Page 52 - March 2019 - v1_june_july_2009.qxd

52 25 Space Conspriacies

25 Space Conspiracies

That Conspiracy Theorists

Do Their Best To Keep

Alive... For Now

Continued from Page 51

There is a face on Mars.
In 1976, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft
took a picture of what appeared to be a face on
Mars. Immediately, some people said there must
have been aliens on the Red Planet that left that
face behind as evidence of their existence.
NASA, however, pointed out that the suspected
face is really just a pile of rocks casting
shadows that resemble face-like features.
NASA followed up with better-
resolution pictures taken from the Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Global
and other features of the storm, to try to learn of the tale that has been circulating for years,
Surveyor in 1998 and 2001, respectively. These
more about its weird properties. according to debunking website Snopes.
new images made it quite clear that the "face on As we all know, Earth did not actually
Mars" is nothing more than a trick of light and
Mars is as big as the moon. experience that much darkness that year. (The
shadows on a completely normal Martian article claimed that the alleged darkness was
Originating in 2003, the infamous Mars
mound. partly due to a Jupiter-Venus conjunction, which
hoax asserts that Mars was closer to Earth than
it had been in the 60,000 years prior, and that actually took place more than 500 million miles
The moon Iapetus is an alien Death apart.) Darkness occurs when the Earth rotates,
the planet will appear as large as the full moon.
Star. What started out as a misconstrued email turned causing the sun to "set" on the local horizon.
Iapetus is a moon of Saturn that looks into a recurring rumor that gets reshared every Brief periods of darkness can also happen when
somewhat like the infamous Death Star in the August and, naturally, has spread to social the sun is totally obscured during total solar
"Star Wars" franchise, with a large crater that media as it became more popular. eclipses, which occur rarely in any particular
resembles the fictional weapon's superlaser Although Mars is indeed relatively close spot on Earth. But even during an eclipse, Earth
focus lens. The Death Star is a planet-killing to Earth in a cosmic sense, it will never be as is never completely in the dark.
machine that destroys entire worlds with its large as the full moon. It will appear as a red dot
outrageously powerful laser. It was prominently in the sky, just as the ancient astronomers saw it. Zero-gravity day will make you weightless.
featured in the 2016 movie "Rogue One: A Star If you'd like to see Mars magnified, take out a If you ever wanted to leap into the sky and soar
Wars Story," as well as in 1977's "Star Wars: telescope or look at one of NASA's spectacular like Superman, this hoax is for you. In late 2014
Episode IV - A New Hope." Mars pictures. and early 2015, a widely shared story claimed
A Daily Mail article published in May that on Jan. 4, 2015, everyone on Earth would
2016 claimed Iapetus is an artificial object The moon will turn green. experience weightlessness due to a rare
crafted by aliens. As "evidence," the article alignment of the planets. A doctored image of a
In spring 2016, there was a rumor that
cited a photo taken by NASA's Cassini purported tweet from NASA's Twitter account
the moon would turn green because several
spacecraft in 2004. In the photo, there's a line planets had aligned and caused an eerie glow. that went around on social media fooled a lot of
around the moon's equator that resembles the This was supposed to happen on April 20 and people into believing the hoax.
equatorial trench around the Death Star. But this again on May 29 for the first time since 1596, But, of course, nobody floated off the
line isn’t nearly as interesting as the Death Star's the rumor alleged. surface of Earth that day. Earth's gravity is too
trench, which houses the battle station's engines, The moon never actually turned green, strong for people to become weightless. The
thrusters and docking bays. That line is nothing although it can appear red during a lunar only way to experience weightlessness without
more than a mountain ridge, and Iapetus is going to space is to ride aboard a plane that
eclipse, when the moon passes through Earth's
actually just made up of boring old rock and ice. performs parabolas, with some including a few
shadow. In the same way sunsets often appear
Cassini has flown by the moon to take pictures seconds of weightlessness. This is sometimes
red, sunlight is scattered as it passes through
several times without being blasted by deadly Earth's atmosphere, casting a reddish shadow on nicknamed the Vomit Comet.
alien lasers. the moon's surface.
(Continued on Page 54)
Skywatching columnist Joe Rao
Saturn's hexagon is alien technology. debunked this green-moon myth. He pointed
Saturn's hexagon was first spotted when out that a full moon actually took place on April
NASA's Voyager spacecraft flew by the giant, 22, 2016, and speculated that the April 20 date
ringed planet in 1980. The bizarre, six-sided of the "green moon" might have to do with
structure on the round planet's north pole caused "National Weed Day," popularly known as 4/20.
quite the stir, because straight lines and Considering that the last green moon
polygons are not so common in nature. supposedly happened 420 years ago as well, this
Immediately after the Voyager returned doesn't appear to be a coincidence.
its first images of Saturn's strange feature, even
stranger theories arose to explain it, including
Earth will go dark for two weeks.
that it was somehow related to alien technology,
In July 2015, a website called
or perhaps even was a gateway to hell. The "NewsWatch33" wrote an article claiming that
hexagon is not artificial, but rather a weird-
Earth would have 15 days of complete darkness
looking hurricane at Saturn's pole. NASA has
that year. The website, which is actually a fake
done several flybys of this region with the
news site, was borrowing from an older version
Cassini spacecraft, studying the haze particles