Alien on the Moon? Moonshine, Says NASA

Alien on the Moon? Moonshine, Says NASA

If sci-fi is your cup of tea, the exciting news about an alien on the moon should be right up your alley. For NASA scientists are now claiming that the viral video of an alien on the moon is simply hogwash. The video claiming to show an 'alien' figure on the moon was viral, as people sought to uncover more about the “we are not alone” story.

But, it turned out to be a mock tale and a tasteful one at that, unlike many others. While theorists had a gala time suggesting it could be anything from a shadow cast by a boulder nearby to a alien on the move, NASA scientists reduced the theories to dust literally and metaphorically. NASA announced that the figure is simply “dust, an eyelash (which is a term for a scratch) on the negative” of the film that showed the image.

Many questioned who the mystery figure on the moon was. The image was spotted on the Google Moon site by web-user Jansenko. Seeing patterns where there are none is nothing new for the human race. The phenomenon is referred to as pareidolia and it is a psychological response for locating faces and other meaningful stimuli in random patterns.

This particular tendency is part of a general condition called apophenia where people see patterns or connections in data which is just plain and simple random. Some suggest this tendency may even be necessary for survival. Human eyes can see faces within the environment to recognise an ally or an enemy in the crowd and also ascertain the speed at which a car is travelling or how many patterns we can see in random events and (you guessed it) numbers.

Scientists also hold that this ability is useful for enriching the imagination and ascertaining meaning in random patterns and shapes. The same tendency could be used to make abstract art or write a spell-binding story. Of course, the video in question with the alien on the moon which was posted by YouTube user Wowforreel has attracted more than 2 million hits in less than one month which is something to be said for the lure of the unknown for all of mankind.

The myth buster was Noah Petro who is a deputy project scientist for the Lunar Renaissance Orbiter or LROC mission currently orbiting the moon. He hold the media that the image was taken by either the Apollo 15 or 17 manned missions to the moon in 1971 and 1972. The current LROCC does not display any lunar feature that could cause the pattern on the ground. 'My best guess, is that something (dust, an eyelash, scratch on the negative) was on the film,' Dr Petro informed media group Pix11. He went on to caution 'Remember, this was in the pre-digital days when all sorts of nasty things could happen to film.'

So, the radio did not kill the video star this time. Instead, the honours were done by the NASA scientist. From a viral video to a disproved theory, the alien moon sensation has taken on a lot of avatars. This is true for any unusual phenomenon that has many possible explanations. In many cases, it is generally the scientific and what some may perceive as the mundane explanation which wins every time. For alien seekers, there a host of consolations out there. If not, at least they managed to read an interesting story. Sometimes, fact need not be as strange as fiction, even if the latter is just a mock tale.