No matter how many videos, articles, or TV shows offer proof that we did in fact send men to the Moon in the 1960s, people still deny it ever happened. One of the conspiracy theorists’ favorite proofs that the Moon landings were faked is the images from Apollo 11. Well, graphics card maker NVIDIA is offering some interesting proof that the pictures are in fact real.
NVIDIA just launched two new graphics cards, the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970. Both these cards boast an uncanny ability to render extremely realistic, real-time, dynamic lighting, something the company calls Voxel Global Illumination. To show off the technology, NVIDIA took on three famous lighting cases from the Apollo 11 Moon landing. In creating a hyper-realistic model of some Apollo 11 images and consulting with experts, the company not only demonstrated the power of its new technology, it gave new and interesting proof that the Moon landings weren’t faked.
So there are three main arguments hoaxers bring against pictures of Apollo 11. The first is why objects that are in the Lunar Module’s shadow are apparently illuminated, like Buzz Aldrin climbing down to the surface in this picture. There has to be another light source.
Well, there doesn’t. Moon dust, properly called regolith, is pretty reflective, and the sunlight hitting the Moon isn’t passing through and being dulled by an atmosphere. When that unfiltered sunlight hits the regolith, it reflects almost as though off a mirror, shedding light on anything nearby, which in this case means Aldrin’s descending form. Taking these lunar constraints into consideration, NVIDIA’s model looks a lot like the real image.
But what about the stars. Shouldn’t we be able to see tons of stars from the Moon since there isn’t an atmosphere to block their light? Reflecting light is the answer to this one as well. The lunar module’s skin is by far the brightest object in this image, which means the crew had to keep the aperture of their camera pretty small to actually see anything but a big light blur. Close the aperture enough and you won’t be able to capture the light from all the stars in the lunar sky. NVIDIA’s rendering (left) of this Apollo image (right) is pretty brilliant.
The last theory NVIDIA took on was the mystery light source in footage of Buzz Aldrin climbing down the LM’s ladder.
It looks a little bit like a careless stage hand forgot to take a spotlight out of the shot. To recreate this landing moment, GeForce general manager Scott Herkelman worked with experts to recreate exactly what happened on the Moon that day.
Neil Armstrong, as commander and by virtue of his physical position inside the tiny Lunar Module, got out first. He took some contingency samples and wandered around a little while Buzz Aldrin eased his way out of the spacecraft. It was slow going for both men thanks to their bulky pressure suits, pressure suits that were white in part to help reflect sunlight to keep them cool. When Herkelman realized that Armstrong was already on the Moon when Aldrin was climbing down the ladder, it all came together. That apparently bright light is just sunlight reflecting off the commander’s suit.
So there you have it. There are plenty of arguments to prove the Apollo Moon landings were real, and NVIDIA’s is another pretty neat one.
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Feature image and NASA Images from the Apollo Archive. NVIDIA images via fastcolabs.com
Hi AMY SHIRA TEITEL, you are a idiot.
Why are we comparing the technology now to the technology from 1969 to say we faked it, we didn’t have the same capabilities we do now. Sorry.
There is a lot of information about the moon dust and how it reflects and falls in predictable arcs. However, there doesn’t appear to be any explanation about why there is no crater underneath the lunar lander. There should have been thousands of pounds of thrust from burning fuel, yet under the lander is pristine dust undisturbed and no dust on the lunar lander. Great trick!
No trick it’s just we have to remember there is no air on the moon. When you drive into a parking space do you drive at full speed? No you slow down. The lunar lander backed of the throttle and landed slowly. So not much of a crater was formed.
its insane that you have to prove the moon landing to some of the same people who are convinced some guy name Noah rounded up 2 of every animal… SMH
Actually most of the people I have to convince the moon landing occurred believe in man made global warming.
it’s an irrational over-generalisation, and close-minded to say that all believers in the bible deny the moon landings
you can’t even say that a majority of believers feel that the moon landings were a hoax, because it’s patently untrue
i suggest you broaden your horizons a bit and talk to a few more believers than the seemingly ignorant ones you allude to
Just show the video of Buzz Aldrin decking the moon landing denier. Has NVIDIA got a realistic rendering of that?
You have three kinds of conspiracy theorist. The first kind is the paranoid type. The one that doesn’t believe in almost anything. The one that fears the Government and sleeps with a gun under their pillow.
Then you have the ignorant gullible morons. The ones who watch Moon hoax videos on youtube and right away believe it. These sort of people lack any knowledge about Science.
Then you have the worst kind. The one that’s in it for the money. They’re writing books and selling documentaries on DVD. It’s vital to them that these conspiracy theories stay alive in the public imagination. They prey on the two above.
There are also people who don’t claim to know one way or the other. I watched the first Apollo MANNED Moon Landing on television in 1969, and I fully accepted it for over 20 years. I question why NASA and even this lady almost always use textbook invalid reasoning to try to claim proofs. I question why NASA doesn’t answer the hard valid questions … they only create straw men arguments and then debunk them. I question why anyone would not acknowledge that it is actually very REASONABLE to believe that the Apollo Manned Moon Missions were all simulated. There has been absolutely ZERO convincing evidence that we actually landed MANNED craft on the moon … in 45 years! The rocks don’t prove it. The reflectors don’t prove it. The white out dots and charcoal foot paths on doctored photos courtesy of Japan don’t prove it. I use my eyes, my mind, my experience … I don’t buy everything NASA says … I don’t believe everything I read. I question. Everything I have seen in the past 4 decades strongly suggests that some or all of the Apollo Manned Moon Missions were indeed only simulated. I can’t KNOW that … and I wouldn’t suggest that someone is a moron, or stupid, or an idiot because they believe or disbelieve NASA’s claims. There are very valid hard questions that NASA has never satisfactorily answered. So it is simply another typical form of invalid reasoning when NASA believers suggest that skeptics are dumb or stupid or crazy … and another indication that NASA doesn’t have valid answers, and has to resort to invalid forms of argument.
