The moon

[Fitzroy]

The problem with conspiracy theorists is that supplying proof is simply used as more evidence of the conspiracy...

Make a telescope in Earth orbit that can see evidence of human activity on the moon's surface: it's fake because it's not being seen from Earth.

Make a telescope on the Earth's surface that can somehow see that tiny detail through atmospheric distortion : it's fake because the image is being manipulated.

Fly them to the Moon's surface and show them in person: it's fake because you planted that stuff there yesterday.

Etc.

I was in the comments section of a facebook post the other day about some paleontological post...... The creationists were out in force one chaps comment was along the lines of, "I've not experienced it so it is hokum". He didn't see the irony that he had no more experience of a flood 6000 yrs ago as the dinosaur making tracks 11million years ago. I think this is 'confirmation bias', if that's the correct term.

 

[guineafowl21]

I'm a non believer. Why haven't there been photos of the Stars & Stripes taken from Earth?

Even our best telescopes can’t resolve the image at that distance - it’s 250,000 miles away. Also, the colours are most likely bleached out by the solar radiation.

They did leave a mirror up there, and if you fire a laser at it, you’ll get the reflection about 2 seconds later.

 

[D_W]

Even our best telescopes can’t resolve the image at that distance - it’s 250,000 miles away. Also, the colours are most likely bleached out by the solar radiation.

They did leave a mirror up there, and if you fire a laser at it, you’ll get the reflection about 2 seconds later.

And somewhere on earth, a cat will chase it.

 

[--Tom--]

Have all the conspiracy theories you like.
Just maybe you are wrong.

The ONE thing that holds back our understanding, is the thing we called science.
Why - because the tools that have served us so well in the past, are limiting.
Our maths is an evolutionary tool - problem is that we cannot get beyond our basic axioms, so it is not evolving.

We have real number systems and complex number systems - but I suspect we have one simple problem in maths. That is the concept of zero.
Imagine a number system where zero did not exist.

No more problems of infinity.
No more problems of time
No more problems related to time travel

So yes, lets spend some money on space exploration.
BUT we should spend lots more on "discovering" a new system of maths.

And yes, I do think we will continue to waste money on "petty" wars. It seems to be a human trait.

I’ve pretty much stopped trying to reason with most conspiracists and instead engage in upping the ante instead - faked moon landing -> oh so your one of those people that believes in the moon
Anti mask- oh you believe those government spread rumours to hide the fact it messes with their facial recognition and lip reading satellites

 

[William2020]

The problem with conspiracy theorists is that supplying proof is simply used as more evidence of the conspiracy...

Make a telescope in Earth orbit that can see evidence of human activity on the moon's surface: it's fake because it's not being seen from Earth.

Make a telescope on the Earth's surface that can somehow see that tiny detail through atmospheric distortion : it's fake because the image is being manipulated.

Fly them to the Moon's surface and show them in person: it's fake because you planted that stuff there yesterday.

Etc.

That made me laugh so hard I hit ‘like’ twice!

 

[sploo]

That made me laugh so hard I hit ‘like’ twice!

Some years ago I heard a great story that there are US based conspiracy theorists who consider the nut job Alex Jones to be a government plant - put in place to give "credible" conspiracy theorists a bad name. I use "credible" in quotes, obviously.

 

[Jacob]

This thread, plus the cup in a bin thread, and other daft threads, have pushed me into getting a real life.
Bit scary but it's quite enjoyable.

What was the cup in a bin thread?
PS spotted it! Don't need to know any more about it!

 

[Spectric]

Maybe it is desperation, rather than fix and look after the lovely blue/green planet you live on get somewhere else ready for when the Earth becomes a toxic version of the moon at which point the moon becomes desirable. A much better use for the moon would be to take all the nuclear and radioactive material including everyones stockpiles of weapons and dump them there which would be a huge step towards cleaning up the planet.

 

[mudman]

Short answer... you'd need a telescope with something around a 100 meter diameter to have any chance of making out details that small at that distance: https://skyandtelescope.org/astrono...s-answers/can-you-see-astronauts-on-the-moon/

There's also the problem of "seeing". With larger telescopes (capable of resolving smaller detail at distance) atmospheric distortion becomes more of a factor; so as the article above notes, such a (huge) scope would also have to be in space.

