10 Surprising Moon Facts! (That Were Totally Wrong)

There are plenty of conspiracy theories, recent discoveries, and just plain old misconceptions about the moon.

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At 3:17 p.m. ET on July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 lander touched down on the lunar surface. For millennia, scientists, astronomers, religious thinkers, and philosophers have tossed out theories about the moon—some based more on science than others. But finally, humanity had landed on its surface.

Here are some theories we once believed about the moon, some of which the Apollo program helped disprove.

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1 The Moon Has Been the Same Size For Millions of Years

For years, scientists thought that the moon’s volcanic activity ceased hundreds of millions of years ago with the interior cooling and the crust no longer retracting in size. As it turns out, this isn’t the case. The moon is, in fact, shrinking.

Data gathered during the Apollo program and again by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in the 2000s shows that the moon’s fault lines are still active and producing “moonquakes.” This has led scientists to believe that it’s highly likely the moon’s crust is still retracting in size.

Now, the moon isn’t going to be the size of a football any time soon. It’s thought to have only shrunk by about 150 feet in a few hundred million years so chances are good that it will still be there when we go back in 2024.

2 The Moon Is a Dry, Barren Wasteland

Until recently, it was thought by many scientists that the moon was dry. While Apollo scientists’ theory that it was possible that ice could exist on the far side of the moon, no water had been detected on the surface, in the atmosphere, or in the interior of the moon.

That all changed in 2009 when water was discovered in trace amounts. Then, in 2010, it was uncovered that it has a “hundred times” more water than previously thought. Eight years later, it was discovered that ice was actually at the moon’s poles, mimicking Earth, and there was, in fact, water in the interior.

This revelation has changed much of what we know about the moon. With its whole history up ended, this has lead to a list of possible theories like did the moon give Earth its water? Did the moon once have life? Or, perhaps, is there still? These questions haven’t been answered yet, but could be soon.

3 The Moon Is Made Out of Cheese
Title Page Of Manuscript W/Moon & Sun
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The idea that the moon was made out of cheese may have been first proposed in Asian folklore. In an ancient fable, a fox convinces a hungry wolf that instead of chowing down on him, there’s a much better meal of cheese floating on a nearby body of water. Of course, that circle of cheese was simply the moon’s reflection, but, fooled, the wolf gulps the entire body of water and bursts.

Then in 1546, according to Mental Floss, an English writer named John Heywood wrote a book of proverbs where he coined the phrase “a penny for your thoughts” and “the more, the merrier.” He also said that “the moon is made of a green cheese” as a descriptor for someone who would believe anything.

While it’s pretty clear that no adult really ever thought the moon was made out of cheese, a 1902 American Journal of Psychology survey of 423 children revealed that more than a few kiddos thought the moon was made out of this delicious dairy item. Other things kids thought the moon was out of included rags, gold, balloons, yellow paint, God, and “dead people who join hands in a circle of light."

4 Full Moons Make People Go Insane
The Phases of the Moon, c 1860.
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For centuries, people have thought that a full moon has somehow been associated with insanity, behavioral changes, seizures, fertility, and teenage werewolves. To wit, the word “luancy” comes from the Latin word “luna” meaning “moon.”

But numerous studies over the last decades have proven to be rather inconclusive. A few studies here and there have found connections between the moon's gravitational pull and human behavior. Others have speculated that a full moon gives off more light, which keeps people up, which leads to sleep deprivation and behavioral changes due to being tired. However, a study in the late 1980s that looked at 100 studies found that the supposed “evidence” was spotty, poorly conducted, and swayed by biases.

5 There are Bat-Winged Humanoids on the Moon
Lith. Of Herschel'S Flying Moon Animals
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In August 1835, the most widely read newspaper in the world reported that there were man-bats living on the moon. The New York Sun told of bat-winged, copper-haired humanoids who were four-feet tall, very intelligent, and lived in pyramids.

The newspaper’s claimed source was the work and findings of John Herschel, a real and respected astronomer, who had seen these bat moon people from his seven-ton telescope he had transported from England to South Africa. Of course none of this was true, but it didn’t stop people from freaking out including a committee of Yale scientists who went in search of Herschel’s research to learn more themselves.

