Nvidia debunks lunar landing conspiracy (Video)

Nvidia cooked up a fun demo to recreate the lighting conditions for the famous photograph of Aldrin climbing down the lunar module's ladder, taken by Armstrong, who was already standing on the surface of the moon.

The purpose of Nvidia's project—aside from showing off Maxwell( its first Maxwell-class GeForce GTX desktop graphics processors )—was to debunk a popular conspiracy theory which holds that NASA never actually sent humans to Earth's satellite, a view supposedly bolstered by claims that the light conditions in Armstrong's photo and other images taken by Apollo astronauts appear to be off, as if the pictures were taken on a studio set.

Conspiracy theorists expound that Aldrin is too brightly lit in the picture. But as Nvidia's demo illustrates, in the conditions under which the photo was taken, there was plenty of reflected light to go around for Aldrin to stand out as brightly as he does.

Download Nvidia's Maxwell Apollo 11 demo on the graphics chip maker's website. You'll need a system with at least a GeForce GTX 970 graphics card, running Windows 7 or Windows 8.