around the destruction anyone that says anything homophobic why do they tolerate someone that called Neil Armstrong a liar less than a week after his death?

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[syn3rg]

+1 funny; clever to boot.

Re:ya'll a bunch of lazy slobs!

[RockDoctor]

Who punched Buzz Aldrin? Hoooo, that guy is going to get a battering when the nerds catch up with him.

A I recall

[jetkust]

The conspiracy pretty much ended when Buzz Aldrin punched Bart Sibrel in the face on camera.

Re:A I recall

[Tablizer]

when Buzz Aldrin punched Bart Sibrel in the face on camera.

That event was arguably better than the Eagle landing itself.

That was one medium punch for a man, one giant leap for troll riddance.

What some vids don't show is that Bart kept following and harassing him multiple times before the punch. Buzz would walk somewhere else to avoid him, and Bart would soon follow, sticking the Bible in his face and taunting him. If you didn't see the whole thing, it may look like Buzz was unreasonable. It shows that video evidence can strip out context if not complete.

Re:A I recall

[Anonymous Coward]

The first Youtube result that turned up on Google had the complete encounter. Buzz showed great restraint in only decking him. I probably would've made sure he got some papercuts while he removed that bible from his ass.

Re:A I recall

[sribe]

What some vids don't show is that Bart kept following and harassing him multiple times before the punch. Buzz would walk somewhere else to avoid him, and Bart would soon follow, sticking the Bible in his face and taunting him. If you didn't see the whole thing, it may look like Buzz was unreasonable. It shows that video evidence can strip out context if not complete.

There is actually more to the story than even that. Very soon after it happened, the little fuck sent out his video, in which he challenges Aldrin to swear to the truth of the moon landing, and BOOM, Aldrin punches him. But there were bystanders who also recorded the incident, and all their videos had the little fuck yelling "YOU'R A LIAR AND A COWARD AND", and BOOM, Aldrin punches him. In other words, the little fuck actually edited the video and changed what he was saying in a pathetic attempt to make Aldrin look bad.

Re:A I recall

[Tablizer]

Being one of the most well-known astronauts, Buzz should probably not be out in public without a bodyguard. Let the bodyguard bop the guy; less court risk and paper-work for Buzz.

Re:A I recall

[Tablizer]

The conspiracy pretty much ended when Buzz Aldrin punched Bart Sibrel in the face on camera.

Buzz: "I was merely demonstrating the formation of craters that match our surface photos."

Re:A I recall

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't he also file charges against Aldrin for assault?

Charges which the judge basically laughed at, because he was being such a prick that he was basically asking for it.

Alleged

[Anonymous Coward]

I just find it amusing that the western media and population always say "alleged" when discussing murderrers, thieves, rapists and criminals that blatantly did their crime, yet when it comes to the moon landing, a topic that has so much doubt in the whole world, they refrain from using that word.

Regardless if it did happen or not.

Re:Alleged

[Anonymous Coward]

uh...they say "alleged" if the person has not been convicted yet, because if they were to say otherwise before the person was actually convicted, they could be sued up the ass. Who doesnt know this?

Re: Alleged

[Anonymous Coward]

That "doubt" is close to non existing outside the US, so much for "world".

Re: Alleged

[Anonymous Coward]

Per Wikipedia:

In a 1994 poll by The Washington Post, 9% of the respondents said that it was possible that astronauts did not go to the Moon and another 5% were unsure.[192] A 1999 Gallup Poll found that 6% of the Americans surveyed doubted that the Moon landings happened and that 5% of those surveyed had no opinion,[193][194][195][196] which roughly matches the findings of a similar 1995 Time/CNN poll.[193]

A 2000 poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation (ru) () in Russia found that 28% of those surveyed did not believe that American astronauts landed on the Moon, and this percentage is roughly equal in all social-demographic groups.[199][200][201] In 2009, a poll held by the United Kingdom's Engineering & Technology magazine found that 25% of those surveyed did not believe that men landed on the Moon.[202] Another poll gives that 25% of 18–25-year-olds surveyed were unsure that the landings happened.[203]

I would be fascinated to see a breakdown by country, but as far as I can tell no international poll has been done. The limited polling that has been done in other countries suggests they are much more likely to believe that the moon landing was a hoax. Sorry to burst your anti-American bubble.

yxuO Fail It?!

