Man in the Moon

September 08, 2008

"If you believed they put a man on the moon,
If you believe there's nothing up my sleeve,
Then nothing is cool."
       -- REM, "Man on the Moon"

The new season of Mythbusters kicked off with a bang, as Adam and Jamie took on the infamous "Moon Landing Hoax": you know, the pet conspiracy theory of those crazy folks (about 6% of Americans, according to Wikipedia) who've convinced themselves that the entire 1969 Apollo moon landing was just an elaborate fake-out by NASA and a few other key co-conspirators.

Long before rumors started flying about the moon landing hoax, there was the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. That one really was a hoax. In late August of that year, the New York Sun ran a series of six articles on the front page reporting on supposed new astronomical breakthroughs by famed British astronomer Sir John Herschel (son of William Herschel, builder of telescopes and discoverer of the planet Uranus). Most startling of the various reported findings was that Herschel had discovered life on the moon.

We're not talking evidence there was once water, or even tiny little microbes. No, the lunar surface was described as having forests, inland seas, even lilac-colored pyramids made of rose quartz. The New York Sun reported herds of bison walking across the plains; blue unicorns (blue?); and a primitive tribe of what the Museum of Hoaxes describes as "hut-dwelling, fire-wielding biped beavers, and a race of winged humans." The latter were dubbed Vespertilio-homo ("man-bat"). The "author" of the articles was identified as Dr. Andrew Grant, supposedly John Herschel's traveling companion, but Dr. Grant didn't actually exist.

How was Herschel able to see such wondrous things when these discoveries had eluded astronomers until then? Why, an amazing new telescope, of course, a whopping 24 feet in diameter that cost $300,000 -- a princely sum back then -- housed at an observatory in the Cape of Good Hope. This aspect wasn't entirely unbelievable: the father, William Herschel, owned one of the world's largest telescopes in the 18th century, after all, so why couldn't his son own an even bigger one in the 19th century? And John already had a 20-foot scope at the Cape of Good Hope.

But bat-like Moon Men? Why would anyone buy that? Well, not everyone did; there were several newspapers who responded to the articles with skepticism. For instance, the New York Commercial Advertiser described the articles as "well done, and makes a pleasant piece of reading... but we can hardly understand how any man of common sense should read it without at once perceiving the deception."

The man behind the elaborate hoax is believed to be Richard Adams Locke, a Sun reporter, although he never admitted this publicly. On the plus side, the Sun sold thousands of copies before the hoax was revealed (although even the Sun never admitted it was a hoax). That was probably one of Locke's primary motives, although the Wikipedia entry theorizes that Locke also meant to poke fun at certain over-hyped discoveries in astronomy along similar lines, as well as one Rev. Thomas Dick. The good reverend maintained that the solar system had more than 21 trillion inhabitants, and the moon alone should have 4,200,000,000 inhabitants. (He was the 19th century version of a Young Earth Creationist, I guess.)

Herschel himself was initially amused by the hoax, although over the years, as the hoax persisted, he became increasingly irritated at the constant questions about it. Edgar Allan Poe was less pleased. He had published his own "moon hoax" story just two months earlier in the Southern Literary Messenger about a voyage to the moon in a hot-air balloon. "Hans Phaall -- A Tale" is widely considered one of the first science fiction stories, but it was obviously satirical and thus less effective as hoaxes go. So Locke upstaged Poe on that score.

There will always be conspiracies, or people taken in by hoaxes, because there's something about human nature that makes us want to believe, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I missed the Mythbusters episode (trailer is below), but I'll go out on a limb and say they concluded the whole "faked moon landing" theory doesn't hold water. And I'll go even further and bet, no matter how thorough their debunking, that stubborn 6% of the population still believes the whole thing was faked.

Photo: "Moon Man", 1836 lithograph, Museum of Hoaxes.