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Sky News AU
3 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Resurfaced clips of Buzz Aldrin reignite Apollo 11 landing conspiracy theory as US marks 56th anniversary of first man to walk on the moon
Resurfaced clips of Buzz Aldrin have reignited an old conspiracy theory about the 1969 moon landing, with scientists once again having to debunk it. As the United States prepares to mark the 56th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, old clips of Buzz Aldrin have resurfaced, which have reignited a conspiracy theory claiming the iconic 1969 moon landing never happened. The clips, which show Aldrin on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien Show back in 2000 have, according to some social media commentators, given credence to the theory that man never made it to the lunar surface. In the video, Aldrin responded to a quip by host Conan O'Brien saying that he watched the moon landing as a boy. 'No, you didn't,' Aldrin snapped. "There wasn't any television, there wasn't anyone taking a picture. You watched an animation," he said. The video, which has since racked up more than a million views online, has led to conspiracy theorists in the United States taking it as gospel that the moon landings were faked and were staged by NASA to fool the Soviet Union. A subsequent 2015 clip has also gone viral, with an eight-year-old girl asking the NASA veteran why NASA has not returned to the moon since, to which he replied, 'Because we didn't go there, and that's the way it happened.' Doubt over the moon landing took root in the mid-1970s, fuelled by public mistrust after Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. Theories about staged sets, lighting inconsistencies, and suspicious interviews have persisted ever since. — Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) March 20, 2023 NASA has repeatedly dismissed such claims, pointing to telemetry data, lunar rock samples, and the testimonies of thousands of engineers, scientists, and astronauts as proof of the mission's authenticity. In fact, a Reuters fact check from 2023 has debunked the 2000 clip, with the news agency reporting that Aldrin's comments are related to animation graphics that television networks used to illustrate the moon landings. The news agency also debunked the 2015 clip, which was a question-and-answer session at the Oxford Union. They said the clips edited out elements where Aldrin was talking about his fears of a technical failure in the craft that could have caused a catastrophic fire like the Apollo 1 disaster or caused a decompression sending himself and Neil Armstrong into the vacuum of space. Aldrin is the only surviving member of the Apollo 11 team after Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins died in 2012 and 2021, respectively. In the 2024 US election, he endorsed Donald Trump for the presidency after he made a promise to put an American astronaut back onto the moon.
ABC News
9 hours ago
- ABC News
Large Hadron Collider glimpses clue in search for universe's missing antimatter
Scientists have uncovered another clue in the effort to solve one of the great puzzles of modern physics: why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. The discovery relied on observations made with the world's largest machine, the Large Hadron Collider, which helps researchers to probe the fundamental nature of matter. Everything we see around us is made up of subatomic matter particles such as protons and neutrons, which belong to a category of particles called baryons. An experiment using the giant particle accelerator, based at CERN in Switzerland, has for the first time seen baryons form more matter than antimatter. The findings could change our understanding of how small particles interact and help explain the absence of antimatter, said Tom Hadavizadeh, a physicist at Monash University and collaborator on the project. "We haven't found the new physics yet, but it's given us a new way to look for it," Dr Hadavizadeh said. The researchers have published their findings in Nature. The current leading theory in particle physics — the Standard Model — predicts that for every particle of matter that forms, a corresponding particle of antimatter forms. Antimatter particles are identical to matter particles, but with their electrical charges reversed. Scientists have observed similar amounts of matter and antimatter being generated when they create subatomic particles by colliding larger particles at high speed around large underground loops in the Large Hadron Collider. But antimatter doesn't tend to stick around — if it collides with regular matter, both particles annihilate each other, releasing energy. If antimatter and matter were truly created in equal amounts, as per the Standard Model, the universe wouldn't exist. The problem for this theory is that the universe does exist, and it's mostly made of matter, with only tiny amounts of antimatter. This "matter-antimatter asymmetry" is a major unresolved problem in physics. "The way that we explain that is that at some point in the early universe, matter should have become slightly