[Anonymous Coward]

has steadil7 show that FreeBSD

I've almost given up on debunking

[istartedi]

I've almost given up on debunking conspiracy theories. Those who believe in them, BELIEVE in them. It's like trying to debunk somebody's religion.

Re:I've almost given up on debunking

[Mr D from 63]

Interesting article on Conspiracy nuts; http://www.slate.com/articles/...

The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren’t really skeptics. Like the rest of us, they’re selective doubters. They favor a worldview, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It’s about the omnipotence of elites.

Re:I've almost given up on debunking

[Registered Coward v2]

I've almost given up on debunking conspiracy theories. Those who believe in them, BELIEVE in them. It's like trying to debunk somebody's religion.

I find they eventually come around to "you're part of the conspiracy..."

Re:I've almost given up on debunking

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a deep truth you may as well try and convince Americans that that abomination they call football is not actually football.

Re:I've almost given up on debunking

[cyberchondriac]

Especially the 911 "truthers". For a portion of them, it IS about religion... or anti-Zionism, at least. It's like trying to talk a rabid dog out of having rabies.

Re:I've almost given up on debunking

[istartedi]

Interesting indeed. They condense the conspiracy mindset into "motivated skepticism". I have recently thought of it as "jumping the gun gone full tard". I think we all jump to conclusions or fill in the blanks sometimes. The conspiracist, IMHO, just takes normal gun-jumping and blank-filling to the extreme. They hold to the positions into which they've jumped, latch onto jumps made by others, and turn it into a whole new culture. I also can't believe that a certain amount of pride doesn't come in. Testosterone is a helluva drug. How many of these guys would rather run with a posse of moon-bats than admit they're wrong? Picture the Fonz on his motorcycle. "What? The Moon landing wasn't faked? You mean I was www---ww--w-w-wrrr....

Re:I've almost given up on debunking

[Anonymous Coward]

Just ignore them. People who believe in them aren't worth arguing with.

Re: I've almost given up on debunking

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, now, that's an insult to religion.

Re:I've almost given up on debunking

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if I would count as one of them truthers or not. I personally have no clue what actually happened and probably never will. All I do know is that the official story is full of holes and inconsistency and the fact they refused an independent investigation while simultaneously recycling the remains before they even properly did one of their own is a bit suspicious.

Whatever the truth really is, the government kinda baited them with this one themselves with their actions. And when the documents were declassified a couple years back and it came out that they government was mulling around with doing a false flag event a couple decades ago as an excuse to go to war (was shot down but they actually considered it enough to put it in writing), just kinda fueled that fire that they did it again and followed though.

My view on it, I don't know if they did it, I don't know if we did it, I don't know if someone else did it, I just know it isn't what the official story states.

scoreboard

[turkeydance]

when your opponent (Soviet Union) agrees, then you did it.

Re:scoreboard

[Anonymous Coward]

The Soviets were part of it too. After all, they too knew there are Nazis on the Moon but don't want to admit it.

Re:scoreboard

[Trepidity]

Plus they were afraid that if they exposed the U.S.'s fake moon landing, the U.S. would expose their fake Sputnik. ;-)

Re:scoreboard

[Anonymous Coward]

who in Russia would believe the U.S if we said Sputnik was fake? For that matter who would believe the Russians if they said the moon landing was fake?

Re:scoreboard

[Anonymous Coward]

Conspiracy theorists.

This just in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Graphics card maker admits to faking moon landing. Film at 11.

Re:This just in...

[Tablizer]

Indeed. They could have created a whole product line around it, like The Sims, Hoaxing Edition.

"Buy Bigfoot Footprint Simulator II, Shaq Silver-Foot Edition also, and get Crop Circle Sims for freeeee!"

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to lump all "conspiracy theorists" into 1 nice derogatory stereotype that the slashsheep modded up to infinity.

I guess it's cool for me to say that all fagots are HIV carrying scum, and even if they deny they have HIV, they'll just go get some other STD instead.

See how I did that?

Doesn't matter though. Operation Mockingbird has already fucked your entire perception of what it is to be human. And yes that "conspiracy" turned out to be true, along with many many others.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Really dude? Yes, I get the point, but a gratuitously homophobic slur was the hypothetical that you decided to go with there?

You've got issues.

Sleight of hand

[Registered Coward v2]

nVidia clearly wants to distract attention from the true flaw - shadows. Everyone knows there are no shadows in a vacuum.

