Humans love conspiracy theories. From the JFK assassination, the Illuminati and the ‘deep state’, to vaccine distrust and ‘chemtrails’, the modern world is awash with beliefs in collusion and hoaxes.
How and why these baseless claims arise, and what maintains them, are complex questions. But one thing’s for sure: contrarian narratives are not going away.
More debunking
Here are 10 widely held falsehoods concerning space and our place within it, which we examine rationally.
It’s safe to say they don’t stand up to scrutiny…
Planet Earth is flat
Let’s start with perhaps the strangest conspiracy theory of all: that Earth is flat.
The basic premise is that ancient cultures were right – Earth is a circular disc that is perfectly stationary while the sky rotates above it.
Furthermore, the idea that Earth is a sphere is a villainous lie spread across millennia by an evil, secret establishment.
There are many reasons (or excuses) flat Earthers give for this belief: Earth looks flat; we don’t feel Earth moving; NASA has faked images of the spherical Earth; gravity doesn’t exist; ships don’t sink below the horizon; the tides are caused by Earth moving up and down; explorers who have discovered the edge of the world have been silenced; the Moon generates its own light; artificial satellites don’t exist… and so on.
All of these can be easily disproved or logically discounted.
Exposed!
Disproving the flat-Earth hypothesis is surprisingly easy – so easy that the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes did it in 240 BC.
You can actually perform a similar proof yourself. All you need are two synchronised clocks, two sextants
(or other devices for measuring angles in the sky), a car and a friend.
If you and your friend stand exactly 111km (68.9 miles) apart, but are at the same longitude, and both measure (at the same time) the angle of the star Polaris above the horizon, you will find the angle differs by 1˚.
There are only two possible explanations for this. First, if Earth is flat, Polaris is 6,371km (3,959 miles) above Earth’s surface.
Second, if Earth is a sphere, it has a radius of 6,371km.
We can go further and disprove the first possibility.
If Polaris were only 6,371km high, then if you travel 6,371km from the North Pole on a flat Earth, you have made an equilateral triangle and Polaris would be 45˚ above your horizon.
But do the measurement yourself and you will find Polaris is actually 32.6˚ above the horizon. This is irrefutable proof that Earth is a sphere, of radius 6,371km. Case disproved.
The Moon landings were a hoax
Sadly, NASA is the recipient of much distrust and derision from conspiracy theorists.
The agency is accused of faking climate-change data, faking the Apollo 13 disaster and faking Martian surface rovers.
But these accusations are dwarfed by the claim that humans never went to the Moon, a belief even more ubiquitous than the flat-Earth theory.
The idea has a long history, first appearing even before the first Apollo landing, and was undoubtedly given a boost by the 1977 movie Capricorn One, in which a manned mission to Mars is faked by NASA.
Conspiracy theorists point out that there are no stars in the sky in images taken from the lunar surface.
Or that shadows, backgrounds, and even footprints do not appear as expected.
They also often refer to the US flag ‘waving’ when the Moon has no atmosphere, or that astronauts would be killed by radiation while passing through Earth’s Van Allen belts.
Exposed!
Actually, all of the ‘proof’ for a faked Moon landing can be easily refuted.
For example, there are no stars in the lunar sky because photos were taken in full sunlight and therefore with short exposures.
The US flag only ‘flutters’ when it is moved by an astronaut.
The Van Allen belts present no danger to astronauts during the short time they spent within them.
But can we prove that humans went to the Moon? Yes, we can.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has imaged several of the Apollo landing sites from lunar orbit.
Lunar module descent stages, the tracks of lunar rovers and even disturbances by the astronauts themselves can clearly be seen.
Plus, laser ranging of the Moon is only possible because Apollo astronauts left behind special mirrors for the task.
Unfortunately, even these proofs are often discounted as merely part of the conspiracy and therefore faked.
The Apollo project employed about 400,000 people for a decade and cost about £19.1bn ($25.8bn) – more than £180bn or $250bn in today’s money.
Were all these people part of the conspiracy? What about scientists who have analysed Apollo rock samples? Has NASA managed to dupe all these people too?
Frankly, it would be far more costly and difficult to fake the Moon landings than to actually go to the Moon.
The government is hiding aliens from us
Modern science is pretty confident that Earth cannot be the only place in the Universe where life has emerged.
