An Apollo Meme is a joke, not the one its author intended

 This has been shared over 250 times on Facebook - that was some months ago and I'm not counting again. 

Let's start with the image - it couldn't have been taken in space, as all the Apollo astronauts were inside the spacecraft when the Command and Service Module was docked with the Lunar Module in lunar orbit.  So it must be a model, and so it is, from the LEGO IDEAS site.

But what about the "one tank of gas and oxygen"?  First, let's give the memester some credit for not asking how Apollo burned fuel in the vacuum of space.  The various engines and reaction control systems used oxidizers, either liquid oxygen or nitrogen tetroxide.  And how much fuel did the mission carry?  See this video for more information than you thought you were asking for

As usual, this meme shows that while flat-earthers tell you to engage in research, that's something they don't do themselves

Flat Earth and Numismatics

In the last few days (but see note at end), I've seen endless posts in flat-earth groups showing this coin, often misidentified as being Italian.  It's from the Republic of San Marino, the fifth-smallest country in the world, and while it is entirely surrounded by Italy, it's a separate country.   Before both countries changed their currency to the Euro, the Sammarinese lira had the same value as the Italian.

The would also sometimes show a screenshot of a page about this coin, that explained that this shows "Model of flat earth, three stars shining above, value and date below".  A screenshot, not a link, because if you visited the page, you'd see that on the obverse (front) of the coin is

Sometimes they would insist that's not a globe, but we'd show them that the same site described the reverse of the next coin in the series as "Spherical earth as seen from moon".

The series is called Toward the third millennium - Man & the exploration of his world, all of the coins have the same image on the obverse, and the coins in it would have something old on the reverse of one, and something new on the next.

The 50 Lire coin shows a sailboat, the 100 a submarine under the Arctic ice-cap

 

The 200 Lire has Stonehenge beneath stars and the 500 the surface of the Moon, radio waves, and Saturn

The 1000 Lire coin has a human profile, the North star, waves of Mediterranean and Nile delta and a wind rose, the 5000 a map of Europe and North Africa, the solar system, and an antenna dish in a human mind

Note: while this has really taken off recently, I found a few posts about this from nearly a year ago, I think this is the earliest.  And then I found this one from 2021

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

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 Estación 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.

In short, always insist on a link to a NASA website.

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. 

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.

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.