Are The Moon Landings Fake?

 

The Laws Of Physics Enable It- Get Over It Said: Neil Degrasse Tyson Image Credit: NASA

Neil deGrasse Tyson has chimed in on one of the century's most intriguing conspiracy theories: were the Apollo Moon landings staged?

The astronomer was understandably certain that the Moon landings did, in fact, take place in a piece for Stephen Colbert's Late Show. While there is plenty of evidence to support this, deGrasse Tyson points out that faking such events would be extremely difficult. In fact, the true achievement is arguably easier to accomplish than the hoax.

"Of course," he said, "we landed on the Moon." "Think about how difficult it would be to stage a Moon landing."

"By the way, we've been to the Moon nine times, so we'd have to lie about not going nine times." "We'd have to fake it if two of them went around the Moon, came back, and didn't land," he continued.

"Are you aware of what that would entail?" It'd be so difficult to fake a Moon landing that it'd be easier to just go. It's possible because of the principles of physics — get over it."

A research published in 2016 looked into this topic and showed that huge conspiracies involving many people — in this example, the US government, scientists, and possibly Hollywood — would not go undiscovered for long, simply because collaborators would gossip about it. Dr. David Robert Grimes, a physicist and science communicator at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, investigated whether large-scale conspiracies were possible by devising equations that calculated the likelihood of a secret plot being either deliberately exposed by a whistleblower or inadvertently revealed by a blabbermouth.

He discovered that faking a phoney Moon landing would necessitate at least 411,000 individuals. To keep a pretty juicy secret, that's a lot of people. According to his calculations, with this many people, the secret would be revealed in just three years and eight months. Since Apollo 11, the first crewed mission to land on the Moon, took place more than 50 years ago, it's reasonable to assume the secret has been revealed.

Dr. Grimes also discovered that fewer than 1,000 people are required to maintain a secret plot going undiscovered for more than ten years. A storyline that will endure a century should have no more than 125 contributors. It's better to keep your circle of minions as small as possible if you're planning a secret supervillain-style prank on the globe.