Jarrah White
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Jarrah White (born 1980) is an Australian conspiracy theorist known mostly for his long-running series of YouTube videos claiming that the Moon landings were hoaxed. In addition to the MoonFaker videos, he also maintains a website with the same name and his beliefs about the hoax have led him to a few confrontations with notable skeptics on and off the Internet. He likes to style himself "Grandson of the Apollo Moon Hoax Theory".
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Beliefs and methods
Most of White's "evidence" appears to be borrowed from earlier conspiracy theorists, notably Ralph René, with whom White claims to have become friends prior to René's death. White has reproduced many of René's calculations and theories in his own videos, perpetuating basic errors attributable to René's lack of understanding of basic mathematical and scientific concepts.
Credentials and background
According to the biography on White's website, he "holds Certificate III & IV with distinctions in Screen (a Film & TV course) at Sydney Institute of TAFE", which would explain why his videos have better production values than the average webcam-shot YouTube dreck. He also claims to be studying for a BSc in astrophysics.
He has been posting YouTube videos in his "Moonfaker" series since 2007, but the earliest record of his Apollo obsession on the world wide web dates back to 2003, when he was an active member (later banned) of The Technodrome,[1] a discussion board dedicated to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Business activities
White accepts donations via his Moonfaker website[2]. He also runs a "Paypal fundraise"[sic] entitled Fly Jarrah to the Moon[3], in which he "encourages propagandists and everyone who believes in Apollo to raise $500,000 to pay for himself and an accompanying believer to take this proposed tourist flight".
White has also apparently taken over the sales side of the late Ralph René's website. For example, a 12-page pamphlet explaining that pi is equal to 3.146264[4] is available for $14 by emailing Jarrah White.
Moonfaker.com
White presents a long list of Frequently Asked Questions[5] on his website that are intended to supplement his videos; however these only serve to illustrate his basic lack of knowledge about space flight.
A few examples follow:
| Q: Weren’t there independent parties tracking Apollo all the way to the moon and back?
A: No. There are some known Ham radio operators who attest to having picked up signals from Apollo (Paul Wilson, Richard Knadle, Larry Baysinger, Sven Grahn), but none of them can attest to having tracked these probes all the way to the moon and back. Grahn for example only testifies to having picked up signals from Apollo 17 when it was in earth orbit, when it was on the moon and in lunar orbit. He openly admits to not tracking it the whole way there and back. |
Of course it would be impossible for any one individual to track the Apollo craft all the way from the Earth to the moon. The journey took approximately three days, during which time the moon would be below the horizon for great lengths of time for an observer in any given location on Earth. Hence the need for the Deep Space Network[wp] of receiving stations around the world to maintain constant contact.
| Q: What is the most compelling evidence that the moon missions were faked?
A: First, as demonstrated by James Van Allen’s own findings, the radiation belts that surround earth would have been lethal to astronauts. |
This is categorically untrue, as attested to by Dr Van Allen himself: "The recent Fox TV show, which I saw, is an ingenious and entertaining assemblage of nonsense. The claim that radiation exposure during the Apollo missions would have been fatal to the astronauts is only one example of such nonsense."
| Q: Could you see the artefacts (if they were there) with a telescope?
A: Although propagandists say that you can’t, Jarrah disagrees and can prove it. There is a simple formula that scientists use to determine the angular size of an object in space. (d ÷ D) x 206,265 = α Where d is the diameter of the object, D is the distance of the object and α is the resolution in arc-seconds. We know the lunar module is 4metres across and the moon is 380,000km away – or 380,000,000metres. So we plug those digits into the formula and get, (4 ÷ 380,000,000) x 203,265 = 0.002arc-seconds. So from this calculation, we know that we need a telescope with an angular resolution of 0.002arc-seconds. According to an ESO Press Release, scientists working at The Very Large Telescope (VLT) array in Chile “were able to see details on the scale of one milli-arcsecond, corresponding to being able to distinguish, from the Earth, the headlights of a car on the Moon”. 1 milli-arcsecond is 0.001arc-seconds. This means the Very Large Telescope is perfect to resolve man made equipment left behind on the lunar surface. |
Jarrah is deeply confused here. The press release he mentions is not talking about the visual capabilities of the VLT. It is talking about the VLTI, an interferometer set-up that combines the images from three VLT visual-light telescopes to gain information about very small, very distant objects. Such a set-up is only useful for point sources of light against a dark background (e.g., a star), and completely useless for imaging the lunar surface. He is comparing apples, (in daytime), to flashlights, (at night).
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Turtles on The Moon?, thread started by Jarrah White on 6 November 2004
- ↑ http://www.moonfaker.com/donations.html
- ↑ http://www.moonfaker.com/fly-jarrah-to-the-moon.html
- ↑ http://ralphrene.com/circle_squared.html
- ↑ Frequently Asked Questions