12 most ridiculous space fakes

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

It is unclear how anything from this list can be taken seriously at all.

1. The ninth planet of the solar system will destroy life on Earth

In April 2016, the New York Post tweeted: "A newly discovered planet could destroy the Earth this month."

The newspaper was referring to a hypothetical ninth planet at the edge of the solar system. Scientists suggest the possibility of its existence, because it could explain the orbital inclinations of some trans-Neptunian objects, for example Sedna, and other incomprehensible phenomena in the Kuiper belt. True, so far planet 9, or planet X, as it is also called, has not been discovered.

The video, which was produced by the New York Post, said that planet 9 would influence asteroids in the Kuiper belt, directing them with its gravity towards the Earth, and ultimately destroy life on it.

A similar pseudoscientific theory has been popular in the past. Planet X, called by the conspiracy theorists Nibiru, which has become a byword, supposedly had to approach the Earth in 2012 and destroy it with its gravitational influence.

However, this is nonsense. According to astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology, even if planet 9 exists, it cannot pose a threat to Earth. The distance separating us is unimaginably great, and this object will not come close to us in any way.

2. The Chinese could not find traces of the American landing on the moon

In 2019, the Chinese probe "Chang'e-4" landed on the moon, which at the same time brought with it the second "Jade Hare" - a small lunar rover on six wheels.

He studied the soil in the Von Karman crater, found there olivine, a green mineral, measured the level of radiation, took pictures, showed everyone the greatness of the People's Republic of China and safely went into hibernation on December 22, 2020. There is just one problem …

Chang'e-4 did not find any traces of American astronauts on the Moon.

And their landings, for a second, it seemed like there were six! There is only one conclusion: the Americans did not fly to the moon.

This news appeared on the Internet at the beginning of 2019 and spread through Russian-language news portals as well. She was first seen on the WorldNewsDailyReport.com website. But this resource is hardly worth believing unconditionally: this is a site with comic news, full of headlines in the spirit of “A cannibal killer stabbed and ate 23 pizza delivery men, 6 Jehovah's Witnesses and 2 postmen in the last 7 years” and “A man from Texas confessed, that he kidnapped 79 people to inject rectal probes."

Chang'e-4 landed in the crater, Von Karman, and it is located on the far side of the moon, where the Apollo, for a second, did not fly. It is not surprising that the lunar rover did not notice any traces of landing there. It's like trying to find Red Square by searching Brazil.

And yes, for that matter, I did not find traces of the landing of the Soviet lunar rovers "Chang'e-4" either, but this is not a reason to assert that they did not exist.

3. Gagarin is not the first cosmonaut

As everyone knows, on April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to enter low-earth orbit. He took off on the Vostok-1 spacecraft, made a revolution around the Earth and successfully returned back.

The way the Soviets famously launched a man into space the first time gave rise to a mountain of conspiracy theories in the West. Allegedly, Gagarin was not the first person sent into orbit, but the first survivor. Before him, Alexei Ledovskikh, Sergei Shiborin, Andrei Mitkov, Maria Gromova, Gennady Zavodovsky, Ivan Kachur, Alexei Belokonov, Alexei Grachev, Gennady Mikhailov and a dozen other cosmonauts allegedly flew there.

All of them died during the flights, but Soviet propaganda hid it so as not to lose face on the world stage. That’s a bloody regime.

True, in reality it turned out that Zavodovsky, Kachur, Belokonov, Grachev and Mikhailov were only testers of the Cosmonauts before Gagarin. Exposing the myth of space technology on earth and into space have never been sent. And the names of Ledovskikh, Shiborin, Mitkov and Gromova are absent in the cosmonaut corps, as well as there are no mentions of such people in the archives of the Ministry of Defense. Moreover, in reality, dogs flew on the ships on which they allegedly died.

In general, assumptions that the Soviets secretly launched people, but did so unsuccessfully, appeared in the press even before Gagarin's flight. The head of the cosmonaut corps Nikolai Kamanin wrote about this in his diary on February 12, 1961:

“After the launch of the rocket to Venus on February 4, many in the West believe that we unsuccessfully launched a man into space; Italians even seemed to hear groans and intermittent Russian speech. All this is completely unfounded inventions. In fact, we are working hard on a guaranteed astronaut landing. From my point of view, we are even overly careful in this. There will never be a complete guarantee of a successful first flight into space, and a certain amount of risk is justified by the greatness of the task. I agreed with Korolev and Keldysh that before a man's flight into space, at least two successively completely successful flights of ships with dummies should be carried out."

Here is a photo of the "cosmonaut" who flew into space in front of Gagarin:

This is a mannequin, his name is Ivan Ivanovich, and it was sold for $ 189,500 to the private collection of businessman Ross Perot.