Maybe this should be posted in alt.folklore.urban?

After all, trolling /. is only slightly harder than rec.org.mensa

Is it healthy or unhealthy for society to have ...

[shoor]

I'm just wondering if when a society has conspiracy theorists speaking out freely, the 'tin hat' crowd, is that the sign of a healthy society or not.

It's bad I suppose when conspiracy theorists are flat out wrong, but would a repressive government try to silence them or do repressive governments only bother suppressing people who are telling the Truth?

Does it do harm in that when somebody really finds something bad going on people will tend to disbelieve them because of all the flakos (sort of like crying wolf too many times)?

Is there some sort of bell shaped curve of attitude towards what the establishment tells us in that a few people on one end of the curve will believe everything and bury their heads in the sand over any problem (like maybe global warming), and a few on the other end of the curve will leap at anything as a plot, while most people are somewhere in the middle? If there is such a curve, maybe it's characteristics (skew, standard deviation, etc) are what determine the 'health' of the society.

up next

[Cardoor]

prove that a building can collapse at free-fall speed!

Re:up next

[Anonymous Coward]

^ Parent is right.

Disprove moon-hoax!??
That's the difficulty of knocking over a drunk straw child compared to addressing physics of Building 7.

NASA+NSA=Nvida

[Anonymous Coward]

According to usually reliable sources, Nvida was just awarded a secret NASA/NSA contract worth more than $750M to develop custom hardware for the upcoming Mars landing hoax and future homeland security scenarios . So, of course they want to convince us that the moon landing was real!

the greatest generation

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, come on, his generation had octogenarian astronauts that punch annoying moon landing conspiracy theorists in the nose.

After that we had to settle for crazy stalker ex-girlfriends driving 17 hours cross-country in a diaper to ambush, kidnap and murder their rival.


I'm tellin' ya son, ol' Elon better be lining up a much more entertaining caliber of astronaut for us.

Does not matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Conspiracy theorist don't care if it was actually faked or not they just enjoy arguing with people. If the majority of people believed it was fake conspiracy theorist would tell you it's real.

Re:Does not matter

[Anonymous Coward]

In the meanwhile, they will organize a peacefull stand-off with law enforcement to continue denying grazing fees.

Let me tell you one thing I know about idiots....

Stupid

[mbone]

'We're going to debunk one of the biggest conspiracies in the world,'

Anyone who takes this seriously is too stupid to take seriously.

It proves the conspiracy theorists right (sort of)

[jfengel]

To me, the real lede is buried pretty deeply in the article. The light on that particular photo IS anomalous. It sounds as if the conspiracy theorists were right about that, and that's kind of astute.

What's interesting is the resolution of the anomaly: it's light reflected off Neil Armstrong himself. Or rather, his large, bright-white suit. The NVidia guys showed that it reflects enough light to account for the lighting in the picture. If you don't include it, the lighting is off. I think that's pretty cool.

This doesn't, of course, settle anything for the conspiracy nuts, and I fully expect this to prove only that the NASA guys were wily bastards. And that sucks, because it sounds as if the brain power they're applying might well have turned up something more interesting if it weren't fixated on achieving a delusional result.

Interesting, but pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as getting conspiracy loonies to change their minds. Their idiotic notions, mostly underpinned by a profound ignorance and an evident lack of basic competence to understand that, have been thoroughly debunked over and over and over again. It does not matter.

ma8e

[Anonymous Coward]

Knows that ever prospects are would take about 2 trouble. It join in especially counterpart, 'doing something' to underscore GNAA (GAY NIIGER Here, please do

Just watch "Why we left the Earth" series

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Excellent documentary (free with Amazon Prime), shows why they went so many times. Also leaves no trace of doubt how it was done.

Modern moon surveys prove it was faked

[Overzeetop]

Look, all you have to do is look at the stills from the recent lunar orbters when taken over several orbits in differing light. You can *clearly* see the remains of the sound stage rigging they left there when they lifted off. None of that stuff was necessary for the landing - they just shot the video with faked effects right there and came back leaving all the video gear. You can't argue with that.

