Nvidia uses new global illumination tech to test hoax claims

[gillianren]

Don't they know the New York Times retracted that statement?

[ka9q]

Don't they know the New York Times retracted that statement?

Yeah, but they think they got it right the first time.

I've run into a surprising number of people who claim rockets can't work in vacuum. I still wonder how many of them are just pulling my leg.

[Echnaton]

Its funny how people attribute all sorts of special properties to something they have no experience with.  We've had HBs that thought air filled tires would explode in a vacuum. Including one that thought that "fact" proved the lunar rover was fake?  As a 4 or 5 year old kid paying attention to the Gemini program, I thought it was the vacuum of space that made the astronauts weightless.  The vacuum seems to be a magical state for some people. 

[raven]

Especially absurd since the rover tires weren't even air filled, instead they were made from an open wire mesh.

[Bryanpoprobson]

Its funny how people attribute all sorts of special properties to something they have no experience with.  We've had HBs that thought air filled tires would explode in a vacuum. Including one that thought that "fact" proved the lunar rover was fake?  As a 4 or 5 year old kid paying attention to the Gemini program, I thought it was the vacuum of space that made the astronauts weightless.  The vacuum seems to be a magical state for some people.

I think that "Earthly" experience leads some hoax believers to come to erroneous conclusions, especially in the understanding of Lunar Surface temperatures. Another thing that misleads "some" protagonists is the fact that the Moon keeps the same face to the Earth. They fail to understand and the accept the reality of a "Lunar" day and cannot understand the fact, that the moon does in fact have a rotation.

An area where HB's tend to talk total BS is in their understanding of radiation, in particular particle radiation in the VAB's. The background radiation levels from the solar wind and Cosmic radiation was probably a bigger concern for NASA at the time, but the old HB's do like their VAB nonsense.

[Echnaton]

Especially absurd since the rover tires weren't even air filled, instead they were made from an open wire mesh.

IIRC that was a short lived "fact" on one of those long continuous single page web sites.  The owner backed off that claim, once the error was pointed out.  Likely because it was a huge visually identifiable gaff that all but the most credulous would notice. 

[JayUtah]

The space shuttle tires were filled with air.  That used to be one of my interview questions:  Why don't they pop in the vacuum?

[raven]

As were the MET 'Lunar rickshaw' tires. Well, nitrogen, but still pressurized, yet I have yet to hear a specific complaint regarding them from conspiracy theorists.

[cjameshuff]

As were the suits and spacecraft. Even if 1 atm of difference were enough to rupture a normal tire, do they think NASA could build an airtight spacesuit but not an airtight lunar tire?

The idea that tires would necessarily burst in a vacuum is just nutty no matter how you look at it.

[frenat]

IIRC the tires on the SR-71 were pressurized to about 300 atm.  Not sure about the shuttle tires.  I doubt 1 more atmosphere of difference would be significant.

I had an HB try to argue on GLP recently that the pressure difference would be too great in a vacuum for the fuel and air tanks on Apollo.  I tried to explain that one more ATM difference wouldn't be significant but he didn't get it because again, it was GLP. 

[JayUtah]

IIRC the tires on the SR-71 were pressurized to about 300 atm.

PSI, but yes.  The 1 atm pressure difference is negligible.

[frenat]

IIRC the tires on the SR-71 were pressurized to about 300 atm.

PSI, but yes.  The 1 atm pressure difference is negligible.

Yes, PSI.  Oops.

[Tedward]

Must admit I thought it was a tyre with air in it, though assumed it was somewhat different to a car, and not exploding. The wire tyre was really an elegant choice.

[smartcooky]

Its funny how people attribute all sorts of special properties to something they have no experience with.  We've had HBs that thought air filled tires would explode in a vacuum. Including one that thought that "fact" proved the lunar rover was fake?  As a 4 or 5 year old kid paying attention to the Gemini program, I thought it was the vacuum of space that made the astronauts weightless.  The vacuum seems to be a magical state for some people. 

Here is another one for you.

I talked to someone a few weeks back who is not really a hoax believer, they are just someone who I put in the category "the Americans didn't really go to the moon, did they?". Most of you will know the type, they have just seen the odd thing mentioned on the internet, and probably don't much care one way or the other.

Well, this particular person seemed to think that weightlessness in orbit is caused by weaker gravity because they are further away from the earth. I tried to explain about how an object in orbit is "always falling" towards the earth, but its forward speed is such that the point where it is falling to is always beyond the horizon due to the curvature of the earth. (I would like to find a better way to explain this sometime)

I asked her to imagine that we had a spacecraft with an unlimited fuel supply that was able to stay 500 miles up over the same spot on the earth (using its rockets to keep it there). Would the occupants feel weightlessness? She said yes because the astronauts in the ISS were only a couple of hundred miles up and they feel weightless.

When I said, "how about the people on the top floor of a 500 mile high tower building", I saw the penny drop!

[raven]

There was a neat little experiment that shows how things in freefall are 'weightless'. Take a paper or Styrofoam cup poke a hole near the bottom and fill it with water. Then, drop it from some height. You will see that the water doesn't pour from the cup while it's falling. Now explain that the spaceship is like the cup, only it's falling around the Earth so fast and so high it never hits the ground.