Tuesday Night Hoax: Mars Huge 'Round About Nowish
So.I have received several different versions of the "Mars is going to be as big as the moon this month" email recently. Like some others, I get a bit annoyed at receiving emails that are proponents of this or that (sometimes with large picture files attached that eat up my broadband MB allowance or clog up the dial-up user's downloading of their emails), especially ones that are obvious hoaxes.
Especially when it is so easy to check the sources before sending them on, on sites such as snopes.com (a site I will be checking all emails with, along with another reliable source if I can find one).
I'm not talking about funnies here (whether accurate or not - the Washington Post Mensa Competition falls under this one), or emails of the "crazy cats dance" persuasion, but the "Coke will melt a tooth overnight" types of emails that are designed to alarm, lovely "my angel protected me stories" designed as morality tales to convert you to [insert religion here], or emails that deliberately misinform.
So, Tuesday night is now "post a hoax" night.
I am going to start with the aforementioned Mars email.
The email states:
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!
This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.
The encounter will culminate on August 27th 2006 when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide.
And so on.
Snopes says:
Origins: The piece quoted above is another example of an item that was once true but is now being circulated again, long after the events it describes have come to pass. This article was relevant back in 2003, but it is not applicable now, three years later."
Further information on this email can be found on the NASA site:
July 7, 2005: Just when you thought it was safe to read your email....
There's a rumor about Mars going around the internet. Here are some snippets from a widely-circulated email message:
"The Red Planet is about to be spectacular."
"Earth is catching up with Mars [for] the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history."
"On August 27th … Mars will look as large as the full moon."
And finally, "NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN."
Only the first sentence is true. The Red Planet is about to be spectacular. The rest is a hoax.
Here are the facts: Earth and Mars are converging for a close encounter this year [2005] on October 30th at 0319 Universal Time. Distance: 69 million kilometers. To the unaided eye, Mars will look like a bright red star, a pinprick of light, certainly not as wide as the full Moon.
Disappointed? Don't be. If Mars did come close enough to rival the Moon, its gravity would alter Earth's orbit and raise terrible tides.
Sixty-nine million km is good. At that distance, Mars shines brighter than anything else in the sky except the Sun, the Moon and Venus. The visual magnitude of Mars on Oct. 30, 2005, will be -2.3. Even inattentive sky watchers will notice it, rising at sundown and soaring overhead at midnight.
You might remember another encounter with Mars, about two years ago, on August 27, 2003. That was the closest in recorded history, by a whisker, and millions of people watched as the distance between Mars and Earth shrunk to 56 million km. This October's encounter, at 69 million km, is similar. To casual observers, Mars will seem about as bright and beautiful in 2005 as it was in 2003.
Although closest approach is still months away, Mars is already conspicuous in the early morning. Before the sun comes up, it's the brightest object in the eastern sky, really eye-catching. If you have a telescope, even a small one, point it at Mars. You can see the bright icy South Polar Cap and strange dark markings on the planet's surface.
For the record, I did check out Mars last October, and it was very pretty. So please stop telling me about it. And, anyone who missed it in August 2003, don't be too upset. There'll be another of similar magnitude in about 13 years or so.
Do you have a consistent hoax email that is giving you the irrates by popping into your inbox every 5 minutes? Comment and I'll use it next Tuesday.
Thanks to snopes.com and NASA for keeping us informed.
It should be noted that some of the emails that bounce around the internet are true, but not very many. If I don't find an irritating hoax email, I'll report on one that is, in fact, the truth as far as can be ascertained.
posted by Heather @ 9:06 pm
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