Nasa is expected to release more images from New Horizons later today

Their views have been mocked by users of social media and by scientists

They say either Pluto does not exist or Nasa is hiding evidence of aliens

Whenever mankind achieves something extraordinary that pushes the boundaries of what is possible, there are some naysayers who refuse to believe it has happened.

It turns out there are some out there who think that Nasa has faked the stunning images of Pluto and its moons sent back by the New Horizons space craft this week.

Rather than marvelling at the extraordinary detail they have revealed of mountains of ice, craters and canyons on Pluto’s surface, they instead insist it is all an elaborate lie.

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Conspiracy theories have already begun circulating about the images being sent back by New Horizons of Pluto. One YouTube user calling himself Crow used the images above, with a picture using his backyard telescope of Jupiter and an early New Horizons' image of Pluto to suggest the mission has been faked

They claim Nasa has instead attempted to pull the wool over the eyes of the general public by releasing faked photographs of the planet as New Horizons has approached and flown past it.

One individual, who calls himself Crrow and runs something called the Crrow Discovery Project, posted a video on YouTube that he claims debunks the Pluto fraud.

PLUTO'S ICY MOUNTAINS The first high-resolution image of Pluto's surface beamed by New Horizons has revealed 11,000ft (3,350 metre) mountains made of ice. Released alongside new pictures of Pluto's moons Charon and Hydra, it provides evidence that geological activity is still taking place on the icy world. Scientists were shocked to see mountains as high as those in the Rockies that likely formed 100 million years ago - mere youngsters relative to the 4.56-billion-year age of the solar system. Nasa says they may still be in the process of building. Like the rest of Pluto, this region would presumably have been pummeled by space debris for billions of years and would have once been heavily cratered - unless recent activity had given the region a facelift, erasing those pockmarks. Advertisement

He used images from his own telescope in his back garden to take images of Jupiter, which is 400 million miles from Earth, and compared them to New Horizons images it took of the much smaller Pluto from nine million miles way, early in its mission.

He said that as his images of Jupiter are clearer than those of Pluto, it proves the Pluto images are fabricated.

He said: ‘It is all fraud. You are just looking at pixels. Nasa and John Hopkins own these fabricated and false images.

‘If you want to see the real Pluto, I’m sorry to say, you have got to go to Disney Land.’

In the past, however, Mr Crrow has also claimed that the moon is an illusion and he concludes our view of the entire solar system is an elaborate fake.

Others posting on Twitter have attempted to highlight what they claim are computer generated images and even holograms created by Nasa.

A blogger writing on End of Show, claims any object in space that cannot be observed with a telescope on Earth is a fake.

Lmao so their other fake as hell satellite is able to take a photo of the #pluto inbound satellite. #gullible much? https://t.co/eTOD7WRaOZ — WAHsu (@WAH_su) July 14, 2015

TOO BAD ALL #NASA MISSIONS ARE FAKE HOAX.............. #PLUTO DON'T BELIEVE THE HOLOGRAMS , AT LEAST STAY CONSISTENT WITH THE IMAGES SMH — DA INFAMOUS ACE (@DaInfamousAce) July 14, 2015

There are also those who believe that while Pluto may exist, the US government has been covering up evidence of alien bases on the surface of Pluto.

One claim on Twitter, which was later deleted, described the New Horizons mission as the 'biggest lie in history', according to Gizmodo.

The unattributed tweet said: 'Pluto? You all having fun with this fake cgi pic !!! #NASA#NASAHoax biggest lie in history!!!!! #WakeUpAmerica they lied about that to'.

However, such claims have also attracted mockery on social media, while scientists have dismissed them.

Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, said conspiracy theories were an inevitable part of space exploration.

This animation shows how our view of Pluto has changed from its discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 through the 1990s and the latest images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in 2015 (Credit: NASA)

FIRST IT WAS GRAY.... HOW CAN YOU EVEN DETERMINE ITS A PLANET, THEN ITS , BLUE, NOW TAN.... 5 YEARS ITS GONNA BE RED WATCH..... I HATE THIS FAKENESS BY NASA Posted by Kedrick Parker on Wednesday, 15 July 2015

Hey Space Monkeys! I demand your Proof of Premises! Critical thinking is obviously extinct.... @nasa #space lies pic.twitter.com/iqq6uIJqQv — uSHAW@ (@WAH_su) July 15, 2015

He said: 'I was surprised to see how quickly people started saying the mission to Pluto, and the pictures being sent back to Earth are all fake. I think these ideas are just plain Goofy.

'Conspiracy theorists believe every strange blob of light near the International Space Station are alien spacecraft, and every feature on Mars photographed by Nasa is interpreted as evidence of aliens living there.

'They can believe those pictures are not faked because they fit their ideas but call other pictures fake that don't fit their theories.

The first ever high-resolution image of Pluto has been beamed back to Earth showing water ice and 11,000ft (3,350 metre) mountains. The mountains likely formed no more than 100 million years ago - mere youngsters relative to the 4.56-billion-year age of the solar system. Nasa says they may still be in the process of building

New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, center, reacted with astonishment when the 'mind blowing' images began appearing from the spacecraft for the first time since its close encounter with Pluto

Clearly new #Pluto photos are fake: they don't show the turtles upon which Pluto rests to prevent it from falling out of orbit #nasahoax — JR (@RobeJonathan) July 16, 2015

'In the end Nasa will always be seen as an evil agent of the US government that is hiding the evidence of aliens visiting us and working with our leaders to take over the world.'

