Most conspiracy theorists prefer their iconoclastic status and for those wishing to take it even further, there are alternatives to the alternatives. These include the idea of Earth being hollow instead of flat; a fondness for Lumeria instead of Atlantis; and whispers that Israelis were behind 9/11 instead of the U.S. government.

Then we have the conviction that the moon is a hologram, which while not precisely inconsistent with flat Earth beliefs would leave little room for common ground. One of the few astronomical observations flat Earthers get right is that our satellite is indeed in motion. They believe it exists and moves about, while hologram proponents reject such notions.

While the idea of a holographic moon is comical, I was surprised by the anger that believers have over what they feel is a repressed truth. Of course, we here are much more concerned with their evidence than their emotions, so let’s dive into the former.

At the risk of stating the obvious, this leads us to YouTube. The user Crrow777 claims that when gazing skyward at night power glitches in an artificial electrical system are revealed. They probably are if one looks long enough and is determined to reach such a conclusion. But his corroborating evidence is limited to referencing three unidentified individuals with secret information and unspecified Russian scientists also in the know.

He leaves several questions unanswered, or unasked for that matter. These include: What causes a solar or lunar eclipse? What causes gravitational pull on Earth and the resulting tides? How do radio signals bounce off a three-dimensional light projection? How would a hologram emit gamma rays, which are detected coming from the moon?

Further, what is the incentive for the thousands of persons would need to have been in on this for millenniums and who exist in every part of the world, including islands several hundred miles away from any other land mass? Such as Bouvet, an uninhabited hump of coral 1,100 miles from any human and which is visited only annually by Norwegian scientists, who still see a moon when they’re there.

Residents of Tristan de Cunha are 1,500 miles from any other terra firma, yet even on this extremely remote, airstrip-free locale, someone would need to be present to perpetrate the ruse from the ground or broadcast it from a manmade satellite (like I said, hologram enthusiasts and flat Earthers don’t get along too well). Sailors circumnavigating the globe have always been able to use our satellite as a guide and modern-day jet passengers on a long distance overnight flight would see the hologram disappear.  

Moreover, how did the hologram plotter’s predecessors manage this 100, 1,000, and 10,000 years ago? Ancient cultures referenced the moon and based rituals, festivals, and planting and harvesting seasons around it. This was done by societies all over the world, meaning the conspiracy would have to have been coordinated with persons up to 10,000 miles apart who had no way of communicating with each other. 

The website revisionism.nl touches on parts of this by stating that the projection “could have been different things at different times and different places, depending on the technology available to the conspirators and the culture and beliefs of the population being deceived. Perhaps it began as a collective hallucination or a religious myth, or perhaps an especially bright star that came to be exaggerated over time. However the moon story started, early proponents of the hoax were swift to recognize how it could be exploited for their benefit, and shrewdly devised a scheme to use it to their advantage.”

Who they were, how they perpetrated it, what they gained, and how they passed the secret down for 50,000 years are all left unanswered, and no evidence is offered for this haphazard hypothesis.

Ccrow777’s cohort Dave Johnson opens his videos with a notice that includes personal attacks, hostility to opposing views, and superfluous apostrophes and articles: “I care less than NOTHING for your opinion or recollection’s from a Science book Dummies.”

Johnson points to a purple fringe that appear when he zooms in on the moon with his camcorder, not explaining why that would be consistent with a hologram or why a hologram would be the only explanation for a purple fringe.

The skeptic YouTuber ColdHardLogic replied that different colors of light refract while passing through a lens. Part of the lens function, in fact, is to bring light to a desired focal plane. And since different wavelengths of light are refracted by different amounts, they are focused at different points, and can result in visual phenomena since as purple fringes.

Gawker’s Dayna Evans unearthed a Facebook group asking questions such as how a supposed barren wasteland like the moon could glow. Since I’m assuming the persons asking this have no fourth-grade science books handy, I’ll let them know it’s caused by the sun’s light reflecting off it.

Meanwhile, revisionism.nl’s About section highlights continual changes to the moon’s brightness, shape, size, and color, though those changes would seem INCONSISTENT with a holographic projection. The site maintainers don’t entertain competing notions, but do allow some internal dialogue as to how conspirators display the image: “It could be a hologram, projected from various government installations throughout the world. It could be a large, crudely painted balloon held in place by helium and propelled by tiny sails and rudders, which is why it moves across the sky so slowly.”

A third option that’s floated, so to speak, is that chemtrails leave behind a screen on which the hologram is shone. This would push the notion of chemtrails back several thousand years, which would get conspiracy theorists excited, but it leaves unanswered the question of why this screen fails to respond to sunlight during times the hologram is seen during the day.

A fourth option to explain the cratered white rock in the night sky is that a round satellite formed 4  billion years ago when Earth collided with another planet, and gravity has kept this heavenly body orbiting our planet ever since. During this time, humans visited this astronomical neighbor and brought back souvenir rocks. Gotta tell you, I’m definitely getting good use out of this fourth-grade science book today.