Re:Is it healthy or unhealthy for society to have

[Jason Levine]

If you're talking about the Moon landing conspiracy theorists, it doesn't do much harm. Other conspiracy theorists, though can cause harm. For example, the "vaccines cause autism" folks have convinces a lot of people to skip vaccinations for fear of giving their child autism. Enough people are skipping the vaccinations that herd immunity is breaking down and we're seeing outbreaks of disease. These diseases are hurting and even killing people.* So, yes, some conspiracy theorists are harmless but others (especially in large enough numbers) CAN cause harm.

* My son actually has autism (diagnosed Asperger's Syndrome / High Functioning Autism). Even if, despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary, vaccines gave him autism, I'd rather he be autistic and alive than non-autistic and dead of measles/whooping cough/etc.

Aren't there mirrors?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not trolling... actually curious. Weren't mirrors placed on the face of the moon by the Apollo astronauts that reflect light pointed from the earth? Doesn't this prove astronauts were up there? I'm curious how the deniers account for the mirrors.

Re:Aren't there mirrors?

[doom]

Weren't mirrors placed on the face of the moon by the Apollo astronauts that reflect light pointed from the earth? Doesn't this prove astronauts were up there? I'm curious how the deniers account for the mirrors.

Without being up on the state-of-the-art in this field, I would guess that there are many variant scenarios. Maybe Apollo 8 was real (lunar orbit without landing), but they were nervous about getting Apollo 11 to work on time, so they did another Apollo 8 with some faked telemetry, but they actually did do some real landings later, with Apollo 12 and so on. Or maybe they never did a human landing, but they dumped some crud on the surface so that people playing with telescopes would see something that looked like traces of landings.

The question I would ask is why is it on this particular subject that some people have chosen to treat with aggressive, extreme skepticism. What makes a lunar landing seem so absurd to them that they'd rather believe anything else happened? Needless to say, there's a certain satisfiaction with feeling like you're one of the elite that knows The Truth, but still, there's plenty of those around...

Here's a Truth for you: there really are no lunar landing denialists, that's actually all just a foreign conspiracy intended to undermine belief in the American government and American technology.

Does not matter

[Skynyrd]

Whatever the issue - moon landing, anti-vaxers, Kenyan President. climate change... the deniers will deny.
Science will not change their minds. Evidence will not change their minds. Nothing will.

Ignore them and move on.

Star Trek: TNG Identity Crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Identity Crisis (4x18) in which Geordi La Forge uses the computer to simulate a scene using light to discover a shadow created by an unknown entity. http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Identity_Crisis_(episode)

Re:Star Trek: TNG Identity Crisis

[wonkey_monkey]

Almost. He discovers the shadow which is in the recording, then has the computer extrapolate the shape of the object that cast the shadow.

Fake images

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon landing were real.
But the actual landscape was terrible and cameras didn't work well.

So, they used Kubrik's fake shoots. ;-)

Take 2:That's one small step for _A_ man, one g...

[An dochasac]

Moon landing take 2: Ok Neil, but this time you need to say, "One step for A man... one giant leap for mankind." Don't flub your line or "One small step fur man" will be in the history books.

911 Conspiracy take 2: The first take was Ok but we need to swap out the Saudis and Egyptian hijackers. You guys are supposed to be our allies. Can we get at least one Iranian, Iraqi or Afghani hijackers? How the heck are we gonna start a war? How about a North Korean?

Nvidia is part of the conspiracy

[MildlyTangy]

Can we please stop the use of logic, deductive reasoning and empirical evidence when debunking conspiracy theories? It is a complete waste of time due to the first rule of conspiracy theories:

Rule #1 of Conspiracy Theories: Any and all evidence debunking a conspiracy is part of the conspiracy.

The typical response will be that NVidia is part of the conspiracy, therefore all results from Nvidia are completely and utterly wrong in every possible way.

Trying to convince a conspiracy theorist that he/she is wrong is akin to trying to convince the Pope that god indeed does not exist. You are wasting your time no matter how right you are.

Re:It proves the conspiracy theorists right (sort

[Ichijo]

I fully expect this to prove only that the NASA guys were wily bastards.

Yes, NASA put a lot of effort into making the details perfect enough to remain convincing over four decades later. Maybe it would have been easier to put a man on the moon!

no

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it? Does it really?

Because I'm pretty sure a HARDWARE based GI render of a simulated moon isn't going to be that accurate. Hardware rendering is terrible, you can literally ask every person who does 3D rendering.