Earlier this week New Horizons sent back the highest resolution images of Pluto's surface taken as it flew to within 7,750 miles of the dwarf planet's surface three billion miles from Earth.

Sent back alongside images of Pluto's moons Charon and Hydra, the pictures revealed 11,000ft (3,350 metre) mountains made of ice.

Scientists say these provide evidence that geological activity is still taking place on the icy world and they say they were likely formed within the past 100 million years ago and may even still be forming.

The mountains are probably composed of Pluto's water-ice 'bedrock.'

‹ Slide me › The image above shows some of the features, and their names, that have already become clearer on Pluto

This image of an area on Pluto's moon Charon has a captivating feature -a depression with a peak in the middle, shown here in the upper left corner of the inset. The image shows an area 240 miles (390lm) from top to bottom, including few craters. 'The most intriguing feature is a large mountain sitting in a moat,' said Nasa researcher Jeff Moore. 'This is a feature that has geologists stunned and stumped'

Although methane and nitrogen ice covers much of the surface of Pluto, these materials are not strong enough to build the mountains. Instead, a stiffer material, most likely water-ice, created the peaks.

CHARON UNVEILED Pluto's moon, Charon is almost half the size of the dwarf planet. It is so big that Pluto and Charon are sometimes referred to as a double dwarf planet system. The latest image of Charon has revealed an impressive variation in geology. 'Charon just blew our socks off when we had our new image today,' said Nasa's Cathy Olkin. A swath of cliffs and troughs stretches about 600 miles (1,000km) can be seen which suggest widespread fracturing of Charon's crust, likely a result of internal processes. Along the moon's curving edge, is a canyon estimated to be 4 to 6 miles (7 to 9km) deep. Mission scientists are surprised by the apparent lack of craters on Charon indicating a relatively young surface that has been reshaped by geologic activity. Advertisement

This is the first time astronomers have seen a world that is mostly composed of ice that is not orbiting a planet.

Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by the gravitational pull of a larger planetary body. Nasa says some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.

Professor Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission said that Pluto also appears to be losing much of its thin atmosphere to space.

He said: 'Pluto’s atmosphere is being lost in space. It’s lost about 300 meters of nitrogen.'

Earlier colour images of Pluto have also revealed what look like impact craters and large dark areas that are thought to be recently exposed ice.

Its moon Charon has already revealed some fascinating discoveries and is thought to be composed of water ice and rock.

Scientists have spotted giant chasms bigger than the Grand Canyon on Earth and a strange looking mountain with what looks like a 'moat' around it.

It is expected to take the New Horizons spacecraft well into 2016 before it has managed to beam back all of the data it has obtained during its mission so far.

Spectra images show an abundance of methane ice on Pluto. But there are differences in the ice across the surface. 'We just learned that in the north polar cap, methane ice is diluted in a thick, transparent slab of nitrogen ice resulting in strong absorption of infrared light,' said New Horizons co-investigator Will Grundy

THE DEMON WORLD: NAMES OF UNDERWORLD GODS PROPOSED FOR NEW FEATURES ON PLUTO Unofficial names for new features discovered on Pluto have been put forward including mythological creatures such as Mephistopheles (above) As New Horizons begins to send back the first images of the Pluto system, there is a growing, and rather dark, list of names for the features scientists expect to see in them. Named after the Roman god of the underworld itself, the mysterious reddish coloured planet could have a series of craters, canyons, plains and chasms named after dark gods and demons from different cultures. Among those proposed are Ammit, the Egyptian goddess who devoured the souls of the sinful; Supay, the Inca's ruler of the underworld and Erlik, the underworld god in Mongolian mythology. A number of fictional monsters, such as the Balrog from JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Morgoth from the author's novel The Silmarillion have also been suggested. Although none of the names have been officially adopted, they have been put forward as part of a proposal submitted to the International Astronomical Union by scientists at the SETI Institute as part of a public campaign called Our Pluto. The names could transform the alien looking landscape of Pluto into a world filled with features that have emerged from the nightmares and deepest terrors of mankind. Among the proposed list of names names is Mephistopheles, the demon in German folklore who bartains for Faust's soul in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Peklenc, the god of the underworld in Slavic mythology and Xargi, the ruler of the underworld from Siberian mythology, are also among those put forward. Dr Jane Greaves, an astrophysicist at St Andrews University who has studied the atmosphere of Pluto, explained the theme may have been inspired by Pluto's distance from the sun. She said: 'The names in astronomical systems usually form a family, so here the theme is the Underworld, I guess because of the darkness out at Pluto's orbit. Pluto's moon Nix is from a creation goddess though, so more like dawn than darkness. Advertisement

So scientists believe there will be many more discoveries to come from Pluto and its surrounding moons.

Researchers are also to appeal to Nasa to extend the New Horizons' mission, allowing them to redirect it into the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy debris four billion miles from the sun.

This would make it the first spacecraft to visit this part of our solar system and it may even fly past one of the giant frozen blocks there that are thought to have been left over from when the planets formed.