Saturday, January 06, 2024

Another illlustration claimed to be real

 Flat-earther David Rogers has been posting the image below, claiming that NASA posted an impossible photo of the near side of the Moon facing away from Earth


However, it's cropped from an illustration





Tuesday, September 05, 2023

A suspicious photo

This photo has been making its way around Facebook recently with descriptions like "The Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and in the background the silhouette of the moon. Photo taken from the international space station"



But there's never a source posted.  One should always find out if a photo has been presented as real by a reputable source before spending time defending it.  For example, this photo, is found on NASA's site and shows much less Earth curvature and a much smaller Moon.

Older copies turn up on social meda, but never have a source (except for other social media).  For example, here's one on Pinterest that links to Taringa, where there's no info about where it came from.

I also found a few articles, in both English and Spanish, containing this image. These sites look like the sort that have cheaply (or perhaps automatically) generated content.  Top photos of Earth from the International Space Station, The best photos of Earth from the International Space Station, Las mejores fotos de la Tierra desde la EstaciĆ³n Espacial Internacional all credit this photo to "NASA / DegreaseNeil"

This Reddit thread includes a comment that says that "DegreaseNeil" was a fan account in Twitter, the link there goes to a now-deleted account. But no links to either source.  But there's a hashtag #DegreaseNeil at Twitter that contains some more info.

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Simulated video is simulated

Flerfs are posting incredulously about a spacewalk video.  But the video has never been presented as anything but a simulation.

The edited video is on TikTok.  Here's a screenshot.


It wasn't hard to find an unedited version, it was broadcast during the spacewalk of Gemini 9 but was clearly identified in both audio and periodic captions as being a simulation.


Here's a screenshot from the video showing the simulation caption


And here's another, showing the same scene in the TikTok thumbnail


When this is pointed out to them, they reply along the lines of "all photos and videos from space are simulations" but don't even to provide any evidence of that. 


Friday, August 04, 2023

There is no hidden 666 in barcodes

 I found this image in a flat earth group

I deal with barcodes at my job, and while this particular code, UPC-A isn't one that we use there, I took a look at the UPC specification to see how accurate the claim is.

Let's start with what they almost got correct.  The areas in red are called guard patterns, so they get partial credit for "guard bars", and the blue area does encode the character six. 

However, spaces are also part of UPC patterns and symbols, and while the guard patterns at the edge consist only of a single-width bar, a single-width space, and another single-width bar, the center guard pattern also includes another single-width space on each side, and the character six is followed by a quadruple-width space.  So if the side guard patterns are 101, as they said, the center guard pattern is 01010 and that six is 1010000.

And that's only how a six looks on the right side of the barcode, all digits have a different encoding on the left or right side, if a six appears on the left side, it's a single-width space, a single-width bar, a single-width space, and a quadruple-width bar, or 0101111. Here's a barcode where all the characters are six (except for the last, which is a check-digit and is automatically computed) in which it's easy to see that sixes look different on the left side.



Thursday, July 06, 2023

Sunset in Japan, sunrise in Florida

This gets constantly reposted by both flat-earthers and sane people, either as two separate images or a single one, with the text "I sent my parents a picture of the sunset in Japan. They sent me a picture 20 minutes later of the sunrise from Florida".  Sometimes it has "VIA 9GAG.COM" at the bottom.  Each side seems to be implying that it presents a problem to the other, but details are never included.



The name of the photographer, the exact locations and times are never included.  The copy I found on 9GAG is from 2014, but I found an earlier copy at JoyReactor from 2011, so the 9GAG copy is a repost, unless there's something wrong with the date at JoyReactor.

Here's an article from 2014 that attempts to explain the timing saying "Japan is 13 hours ahead of North America’s Eastern Standard Time. Looking at the flooded fields, we can assume the picture was taken in spring or summer, meaning a sunset of somewhere between 6 and 7 p.m. That would correlate to a time around 5 or 6 in the morning in Florida, which allowed the photographer’s parents to send this snapshot back to him 20 minutes after he’d sent his photo."

I haven't checked that myself, and it's further complicated because Florida has Daylight Savings Time, but Japan doesn't.

Sunday, June 25, 2023

"Fake" photo of InSight is a strawman

 I've seen flat-earthers more than once post a photo of the InSight Mars lander on which the shadows are inconsistent with the position of the Sun.  Here's the most recent one.  It's also the pinned tweet of @Eric_Dubay_FE It even has a URL at NASA.


But did NASA claim that this photo was taken on Mars?  Whenever there's no full link, we should be suspicious.  Before defending something, find its source.  Search engines can help, and in this case Google search by image found this on the cover of the NASA InSight Launch Press Kit


Notice the date at the bottom, May 2018.  That's the month that the lander launched.  Obviously the photo wasn't taken on Mars, where the mission wouldn't land until November of that year.

And here's another version of that image, clearly labeled as Artist's Concept of InSight Lander on Mars from 2017

Monday, May 29, 2023

Reviews of Level With Me (2023)

 Two parts, so far, by Planarwalk



SciManDan's in five parts







Live review of the whole film from DeadKennedyInSpace



For reviews of the other "Level" films, see Reviews of Level (2021) and Reviews of The Next Level (2022)