Not to mention, it doesn't explain why there was wind on the moon in the moon landing videos. You aren't going to debunk anything. Ignoring also that even with GI, it's VERY easy - if you know what you're doing - to still control the lightning conditions by using diffusers, light blockers, and other tools.

Re:It proves the conspiracy theorists right (sort

[wonkey_monkey]

I'm not sure conspiracy theorists ever got that far in their reasoning. It's always seemed to be enough for them that Aldrin is lit at all, because as we all know, light doesn't reflect in a vacuum. Or it only reflects once. Or something.

Are all transsexuals stalkers like you?

[Anonymous Coward]

BarbHudson = AC "Count Stalkula" (or are you quoted doing so not truth) http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ? Doesn't look like a conspiracy there "Barb" or "Tom" (whatever) with you telling others to harass others here, now does it? Too bad your psycho journal only backfired on you when you called apk a hater and you tried telling us adblock is better than hosts when apk shot you down 15 to nothing there, lol http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

A loony online stalker, like you?

[Anonymous Coward]

BarbHudson = AC "Count Stalkula" (or are you quoted doing so not truth) http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ? Doesn't look like a conspiracy there "Barb" or "Tom" (whatever) with you telling others to harass others here, now does it? Too bad your psycho journal only backfired on you when you called apk a hater and you tried telling us adblock is better than hosts when apk shot you down 15 to nothing there, lol http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

us conspiracy theorists have moved on

[Anonymous Coward]

to bigger and brighter things.... ghosts and bigfoots

Piling on the dumbass train to boring-town

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes me sick and typifies why I don't bother logging in to slashdot or giving much of a fuck about these comments.

Generally, people are lumping in all conspiracy theories under one giant ass-hat idiot category. Yes, there's a lot of idiots out there who see conspiracy in anything and much of what you say applies to them. But to make the leap to every single conspiracy theory is outright false, that all of the mainstream narratives and government claims are true... All that says to me is that you haven't done enough research and read enough history. History is full of real conspiracies. There are dozens that have occurred in the US in the past century that are verified 100% real conspiracies. Am I talking about 9/11 or the moon landings? No. But is there plenty of seriously fishy facts surrounding 9/11? Hell yes. Or the JFK assassination.

Hell, Enron was a conspiracy. The Libor rate fixing was a conspiracy. The financial crash a few years back: another conspiracy.

You have the same mindset and are probably in the same part of the Venn diagram as staunch athiests who will absolutely refuse to believe any evidence of psi effects in the face of thousands of experiments with real statistically valid results that show that there is something going on there. Another part of that Venn diagram being the religious idiots who will staunchly ignore any and all evidence that their religion is wrong/made-up long ago.

The thing is, science, just to use an example, is advanced by people who question the dominant narrative, who find evidence conflicting with it, and work very hard to overcome the immense resistance that the broader community exhibits against these novel theories. It's always been the case. It took decades for science to accept that hearts pump blood, for example. This kind of thing happens every time, and good scientists know it, and you all act like this same basic rule doesn't apply to real world events and history. You gotta do the research. And yes, there are nutjobs who will construe the facts to fit their theory, but this same dynamic goes for athiesm, religion, materialism, etc.

So I AM NOT SAYING THE APOLLO LANDINGS WERE A HOAX. I'm saying it's repugnant to watch people pile onto the camp of EVERY SINGLE DAMN CONSPIRACY THEORY IS PATENTLY AND OBVIOUSLY WRONG. And I would bet that none of you that say that will ever make a truly novel scientific discovery. Or experience actual ESP. It's amazing what the mind can block out because of belief. And this DOES NOT JUST APPLY TO THE RELIGIOUS.

I know one...

[Kittenman]

My brother-in-law is a Apollo hoax believer. He challenged me once to debate the arguments for and against. I replied (quoted someone) 'You can't have a rational argument with an irrational person".

By the way, he's also into water divining... but that doesn't always work, for some reason. Now, there's a thing...


(Americans - the moon landings were among your finest achievements. In my opinion, history and the human race in general owes you a debt).

Re:I know one...

[captbob2002]

...(Americans - the moon landings were among your finest achievements....

Thank you. I wish we'd some something equally noteworthy in the last 40 years.

watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj5r3jXhV2Q

Re:watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

and this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4veJ5PpIT0

Re:watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

and also, this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo5w0pm24ic

We have never put, nor returned, a man, to or from, the moon. And we are not the only ones to have faked space exploration. We did not have the technology to do it then, much like we don't now.

