Notice! Moonhoax on Mythbusters tonight

[mobo85]

@Thudlow Boink

They were going to, but someone stole their Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.

Was there supposed to be a moon-shattering kaboom?

[Zebra]

What do Kari’s boobs look like in zero G?

[GargoyleWB]

She didn’t get a weightlessness ride, but Jamie’s 'stache looked bouyant

[CalMeacham]

What do Kari’s boobs look like in zero G?

The ads for one of those “Girls Gone Wild” videos seem to show some adventurous girls in the Vomit Comet, or its cousin. So if you’re interested, I’m sure you can find video documentation that’ll answer your question.

“Zero Gravity did distracting things to their breasts. He was sure that more than one space accident had been precipitated by the passage of an unholstered female astronaut.” — Arthur C. Clarke , Rendezvous With Rama

[Find_Friends]

@Garula

Wait… so that means… the moon itself is the hoax!

Well, yeah, sort of. There is actually a site that insists that the moon is not a physical object. Rather, it is merely an appearance of luminescence.
Since the burden of proof is explicitly placed on the “moon believers” and FAQs are answered with the same kind of juvenile arguments that the Moon Landing Hoax-advocate folks use, it is clear that the site is a parody.

@Terminus Est

They fired a laser at the moon, but it didn’t blow up.

Yes! But that’s really only because they didn’t reverse the polarity on the laser first!

The only problem is that doing so would also have destroyed the operator, and also the inventor of the particular apparatus. Also the general inventors of the laser and anyone who laid the theoretical foundation.

• “Jack”

[Chronos]

As for the laser bit, they were probably limited by the equipment they had, but being able to actually see the reflector in the telescope image, or seeing the laser beam actually hit something in the lab rather than just a blip on a computer screen graph would have been more convincing.

Where “the equipment they had” includes the retroreflector on the Moon. It’s not nearly big enough to see the reflection in an image: A blip on a computer screen really is all you can get from it.

[Cervaise]

@jackdavinci

The non parallel shadow bit also wasn’t very demonstrative. Granted they did a before and after, and proved that you could have one source light creating shadows of different apparent angles. But they didn’t demonstrate very well exactly how that worked. Instead of creating a lump of dirt, they should have made the table surface manipulatable, such that they could show that as the surface gradually gains slope, the shadow changes. And possibly even contrasted it with a view from above which would show that altho the angles look different from the side, from above you can see that the angles are actually still parallel.

I definitely agree with this. When Jamie said the table’s surface was made out of Spandex (i.e. material stretched over a frame), I thought this was where they were going with it. Shine a light, then have a camera overhead in split screen with a side view, and then poke the table from underneath to show how the shadows “shift” when the terrain is raised. I thought for the most part they breezed really fast through a whole lot of points; I would have preferred this to be a two-hour special where they really take their time and go into the details.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@jackdavinci

The astronaut in shadow bit suffered from a lack of control. They made a whole deal out of how with just one source of light the astronaut would be hidden in the shadow, but with reflected light from the surface he would become visible. But they never showed the astronaut toy hidden in the shadow! They should have taken one picture with a non reflective surface as a control, and one picture with the reflective surface as the variable, to show the difference and also to prove that they had eliminated all ambient light besides the source light and the surface reflection.

That might have been difficult to arrange though, since non-reflective surfaces don’t generally show well on cameras.

[Irishman]

@Half Man Half Wit

Originally Posted by jackdavinci
They should have taken one picture with a non reflective surface as a control, and one picture with the reflective surface as the variable, to show the difference and also to prove that they had eliminated all ambient light besides the source light and the surface reflection.

That might have been difficult to arrange though, since non-reflective surfaces don’t generally show well on cameras.

(Nice name!)

I think what he meant was use a dark surface and a bright surface. Like this:
http://www.iangoddard.net/moon01.htm

@xtisme

BTW, a question for anyone who knows this CT well…what do the CTers say about the laser reflectors and equipment that is pretty much visible from the Earth? Seems like right there it would kill any thoughts of a hoax, so they must have SOMETHING to say about it.

They claim the reflectors were put there robotically, like the Soviets did.

@jackdavinci

The footprint segment explained everything well enough, but the demonstration was poor. Honestly, the footprint in moon sand didn’t look all that different from the footprint in regular dry sand. They should have done both the regular sand and moon sand next to each other in the vacuum chamber so you could clearly see the difference, and probably have changed the lighting a bit so there was more contrast.

Yes, that would have been better. Though they did explain about the lunar soil being different than Earth sand.

The astronaut in shadow bit suffered from a lack of control. They made a whole deal out of how with just one source of light the astronaut would be hidden in the shadow, but with reflected light from the surface he would become visible. But they never showed the astronaut toy hidden in the shadow! They should have taken one picture with a non reflective surface as a control, and one picture with the reflective surface as the variable, to show the difference and also to prove that they had eliminated all ambient light besides the source light and the surface reflection.

Yes, this one they replicated the claim, but not the results. Recreate the shadow with very dark background to show the difference.

The non parallel shadow bit also wasn’t very demonstrative. Granted they did a before and after, and proved that you could have one source light creating shadows of different apparent angles. But they didn’t demonstrate very well exactly how that worked. Instead of creating a lump of dirt, they should have made the table surface manipulatable, such that they could show that as the surface gradually gains slope, the shadow changes. And possibly even contrasted it with a view from above which would show that altho the angles look different from the side, from above you can see that the angles are actually still parallel.

Excellent idea.

As for the laser bit, they were probably limited by the equipment they had, but being able to actually see the reflector in the telescope image, or seeing the laser beam actually hit something in the lab rather than just a blip on a computer screen graph would have been more convincing.

To be fair, they are sending 200 quadrillion photons per laser pulse and all they get back is 1 to 3 photons per laser pulse. There’s no way that’s going to be visible but by the computer. Which just goes to show that their dramatic claim that this is conclusive proof is hype.