favoured over antimatter," Dr Hadavizadeh said. "There's this little excess that remains once most of the antimatter and matter annihilates away, and that little excess is what we see left over today." So where did this asymmetry between matter and antimatter come from? Ray Volkas, a physicist at the University of Melbourne who wasn't involved in the research, said that the Standard Model does have a way of explaining some of the matter-antimatter asymmetry. "It's been known since the early 1960s experimentally that there actually is a subtle difference in the way that matter and antimatter interact [with other particles]," Professor Volkas said. This subtle difference is called the charge-parity violation, or CP violation, and can help explain why there is less antimatter than matter. While researchers had observed this asymmetry in some smaller particles, they had not yet observed it in baryons — a type of subatomic particle made from three quarks. "Almost all of the matter that we come across is baryons," Dr Hadavizadeh said. The team of more than 1,500 scientists from 20 countries, called the 'Large Hadron Collider beauty' (LHCb) collaboration, used the giant particle accelerator to look for examples of asymmetry in baryons. They analysed libraries of data from the first few years of the experiment, looking specifically at curiously named "beauty" baryons. They were able to spot baryons decaying in an asymmetric way — generating more matter than antimatter. Professor Volkas says it is an "interesting result" but neither he, nor the LHCb researchers, think they've come close to solving the whole matter-antimatter mystery yet. "The amount of CP violation in the Standard Model is actually not sufficient to explain cosmological matter-antimatter asymmetry," Professor Volkas said. "It's one of the great mysteries of science." Matter-antimatter asymmetry is just one problem with the Standard Model. While it's beaten all the tests particle physicists have set for it over the decades, the theory has huge gaps in it. It also can't explain gravity or dark energy, a mysterious phenomenon thought to be behind the acceleration of universe expansion. "We don't want our theories to be totally wrong — in fact, they can't be because they work too well — but we want them to be incomplete so that we can add things," Professor Volkas said. He says the LHCb experiment, and similar ones, are getting increasingly thorough at scrutinising the matter-antimatter mystery. "What they're trying to do is examine this CP violation effect with ever greater precision to try to find if the standard theory continues to be verified, or if it will fail and we'll need to extend or modify the theory." While this new result is consistent with the Standard Model, the researchers suggest it might point towards places where they can move beyond the theory. Now that the researchers have measured the asymmetry in baryons, they'll be able to investigate this phenomenon more closely. The study potentially "unlocks a whole new set of particles" to observe new types of physics, Dr Hadavizadeh said.
The Australian
13 hours ago
- The Australian
Perseids meteor shower returns to Australian skies
One of the most famous and active celestial events of the year will begin streaking across the Australian night sky from Thursday, but sky watchers may find this year's display underwhelming with a near-full moon expected to outshine the fainter meteors. Dubbed 'the best meteor shower of the year' by experts, the Perseids are one of the busiest showers with about 50 to 100 meteors seen per hour, according to NASA. The event produces fast, bright streaks and occasional fireballs, larger bursts of light caused by bigger chunks of space debris burning up in Earth's atmosphere. While best viewed from the northern hemisphere, Australian sky watchers in the Top End will be able to catch a glimpse of the famous display. Picture:. The meteors come from debris left behind by comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which last passed through the inner solar system in 1992 and is almost twice the size of the asteroid believed to have wiped the dinosaurs from Earth. As Earth moves through this trail of dust and rock each year, the particles slam into our atmosphere at high speeds, creating the familiar flashes of light in the night sky. NASA says the Perseids are best viewed in the pre-dawn hours, when the sky is darkest and the shower's radiant point, the constellation Perseus, is higher above the horizon, but they can sometimes be seen from about 10pm. The meteor shower is known for occasional fireballs with up to 100 meteors seen per hour. Picture: Supplied. But there's a catch for Aussie viewers: The best views are in the Northern Hemisphere. Only those in the far north of Australia may catch a glimpse of the brighter meteors, and even then, the brightness of the moon will reduce visibility significantly. Those in southern Australia will likely miss out altogether. The shower runs from July 17 to August 23, with peak activity expected about August 12. Amelia Swan Journalist Amelia Swan joined News Corp as a cadet reporter in 2024. Amelia Swan