Actually a lot bigger than that. If the flag is about 2m across (I think it's only 4ft but 2m will do), then that will subtend an angle at the earth that is a tiny fraction of an arcsecond, (about 0.00033). The Dawes limit for a telescope, or the smallest angular distance that can be resolved, is 116/D where D is the diameter of the objective in mm. So doing a bit of algebra and solving for D gives an objective size of 386m. The biggest one on Earth is something like 10m so nothing we currently have on Earth could image the flag.
However, even if we did have a c400m telescope, the atmosphere gets in the way, the effect of which is to bounce the image around so that it sort of blurs and means that there are limits to the size of object that can be viewed. The best 'seeing' on Earth rarely gets better than 0.5 arcseconds which means that anything smaller than that, e.g. our flag, will be a blurry mess and can't be resolved. It can be compensated for with some special adaptive optics but the upshot of all this is that, no, you can't see the flag from Earth through a telescope.

 

[guineafowl21]

Actually a lot bigger than that. If the flag is about 2m across (I think it's only 4ft but 2m will do), then that will subtend an angle at the earth that is a tiny fraction of an arcsecond, (about 0.00033). The Dawes limit for a telescope, or the smallest angular distance that can be resolved, is 116/D where D is the diameter of the objective in mm. So doing a bit of algebra and solving for D gives an objective size of 386m. The biggest one on Earth is something like 10m so nothing we currently have on Earth could image the flag.
However, even if we did have a c400m telescope, the atmosphere gets in the way, the effect of which is to bounce the image around so that it sort of blurs and means that there are limits to the size of object that can be viewed. The best 'seeing' on Earth rarely gets better than 0.5 arcseconds which means that anything smaller than that, e.g. our flag, will be a blurry mess and can't be resolved. It can be compensated for with some special adaptive optics but the upshot of all this is that, no, you can't see the flag from Earth through a telescope.

The flag was also planted upright, and therefore edge-on to us, making resolution even harder.

 

[mudman]

The flag was also planted upright, and therefore edge-on to us, making resolution even harder.

Depends whereabouts on the surface of the Earth you are it can present at all angles.

 

[doctor Bob]

Hows the retirement going @doctor Bob , is this what you mean by a real life where time is all yours and you reap the rewards of a working life?

No still going (work), loving it at present, lot of pressure and uncertainties but great fun. Playing a lot of golf and tinkering with some cars.

 

[guineafowl21]

Depends whereabouts on the surface of the Earth you are it can present at all angles.

I’m not sure about that. The way I’d calculate that is this:
Given the diameter of earth is about 12,000km, this is the max distance between viewing angles (at the equator). The max angle subtended from this distance to the moon (380,000km) is just under 2 degrees.

Like this:

Based on the angle at the moon being 2(arctan(6000/380,000)), assuming the flag is roughly central in the face we see, and the moon is of course tidally locked.

Edit: oops, those distances should be labelled in km, not m, but the ratio is the same.

 

[D_W]

The flag was also planted upright, and therefore edge-on to us, making resolution even harder.

There are a few pixelated pictures of the surface of the moon from ..I don't recall, maybe it was a fly by from a small observer. They show a smudge that is more shadow than flag as far as i've seen.

three flags - one of them with a signature that it was blown over, which one of the astronauts communicated leaving the moon? I'm not a real space nut, so names or terms - feel free to correct.

I didn't even know there were three flags before yesterday.

You could put a webcam on top of each of the flags looking at the other at all times and people would still say they were fake. The better the proof, the louder the claims will be that the stuff is fake.

 

[guineafowl21]

There are a few pixelated pictures of the surface of the moon from ..I don't recall, maybe it was a fly by from a small observer. They show a smudge that is more shadow than flag as far as i've seen.

three flags - one of them with a signature that it was blown over, which one of the astronauts communicated leaving the moon? I'm not a real space nut, so names or terms - feel free to correct.

I didn't even know there were three flags before yesterday.

You could put a webcam on top of each of the flags looking at the other at all times and people would still say they were fake. The better the proof, the louder the claims will be that the stuff is fake.

This is true. They took pics of the flag when they put it there. If some people think that’s fake, then they’d surely say the same even if we were able to photograph it from earth.

 

[Sandyn]

Have you seen the new book, Apollo Remastered Andy Saunders spent 10 years examining, scanning and enhancing the pictures taken on the mission. He has managed to squeeze an amazing amount of extra detail from the original negatives.

 

[Thingybob]

Wow never thought i wood ever meet anyone who used algebra after school

 

[guineafowl21]

Wow never thought i wood ever meet anyone who used algebra after school

*trigonometry

 

[Sandyn]

All I can say is..........This

 

[Thingybob]

*trigonometry

Was nt he in fools n horses