In this day and age people are still trying to deny something they do not understand. The history books say we went, not a single person ever came foward to expose any fraudl let me guess nasa paid them or threatened to kill them right? No proof whatsoever. Paranoia. The missions were monitored by Russia and other independent groups. Russia admitted we went to the moon. If we didn’t they would have known the signals weren’t coming from the moon. There is a lot people do not know, they are not experts in science or astronomy or physics. You might as well say the earth is flat. It’s also a slap in the face to all the people involved. People often deny what they don’t understand. We went to the moon six times. We faked all six and never got caught? Myth busters and other shows did some testing and said yes you can replicate the moonlanding son earth, but that doesn’t mean it was faked. I know people will say myth busters and all other tv are paid by the govt and nasa to lie. Nonsense! We landed on the moon! It’s a fact. People need to do real research.
Why don’t all the unbelievers just take a look through one of those high powered telescopes at the flag that’s planted up there on the surface…I mean, sheesh…we can see black holes and pulsars and quasars that are millions of light years away, but they can’t see the junk left there on the Moon?
No, we can’t physically see anything man-made left on the moon with any telescope we currently have. Hubble can resolve things that are .03 arcseconds. Which, roughly, would be a baseball stadium from 100 miles away. The stuff we left on the moon would be like trying to find a baseball in that same stadium from the same distance.
There’s the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Which took pictures of the Moon landings just 15 miles above the surface of the moon. Amazing proof imo, but of course conspiracy theorist say it’s all fake.
It looks very much like a 7th grade art student used a white out pen and a charcoal pencil. I can’t prove that and don’t know that … but that is what it looks like to me … so the jury is still out. Remember, ALL of the Manned Moon Missions allegedly occurred during the Nixon Administration, and we know he wouln’t lie to US, right? President Carter promptly cancelled all the remaining Apollo Missions including the Moon Base. I believe there have been dozens of unmanned Lunar mapping probes in the past 4 decades … none of which have revealed anything more convincing than a few white out dots and charcoal lines. If NASA wants US to believe … they should do better this … or they have only themselves to blame.
Quasars and pulsar are huge, an understatement to say the least, and exceptionally bright, which is why we can resolve it. I’m going to assume you were being sarcastic about seeing a black hole.
Actually you can’t with any earth based telescope or even one in orbit. Something called Dawes limit. Even the Hubble can’t resolve the LM – it is 240,000 miles away and 20 feet in diameter. You certainly aren’t going to see a flag.
Google maps can see a car in my driveway yet no one in the world outside of nasa can see a car on the moon. That bothers me
There was an article I read a while back that had the interesting premise that the moon landing couldn’t have been faked, because we didn’t have the technology to fake it.
I find it very interesting that the technology to actually get to the moon would have been less advanced than the technology needed to fake going.
That is true. In addition, unless you wanted 50,000 engineers and scientists in on it, a completely working spacecraft would have had to be designed, built and flown. So why not just land it on the moon?
But that isn’t true at all. We still do not currently have the practical technology to land a craft on the Moon and then return that craft safely to Earth … even unmanned … as neither the U.S. nor any other nation or space organization has claimed to have achieved such in over 44 years! Aside from the Roman Catholic Church, NASA is the largest propaganda organization in the world, and is fully capable of simulating space exploration missions. In fact … they do very completely simulate virtually every facet of every mission in advance … with simulated terrain, mock ups, video, simulate zero gravity, all of it … and they fully acknowledge this. NASA had some of the largest film and sound studios in world in the the 1960s and even built a giant plaster Moon model with tracks for the cameras to pan around it. So they fully had the technology to simulate the Manned Moon Missions and they did … the only questions is did they also compete the missions in reality. It is perfectly logical, intelligent, and legitimate to question that.
I believe we landed on the moon in 1969. I also believe the govt hired the director of 2001 to create certain money-type shots you could recreate on a soundstage that you couldn’t because of the impossibility at the time to fly an Oscar-winning film director and his crew to the moon and back.
I’m not a moon landing denier at all, but I think I’m failing to grasp what Nvidia did here, because none of this is any more convincing than the images that they duplicated? Especially the side-by-side shot, that just looks like they recreated an almost identical image (as compared to recreating the scenario and how lights/cameras/etc work).
I think that the point here is that since the graphical modeling (which represents a theoretical model of the moon landing) matched the actual video of the moon landing, the argument that “the lighting doesn’t make sense” is flawed.
However, other methods of rendering the lighting of the moon landing have already shown this before, and anyone with an understanding of basic geometry would have already grasped this concept without such an elaborate demonstration.
“The moon landing wasn’t faked. Look, we made these convincing fakes to prove it!”
NVIDA was not trying to prove or disprove, they were showing how cool their new graphics card was. It is people who want the nut balls who think that it did not happen to go away are using it as more proof