This is probably more or less restricted to the United States, but I have noticed how so many conspiracy theorists are for some reason really obsessed with NASA in particular.
With the moon landing and UFO conspiracy theories it kind of makes partial sense (although quite often even they talk as if NASA were pretty much the only space agency in the world, and they largely ignore in their rhetoric that there are many other countries that have their own space agencies, like Japan, India and China, among others.)
Perhaps the oddest conspiracy theorists that are obsessed with NASA are the flat-earthers. This goes well beyond just "NASA is lying about space flights".
I kid you not, but many flat-earthers are in all seriousness saying in their videos things like "NASA tells us that the Sun is 93 million miles away". And yes, that's it. It's not like they say "textbooks, scientists and NASA are telling us". It's just "NASA tells us", period.
It's almost as if they thought that it's NASA that's spreading these numbers onto the population and onto schools, and that they are some kind of source and ultimate authority determining these claims and numbers, from which eg. textbooks and schools are getting their values.
The distance to the Sun has been estimated since antiquity. The first remarkably accurate estimates were made in the 1600's. For example, Christiaan Huygens got within 2.3% of the actual value, which is quite remarkable, considering when the measurements were made. By 1895 the estimates were narrowed to within 0.06% of the actual distance.
It shouldn't need to be said, but quite obviously quite accurate distances to the Sun have been in textbooks and scientific literature literally centuries before NASA even existed.
Why they are attributing these distance claims to NASA in particular baffles my mind.
With the moon landing and UFO conspiracy theories it kind of makes partial sense (although quite often even they talk as if NASA were pretty much the only space agency in the world, and they largely ignore in their rhetoric that there are many other countries that have their own space agencies, like Japan, India and China, among others.)
Perhaps the oddest conspiracy theorists that are obsessed with NASA are the flat-earthers. This goes well beyond just "NASA is lying about space flights".
I kid you not, but many flat-earthers are in all seriousness saying in their videos things like "NASA tells us that the Sun is 93 million miles away". And yes, that's it. It's not like they say "textbooks, scientists and NASA are telling us". It's just "NASA tells us", period.
It's almost as if they thought that it's NASA that's spreading these numbers onto the population and onto schools, and that they are some kind of source and ultimate authority determining these claims and numbers, from which eg. textbooks and schools are getting their values.
The distance to the Sun has been estimated since antiquity. The first remarkably accurate estimates were made in the 1600's. For example, Christiaan Huygens got within 2.3% of the actual value, which is quite remarkable, considering when the measurements were made. By 1895 the estimates were narrowed to within 0.06% of the actual distance.
It shouldn't need to be said, but quite obviously quite accurate distances to the Sun have been in textbooks and scientific literature literally centuries before NASA even existed.
Why they are attributing these distance claims to NASA in particular baffles my mind.
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