It took a full month before the New York Sun admitted it was a hoax, intended to be satire and a comment on science’s relationship to religion. Dubbed the “Great Moon Hoax,” it actually increased the newspaper’s circulation providing more evidence that people like a good story more than the truth.

6 Hitler Lived on a Nazi Lunar Base

We all know the history. In April 1945, as the Soviets marched through Berlin, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun were in their underground bunker when they made the decision to... take a rocket ship to the moon to live out the rest of their days on a Nazi lunar base.

Of course, that didn’t happen. Hitler, in fact, took cyanide and a bullet to the temple. But there’s a conspiracy theory that the Nazis set up a base on the moon as early as 1942. As the story goes, when it became clear that the Nazis were going to lose the world war, they simply packed up and left for another one. Their transport was a flying saucer, very much like the one that supposedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

The Nazis, apparently, also went to Mars.

7 The Moon Is Hollow
Alan Bean On The Moon
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On November 14, 1969, Apollo 12 performed an experiment. With everyone safely back in the command module, they crashed landed their lunar module on the moon. It landed with the force of one ton of TNT which caused a “moonquake” that peaked at minute eight and took a full hour to dissipate. Apollo 13 performed a similar experiment by crash landing a ton of their equipment which caused a bigger impact and a longer moonquake. As planetary scientists put it, “the moon was ringing like a bell.”

This has lead to conspiracy theories, even ones promoted by a certain cable channel, to conclude that the moon must be hollow. Well, while the experiments did produce these strange results, it isn’t because the moon is hollow. It’s because it’s much drier than Earth. Water weakens stone, almost acting like a sponge and deadening vibrations. When there’s an earthquake, the vibrations end quickly in comparison to bodies that are drier and more ridge - like the moon. Simply, a moonquake takes a lot longer to stop due to dry rock not because it’s hollow inside.

8 Stanley Kubrick Filmed the Moon Landing
The Shining
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Fresh off of the space cultural phenomenon that was 2001: A Space Odyssey, famed movie director Stanley Kubrick is secretly hired by the US government to produce a fake moon landing on a Hollywood sound stage.

Now, there’s a lot of evidence to why this isn’t true. For one, he was already deeply into pre-production for A Clockwork Orange. Also, the technology available in 1969 wasn’t even close in its ability to produce the images we saw on our TV screens on July 20th. Not too mention that there’s just too much footage and photos that shows the actual moon landing. Earlier this year, Kubrick’s daughter even shut down this theory.

Nonetheless, the conspiracy theory still exists with some claiming that another Kubrick masterpiece was actually an apology for faking the moon landing.

9 The U.S. Flags Are All Still Standing
Harrison H Schmitt, pilot of the lunar module, stands on the lunar surface near the United States flag during NASA's final lunar landing mission in the Apollo series 13 December 1972. Credit: NASA. Science Astronaut Space Travel...
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Starting with Apollo 11, every Apollo mission planted an Amercian flag at their landing spot. A source of pride, the hope is that they would be there forever or, at least, a very long time. Well, that doesn’t seem to be quite true. Aldrin reported that he saw the famed Apollo 11 flag get knocked over by the rocket blast as the astronauts departed. In 2008, Tony Reichhardt of Air & Space Magazine postulated that this probably means the flag has long since deteriorated. After all, it was purchased for $5.50.

In 2012, NASA reported that the other five flags are still standing... but are probably all badly faded due to the harsh ultraviolet light and sudden temperature changes on the lunar surface. In other words, they are all likely ragged, washed-out pieces of white cloth. So much for the stripes and stripes flying forever.

10 The Moon Is a Hologram
Views of Earth from the moon surface
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Just like The Matrix, nothing is real, everything is fake, and we all live in a computer simulation. Or something. It’s unclear how this theory came to be, but there are groups that believe the moon (or, even, the entire universe) is nothing but a hologram.

According to one, the moon is partially real in that it’s a lot smaller than we think. However, when we see a full moon, that’s just aliens creating a hologram so that they can have secret projects without Earthlings knowing what they are doing. This must be true because it’s backed up in a research paper written by Russian scientists.

While the moon being a hologram does seem a bit wacky, well-known astrophysicist Paul Sutter did make a valid point in a Space.com article last year about the possibility that everything is just a hologram.

“Even if we did live in a hologram,” wrote Sutter, “We wouldn't necessarily be able to tell the difference anyway.”

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