Moon landing conspiracy theories, debunked
Conspiracy theory 2: Apollo astronauts could not have survived Earth’s radiation field
Earth is surrounded by a zone of charged particles known as the ‘Van Allen’ radiation belt.
“These are regions surrounding the Earth in our magnetic field where high energy trapped particles from the Sun tend to get confined,” Prof Ojha says. “What that means is if you are going into these regions, there are extremely high radiation concerns.”
If that is the case, how did the Apollo astronauts travel through the Van Allen radiation belt and out of Earth’s orbit unharmed? Surely the amount of radiation would have killed them? Doesn’t this prove that the Moon landings were a hoax?
Prof Ojha has a killer reply.
“My answer to that is… firewalking,” he says.
“If you’ve ever done firewalking, you’ll know the one thing you don’t do is linger around in the middle of the firepit. You cross as quickly as you can. From a science point of view, as long as you walk across quite quickly, looking at the thermal conductivity of your feet, you are not going to have enough thermal energy going into the soles of your feet to burn you. You’re absolutely fine. Just don’t hang around in the middle!
“In a similar way, the transit time through the Van Allen radiation belt right at the beginning of the Apollo voyages was incredibly short. Travelling through the Van Allen radiation belt if you are going fast enough – which you need to be if you’re going to the Moon – is no problem whatsoever.”
Conspiracy status: debunked
Conspiracy theory 3: why are there no stars in pictures of the NASA Moon landings?
Here is another Moon landing photograph which has caught conspiracy theorists’ eye.
If the image really was taken on the Moon, shouldn’t the sky be filled with stars? After all, there is no atmosphere to distort the image, no clouds to interrupt that glorious view.
Conspiracy theorists argue that the lack of stars in the Apollo 11 mission photographs prove that the event was staged. NASA could not have faked the full wonder of the lunar sky, and so they simply chose not to include any stars at all.
Here’s another solution: both the astronauts and the lunar landscape itself are brightly lit by the Sun. The sky may look black, but remember, this is in fact daytime on the Moon.
If you’re going to take a photo of a brightly lit scene, your camera’s shutter speed needs to be fast and your aperture incredibly small. In that situation, faint objects like stars simply aren’t going to show up.
Conspiracy status: debunked