The Universe is so huge, so full of stars and planets, and so old, that life – even intelligent civilisations – probably exist elsewhere.
Currently, however, we have no evidence of life beyond our tiny planet.
This has not stopped the rise of the ‘alien conspiracy’, which proposes that governments around the world are already suppressing knowledge of, and contact with, alien beings.
This broad conspiracy theory includes the myth of ‘Area 51’, the appearance of unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), abductions and experimentation by aliens, and the Roswell incident.
Aligned with this is the belief that Earth was visited in prehistory by ‘ancient astronauts’, or that recently discovered interstellar asteroids or comets are really alien spacecraft.
Unproven!
Despite often-cited ‘evidence’ for aliens (and their collusion with governments), none of it stands up to thorough scientific scrutiny.
Claims are not repeatable, measurable, testable or unambiguous.
Most can be discounted, and those that can’t do not necessarily imply alien involvement; other unproven but possible explanations can easily be put forward.
Case unproven.
There’s a face on Mars
In July 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter took an image of the Martian surface that seemed to show a human face on Mars.
Later analysis showed that the face was just a trick of the light, the result of specific viewing and illumination angles.
Exposed!
Subsequent high-resolution imagery has revealed the face to be a perfectly natural Martian hill with some depressions that can, under the right conditions, give the appearance of a face.
Despite this, some commentators have declared this as evidence of lost Martian civilisations and ruined ancient cities.
The Black Knight spacecraft orbits Earth
A popular conspiracy theory holds that an extraterrestrial craft, dubbed ‘Black Knight’, is in orbit around Earth, and that its existence is being covered up.
Exposed!
This seems to be an amalgam of various myths and misunderstandings, and was probably inspired by a NASA photo of space debris taken during a Space Shuttle flight in 1998.
Nibiru is coming
The idea that Earth will be destroyed by a collision with a planet called Nibiru was first proposed in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, a Wisconsin woman who claims to have been abducted (and implanted) by aliens.
The ‘Nibiru cataclysm’ has since gained widespread attention.
Exposed!
There is no scientific evidence of a planet on a disastrous collision course with Earth.
There is a small possibility of a large Planet 9 (or Planet X) floating somewhere in the farthest reaches of the Solar System.
This could explain the observed clustering of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Even if eventually found, however, it would not be a threat to Earth.
The Moon is hollow
Some claim the Moon is hollow and may be an alien spaceship. This theory gained traction in the 1970s following several pseudoscientific publications.
Exposed!
It’s easy to show that the Moon isn’t hollow.
Data from seismometers placed on the Moon by Apollo astronauts, and countless orbital observations, clearly show the Moon has a solid interior with a thin crust, thick mantle and dense core.
Saturn’s hexagon is alien-made
During its mission to Saturn in 1981, NASA’s Voyager 1 probe discovered an odd hexagonal cloud feature around the planet’s north pole.
The Cassini mission confirmed it to be about 14,500km (9,009 miles) long.
Such an odd shape, which doesn’t often occur in nature, has led some to suggest intelligent design.
Exposed!
Numerous studies have shown that such shapes can easily form in turbulent rotating fluids. Nature can always surprise us.
NASA found a lost day
In the 1960s, a myth about a ‘lost day’ gained traction among evangelists.
An engineer named Harold Hill claimed that while working for NASA, a missing time period was uncovered when calculating space probe trajectories.
He claimed this proved the biblical story of God making the Sun stand still during Joshua’s battle with the Amorites.
Exposed!
Hill never worked for NASA, and the story is completely undocumented. Still, many believe that NASA found a missing day and is hiding the truth.
The Moon was green
More hoax than conspiracy, the infamous ‘green Moon’ meme began in 2016 with a single Facebook post claiming that on 29 May the Moon would turn green due to an alignment with Uranus, the first since 1847.
Exposed!
The hoax has resurfaced annually ever since. Despite its increasingly tongue-in-cheek tone, it’s still believed far and wide.
Sadly, no amount of reasoned debate can shake these 10 beliefs for true conspiracy followers.
Arming ourselves with clear, testable evidence is the best defence – but perhaps the healthiest response is to accept these theories as an often humorous quirk of human nature.
What conspiracy theories would you like to see debunked? Let us know by emailing contactus@skyatnightmagazine.com