Re:watch this

[Golden_Rider]

and also, this https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

We have never put, nor returned, a man, to or from, the moon. And we are not the only ones to have faked space exploration. We did not have the technology to do it then, much like we don't now.

All three videos you posted just regurgigate the same old hoax arguments which have been debunked countless times. For good examples of the debunking, just go to e.g. http://www.clavius.org/index.h... or watch any of the videos (on youtube) by e.g. Phil Plait / astrobrant2 / GreaterSapien (or any of the countless others). Don't even mention Jarrah White, watch the astrobrant2 videos for debunking of his crazy theories.

Also good: Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses (among other stuff) the moon landing hoax with Joe Rogan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Re:watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, friend. What technology are we missing to go to the moon? Answer that question.

It'll never fly

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is explaining how the moon lander was able to lift off and leave the moon's surface when it had never been flown before. The paraphernalia necessary to launch a spacecraft from earth was not available on the moon.

Re:Take 2:That's one small step for _A_ man, one g

[Black Parrot]

Moon landing take 2: Ok Neil, but this time you need to say, "One step for A man... one giant leap for mankind." Don't flub your line or "One small step fur man" will be in the history books.

Producer: No! Leave it in - a minor human slip will make it more believable.

911 Conspiracy take 2: The first take was Ok but we need to swap out the Saudis and Egyptian hijackers. You guys are supposed to be our allies. Can we get at least one Iranian, Iraqi or Afghani hijackers? How the heck are we gonna start a war? How about a North Korean?

Turns out that the demographics didn't have much effect on where the war was started.

Re:Is it healthy or unhealthy for society to have

[Solandri]

I'm just wondering if when a society has conspiracy theorists speaking out freely, the 'tin hat' crowd, is that the sign of a healthy society or not.

It's bad I suppose when conspiracy theorists are flat out wrong, but would a repressive government try to silence them or do repressive governments only bother suppressing people who are telling the Truth?

Does it do harm in that when somebody really finds something bad going on people will tend to disbelieve them because of all the flakos (sort of like crying wolf too many times)?

There's a subtle distinction here that gets lost in our modern society (mainly by the media) which tends to look only at results while ignoring the process to get those results.

Skepticism is healthy. If you're skeptical that NASA landed on the moon, then by all means you should be free to ask questions, do tests and experiments to determine the truth of the matter to your satisfaction. Implicit in this is keeping an open mind that your skepticism may be wrong.

Where it crosses the line into conspiracy theory is when you assume a certain conclusion, and only accept supporting evidence, while ignoring evidence to the contrary, That's unhealthy.

Unfortunately, pure skepticism is impractical and an evolutionary dead-end. If you were skeptical about everything, you wouldn't be able to function. You'd second-guess every decision you made, every thing you thought you saw, anything you were told. Is the news really broadcasting the Presidential debate, or are they slyly editing it to make their preferred candidate sound better? Is it really safe to change lanes, or did you miss a car in the other lane somehow? Did you read what I just wrote accurately, or did you misread and so you should go back and re-read it to make sure? At some point you have to make the leap from 90%-99% certainty to assuming it's 100% just so you can make a decision and choose an action. That's why engineers tend to be more religious than scientists - engineers are forced to make design decisions in the face of incomplete data all the time, while scientists by the nature of their work are expressly forbidden from doing so. So engineers are more comfortable making that "leap of faith." But as long as you understand you're making that "leap of faith" for the purpose of making a timely decision, you're not into conspiracy theory territory yet. You only cross that line when you refuse to revisit your conclusion in the face of contrary evidence.

And no, conspiracy theorists are not always wrong. They were right about global warming. I'd estimate that probably a third to half the people who believe in global warming do so because they want it to be true for environmental protection reasons. The data had nothing to do with it aside from affirming a conclusion that they'd already reached and were going to stick to no matter what the data said. i.e. They are conspiracy theorists. In that respect I don't consider many global warming proponents to be any different from global warming deniers. The time just happened to match up with the hands of their broken clock. If it had turned out that the Earth was cooling and we needed to pump industrial quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere to forestall another ice age, they would've been the deniers, not the other way around.

tl;dr - Skepticism is better, but you need some conspiracy theory-like tendencies in order to function.

