22% of Spaniards don’t imagine that people reached the Moon | Science | EUROtoday

In September 1962, John F. Kennedy introduced that the United States was embarking on the area journey, amid Soviet advances. “We choose to go to the Moon. Not because it is easy, but because it is difficult,” he proclaimed, with the aim of reaching the satellite tv for pc earlier than the top of the last decade. In July 1969, practically 500 million folks all over the world watched in entrance of their televisions because the people who traveled on Apollo 11 set foot on grey mud for the primary time. However, not everybody accepts this occasion as true. In Spanish society, 22% don’t purchase it. This is indicated by the BBVA Foundation’s Study on Scientific Culture in Spain, which is printed this Tuesday.

Specifically, 11% of Spaniards think about the arrival of people to the Moon in all probability false and one other 11% fully false. And it does so within the midst of humanity’s return to the celestial physique, half a century after the final expedition (in 1972). NASA will ship 4 astronauts to circle the satellite tv for pc with the Artemis 2 mission, scheduled to launch in February of this 12 months on the earliest.

Conspiracies are a minority

Although there are segments that imagine that the person didn’t set foot in that grey world, in addition to different theses that encompass hypothesis, the report factors out that the rejection of conspiracy theories is almost all. Flat-Eartherism, the supposed relationship between vaccines and autism or local weather change denialism are discarded by the vast majority of Spaniards surveyed.

That the Earth is flat as an alternative of being a sphere is an concept accepted by solely 3% and 6% imagine that vaccines trigger autism. However, there are important minorities: lower than half of Spaniards settle for that the universe started with a giant explosion (40%) and nearly 30% think about it possible or completely true that “extraterrestrials have visited the Earth, but the powers have hidden it.”

Regarding local weather change, 8% imagine that it’s an “invention by scientists to obtain financing.” At this level, political ideology has a marked affect: nearly 30% of these on the best deny local weather change, in comparison with solely 6% on the left.

Spanish society appears to be like at science with curiosity

The examine, based mostly on knowledge from two phone surveys in 2025 with greater than 4 thousand contributors, describes a society that’s principally all for science. Eight out of ten Spaniards declare themselves all for it, primarily “for the pleasure of learning new things” (58%), and to a lesser extent for its “practical usefulness” (32%).

This curiosity translated into data in 60% of these surveyed, who think about themselves knowledgeable about scientific matters. And amongst individuals who declared that they had little curiosity, the primary barrier they talked about was “difficulty understanding scientific topics” (49%).

Meanwhile, 64% of these surveyed preserve a medium or excessive relationship with science (27% excessive, 37% medium-high), 14% are fully on the margins. Closeness will increase with the academic stage and, to a lesser extent, between younger folks, people who find themselves actively working and college students.

Despite the excessive stage of curiosity in science, the examine highlights that fundamental ideas similar to algorithm or social stratification are usually not understood by numerous residents: solely 24% partially perceive the which means of algorithm and one other 17% don’t. In the case of social stratification, 37% don’t perceive it and 22% perceive it partly.

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2026-01-26/un-22-de-los-espanoles-no-se-cree-que-los-humanos-llegaron-a-la-luna.html