4. ISS is not real

We have already talked about "flat-earthers" - people who believe that our planet is actually disk-shaped. And under the many videos on YouTube dedicated to space exploration, you can often find comments in the spirit of "The International Space Station does not exist, all astronauts are actors, and videos from the ISS are filmed in a pool or in a dive plane to create the effect of weightlessness." Apparently, this is written by the guys who believe in the Flat Earth.

True, they cannot explain in any way why someone should bother so much.

But such statements do not stand up to scrutiny.

First, you can simply make out the ISS, because it is the third brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon. The station is very close - about 400 kilometers from the Earth. Binoculars will be enough, and many still manage to notice it with the naked eye.

NASA has even released a guide for amateur photographers looking to take a picture of the station. You can find out where she is at the moment using an interactive map or a mobile application.

Secondly, 15 countries participate in the ISS development program; in the entire history of the station's existence, 242 cosmonauts have visited it, tens of thousands of people are involved in its maintenance. And it is not easy to believe that NASA has managed to bribe, intimidate or deceive such a large number of people. In addition, research on the ISS was carried out by hundreds of independent scientific organizations and institutes, a list of which can be found here.

Thirdly, radio amateurs, including our compatriots, have repeatedly received the ISS astronauts' radio communications. There are even instructions on how to do this.

Fourthly, the reasoning that the frames from the ISS are being filmed in a pool or in a dive plane are also meaningless. Take a look at a couple of videos made by astronauts, for example. - from Andrew Morgan and Luca Parmitano, - from Sunita Williams. Here you can see that they are clearly not swimming in the pool - they talk too much for people under water.

And the artificial weightlessness created in diving planes lasts only a couple of tens of seconds, which is clearly not enough to create such videos. Yes, and in airplanes a little closer than on the ISS.

By the way, here's an interesting fact. Aircraft for simulating zero gravity American astronauts jokingly call Vomit Comet - "Vomit comet". Guess why.

5. SpaceX rockets are also fake

If the ISS conspiracy theory isn't enough for you, here's another one. As everyone probably knows, Elon Musk is a fraudster who could never invent anything worthwhile, that is, flying. This means that the rockets of his company SpaceX are a grandiose fake.

In the video of the landing of the steps, they are allegedly lowered on cables in front of the camera. And sometimes they just interrupt the broadcast - and then they show a rocket standing on a barge, as during the first manned launch in May 2020. Completely lazy.

In fact, to prove that SpaceX rockets really fly and do not descend on any cables is quite simple: just look at one of the landing stages. And in general, many outside spectators are watching this.

In addition, above you can see a photograph of a spent first stage standing on a barge, next to which a couple of workers are walking. It is obvious that it is very problematic to launch such a huge thing on cables.

As for the frequent interruption of live broadcasts of landings from barges, everything is simple: the barge is shaking at this moment, the signal of the directional antenna gets lost. You have to wait until the ship returns to the port and you can pick up the recordings from the cameras. Learn more about this in this video.

And once again, Internet users noticed a mouse creeping along the Falcon second stage nozzle, flying through space. However, upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a piece of frozen oxygen, which is vented from the engine valves.

6. And the Tesla sent into space is not real

By the way, something else about SpaceX. On February 6, 2018, the company tested its first super-heavy rocket, Falcon Heavy. As a mock payload, she launched somewhere in the direction of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Musk's Tesla Roadster.

After that, rumors began to appear on the Internet that the video with the Roadster in space was a fake, because the car on it looks too unrealistic, as if someone had finished painting it in Photoshop.

Rick Sackleben, an expert from the expert group of the American Chemical Society, explains that colors in space do not look exactly like on Earth, because there is no atmosphere there. Light bouncing off objects does not interact with air particles, so colors appear sharper.

That is why the car looked too clear, so that even Musk joked: "It looks kind of fake."

7. Our Earth has a double obscured by the Sun

Anti-Earth, or Counter-Earth, is a hypothetical planet, supposedly located behind the Sun in the same orbit as ours. She was also called Antichthon, Gloria, Horus or Vulcan. Its existence was suggested by the ancient philosophers - the Pythagoreans, and to this day it flickers in various conspiracy and ufological theories.

Some alien civilization supposedly lives there - perhaps a copy of ours or much more developed green men. And one strange guy named Truman Beturum was taken there even on a flying saucer in 1952. On the way, he still managed to have an affair with the captain of the ship, a humanoid woman named Aura Raines, whose portrait can be seen.

Naturally, then the iPhone was not yet in everyone's pocket, so Truman did not take a selfie with her. But his wife nevertheless left him.

But modern research makes it clear that there is no Counter-Earth. First, it would have a detectable gravitational effect on other planets. In the end, the existence of Neptune was discovered through mathematical calculations even before they saw it through a telescope.

Secondly, a pair of NASA STEREO satellites launched in 2007 to see what is actually going on behind the Sun did not find any planets at the third Lagrange point.

8. Periodically, Mars in the sky becomes the size of the Moon

Back in 2003, a forwarded e-mail was circulating on the Internet, which said that on August 27 of the same year, Mars would be the size of the full moon, or even larger. And this can be seen even with the naked eye.