Global illumination is easy, just not for games

[loufoque]

CGI does not use the same technology as games.
Games should render fast a d uses cheap tricks to implement lighting, for CGI there is no such requirement.

Re:Global illumination is easy, just not for games

[abies]

CGI also has a huge requirement for being fast. It is different kind of fast - maybe 15 minutes instead of 15ms per frame, but you cannot just implement trivial brute-force algorithms everywhere and hope for things to work well. Good algorithms will cut your processing time by factor of 100 in CGI environment - and I assure you, everybody enjoys seeing their scene rendered overnight instead of waiting a month for that.

Re:Global illumination is easy, just not for games

[Shados]

For CGI movies there sure is such a requirement.

A CGI movie takes some time to produce, and the release dates are often set in stone. With the amount of frames they have, if they take too long to render, they can only render them a few times before launch. That's obviously no good, since humans need to make mistake and test stuff. Crazy amount of work goes into making these render as fast as possible. The requirement just isn't 60fps, obviously.

uhhhh

[SuperDre]

but how does it actually debunkt the conspiracy theory?

I dont trust this proof

[mnt]

There is no question that humans were on the moon. But this is just a clever marketing ploy, and is not the least bit convincing or scientific to me.

fact about debunkers

[Anonymous Coward]

some facts about all debunkers in the same vein that anyone who challenges status quo is a conspiracy nut ...

1) debunkers think they are smart, like the emotionally frail child like mentality they have, they need to exert their ideas regardless of how they are generally not educated enough.

2) debkunkers blindly follow status quo, coz it is easier to fit in and laugh along with the rest of the idiots than be singled out as the stupidest by themselves.

3) no all conspiracy theorists believe in all the same conspiracies, ie some believe in fake moon landings (just like debunkers believes that money can magic technology) but others don't.

4) the reason ALL debukers are wrong is that they think they are right but can not prove it, otherwise they would. their understanding of "the simplest answer is right" is flawed as it the misinformation they believe.

5) when a conspiracy is proven, ie nsa spying on people, they move the goal posts and say "well it was obvious".

read the posts above and see the inflammatory language and mixing of moon landing with 911 and you'll see how debunkers are just religious fanatics who do not want their world view to change as it scares them.

BULL!

[sabbede]

The moon is a hoax!

Circular reasoning? Circling the drain?

[rcharbon]

How does showing how to fake the lunar landing images show that they weren't faked? Articles like this, that take the Apollo deniers seriously, are much more of a problem than the deniers themselves. Also, nice ad for Nvidia, Slashdot.

an important test

[slashmydots]

I don't think they should have done this. The moon landing conspiracy was a very important thing in society. It lets me know which of my friends and associates are complete and utter morons. Like almost too stupid to function in society. It's like the mother of all litmus tests for stupidity and now they damaged it.

Now NVIDIA...

[Stubbyfingers]

Is part of the CABAL!

Just kidding!

I really wanted Buzz Aldrin to slug that guy twice.

NOT KIDDING about that.

Re:Is it healthy or unhealthy for society to have

[doom]

It's bad I suppose when conspiracy theorists are flat out wrong, but would a repressive government try to silence them or do repressive governments only bother suppressing people who are telling the Truth?

At last, someone with an interesting question concerning "The Theory of Conspiracy".

I think the answer is that only a very stupid repressive government would bother suppressing conspiranoids, a slicker operation would like having conspiranoids around because no one takes them seriously and they can easily be used to discredit belief in the actual conspiracies that the powers-that-be are engaged in.

My favorite video on all-of-YouTube: moon hoax not

[Anonymous Coward]

An excellent opportunity to share my favorite video on all of YouTube: "moon hoax not"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU

To nitpick further

[DrYak]

Now think about it this way:
yes, indeed a retro flector always bounces signal back to the source, no matter it its orientation is perfect.

BUT a better aligned retroflector offers a bigger cross-section: it will occupy a wider spot in the field-of-view of the laser.
A perfectly aligned retroflector will offer 100% of its surface exposed to a laser.
A 45 retroflector, will only offer a fraction ( cos(45) = sqrt(2)/2 ) of its surface.

So orientation *has* an incidence on the quality of the return signal.

But as you mention:
- so does size
- so does quality (lunokhod2 got covered by dust, to the point of the radiator malfunctionning and the isotope thermal generator overheating the rover, some of that dust could cover the retroflector a bit)