The Great Moon Hoax

It is a curious thing, that well-known people are usually famous for one particular thing, or for one area of research or notable life achievement. One man however, became famous for something that he did not discover, but was attributed to him, as a practical joke!

John Herschel had an unassuming beginning, born in Slough, England on 7th March 1792. His parents William and Mary rather more well-known for their pioneering work and especially for William's discovery of the planet which he called the Georgian Planet after king George. Later it was renamed Uranus by the Astronomical Community, the name we are all more familiar with. Both William and Mary were exceptional astronomers and I will write a blog on each in due course. What

John perhaps has been a little overshadowed by the fame of his parents, when in fact, he too was an most extraordinary scientist.

John grew up in the family home called Observatory House. William and Mary owned a 40 ft telescope, and William's sister Caroline played a full part in helping them make sense of their data from their observations. She also tutored the young John in physics, chemistry and  mathematicss. William and Caroline Herschel were also gifted musicians, and they made a small income from their music.

In 1829 John married Margaret Brodie Stewart, and four years later they set off for the Cape of Good Hope. John had gone a circuitous route away from and then back to the world of astronomy, and during his father's ailing health decided to carry on his father's work. By the age of 41 he was a well-known and extremely well respected astronomer and scientist. He wanted to go and make observations of stars which could not be seen from the northern hemisphere, so, with his family,he travelled to the Cape of Good Hope, arriving in the January of 1834. He was there for the next five years.

On Tuesday 25th August in 1835, the following headline appeared on the front page of the New York Sun;

GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES
LATELY MADE
BY SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, L.L.D. F.R.S. &c.
At the Cape of Good Hope
[From Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science]

At the end of the long article which followed the headline, came the declaration that Herschel had found life on the Moon! The article declared that Herschel had built an enormous telescope while in South Africa. This telescope was apparently 24 feet in diameter, weighing over 7 tons, and was able to project onto a screen or wall via a hydro-oxygen  microscope, images of the Moon and the plant life he had apparently discovered on it, objects as small as 18 inches across. The article also declared that he had seen man like creatures on the Moon, illustrated here:

Six articles were published in total in the New York Sun after first being advertised on 21st August.
No one ever actually admitted to being the author, but evidence pointed to journalist Richard Adams Locke, who was working for the Sun at the time. It has been suggested that the purpose for the series of articles was mainly satire (as well as increasing the sales of the New York Sun). The objects of Locke's satire were those who wrote articles proposing  life on the Moon and other planets in our Solar System  and beyond. It also seems that Locke wrote it thinking that readers would catch on immediately to it being satire, but they didn't. They thought it was real, or at least a great number of readers did. It took several weeks before it was known to be a hoax.

John Herschel was amused at first, but grew increasingly annoyed as so much of his time became taken up with questions about it. The Sun apparently never admitted it being a hoax.

An interesting note to add here is that Edgar Allen Poe had also written a Moon hoax article, in June of the same year. However it was not taken seriously because the satire and humour in it was so much more obvious than Locke's. Locke was Poe's editor at the time. Poe was not impressed!

John Herschel's name would have been a household name after this and hopefully this helped him to be recognised as the great astronomer that he was, albeit by means other than he would have wanted.

There is something else to ponder here though. The fact that Locke wrote something satirical aiming pointedly at those who thought and wrote about the possibility of life on the Moon and planets, shows us that the debate was raging even then. Yet it seems that it was acceptable, at least by the press, to poke fun at those who suggested that there is life elsewhere in the Cosmos.

Just this week, NASA have reported evidence for possible flowing liquid water on Mars. Immediately, this was in all the papers. Water of course, as far as we know, is necessary for any sort of life.

We could look back at the Great Moon Hoax and miss the point that it was satire, poking fun at the suggestion of life elsewhere. History has many lenses and the most powerful one is the current time, with all our prejudices, ideas, assumptions and theories. Let us tread carefully as we walk back through the ages and remember to use a variety of lenses lest we miss the point due to our short-sightedness.