Since then, this message has surfaced from time to time in the media space. And many people sincerely believed that at a certain time, Mars, with a record approach to Earth, becomes the size of our natural satellite. And despite the fact that the letter mentioned that such an event occurs once every 60,000 years, social networks regularly promise the opportunity to observe it almost every year. Most often, this message is accompanied by this photo.

Now, this is nonsense. The apparent size of Mars will never match the Moon, because the Red Planet is too far away,,. On August 27, 2003, Mars really approached the Earth at a distance of 55, 7 million kilometers.

This was a record convergence in the last 60,000 years, although in general the opposition - the position at which Mars and Earth are closest, lining up - happens every 15-17 years. And the last one was in 2018.

However, even then, Mars looked just like a red star in the sky.

9. Mars has a face sculpture visible from orbit

By the way, something else about Elon Musk's longed-for aspirations. You've probably heard of the "Martian Sphinx" - a huge stone face sticking out in the region of Kydonia (an area in the northern hemisphere of Mars). It's easy to find his photo on the Internet. This is a real picture taken in 1976 by NASA's Viking-1 research station.

Many pseudoscientific publications took this as proof of the existence of a civilization on Mars. In the end, the aliens who otkhal the statue, which can be seen from space, and then perished in the sands - it's great. Quite in the spirit of Ray Bradbury's science fiction.

But, alas, everything was spoiled by the automatic stations of the Mars Global Surveyor and HRSC. They photographed the "face" in the best quality, and it turned out that it was just a dull hill. And in the pictures of "Viking-1", the light was simply not falling that way.

10. "Area 51" stores alien technology

Area 51 is a US Air Force base located in the state of Nevada. In 2019, nearly three million people, coordinated on Facebook and Reddit, gathered to storm the base.

What for? Because there are flying saucers picked up by the American military and the extraterrestrial technologies found on them are being studied. And real aliens are also held captive. And all this goodness is passion as you want to look.

We will all meet at the Area 51 Alien Center and coordinate our entrance. If we run like Naruto, we can move faster than their bullets. Let's take a look at the aliens.

Matty Roberts Facebook user who first suggested storming Area 51

The assault, of course, did not work out, because only a couple of thousand people came to it and they limited themselves to a picnic at the gates of the base. But even if they were allowed to enter the protected area, they would not see anything interesting there.

The base is used as a training ground for experimental military aircraft, and people far from aviation will find it boring. The luminous objects that have been spotted periodically over the base since 1955 are Lockheed U-2 and A-12 OXCART spy planes, which the military has admitted to. And the light reflected from the titanium fuselages of these machines can easily be mistaken for a flying saucer.

The CIA declassified part of the base documents back in 2013. So now only the most desperate fans of the movie “Independence Day” can believe in aliens in "Area 51".

11. The stars that we see have long gone out

As you know, the speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. This, to put it mildly, is not enough to cross huge cosmic distances instantly, so we see objects in the sky with some delay. For example, we observe the Sun with a delay of 8 minutes 17 seconds, because that is how long it takes for its light to reach us.

And we see other stars around us as they were in the distant past, since we are separated by tens, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of light years.

That is why very often one can hear statements like “Most of the stars that we see have gone out long ago! We see only the light coming from the already dead stars."

Such phrases sound, of course, very impressive and poetic and make you think that nothing lasts forever. That's just not true.

The vast majority of the stars that you see are still alive and continue to smoke the sky. The life span of yellow and red dwarfs, which are most in the sky, is billions of years.

Under ideal conditions, you can count 9,000 stars in the sky that are visible to the naked eye. The chance of any of them extinguishing is less than 1%. So the overwhelming majority of the stars above us are alive and well. How lively plasma balls can be.

12. Crop circles - messages from aliens

Incredible figures of fallen plants in the fields in modern culture are considered a typical way of aliens to leave messages to less advanced civilizations. Something like the inscription "Katya, I love you!" on the asphalt, only in a big way - so that it could be seen from the plane. The names of such circles and other geometric shapes in the fields are agroglyphs.

Why are aliens from other planets spoiling farmers' crops instead of using clearer communication methods? Most likely, because there are no aliens.

In 1991, two pranksters named Douglas Bauer and David Chorley confessed that they had created over 200 figures on British fields since 1978. Of the alien technologies involved, they mentioned only a wooden plank, a rope, and a coil of wire. Bauer and Chorley had a whole galaxy of imitators who created more than a thousand circles.

Researcher Jeremy Northcote has analyzed many of these phenomena and found that all of the marginal signs appear in easily accessible places, near highways, near settlements and cultural heritage sites. In addition, among the figures too often human symbols come across: hearts, arrows, emoticons and other nonsense.

In general, everything speaks in favor of the fact that agroglyphs are not the brainchild of extraterrestrial intelligence, but of human mischievous hands.