Two Moons on August 27? Nope.
Friday August 22, 2008
I've gotten three emails lately about some wonderful magical phenomenon that's supposed to take place on August 27, two of which have scolded me for not bothering to mention the magical potential of such an event. Allegedly, Mars will be so close to the earth that it will look like it's the same size as the moon. Sounds cool, doesn't it? Well, I had never even heard of this before so I did some digging (okay, I didn't have to dig far, but the Google-fu is strong in me) and it looks like this is something that's been circulating on Teh Interwebs for about five years. In fact, if you've looked at the calendar, you already know that on August 27, 2008, we're not going to be seeing a whole lot of the moon at all, since the New Moon is on August 30. At any rate, the whole thing is actually false. I could go into a lot of detail about why it's not true, but the folks over at Snopes do a way better job of explaining it than I ever could: Mars Spectacular.
Comments
Hey -the new moon is on my birthday 8/30
Wow. People are gullible.
In response to the blog: people never cease to amuse me! LOL!
To ANJI: My birthday is on the 31st, so Happy Birthday to us!
Blessed Be!
Happy Birthday to ANJI and Ross! Love being a Leo.
Blessed Be
Kitty
Thanks Kitty!
Blessed be!
You know, Mars is so far away from us that it is bearly visable to the naked eye as a particularly bright star.
If Mars apprered to be the same size as the moon, well, we’d better kiss our buts goodbye, because we’re about to find out what happens when worlds collide, literally.
It never ceases to amaze me what people will believe without researching. Mars is really really far. If it were the size of the moon to our naked eye, it would be seriously screwing with our tides and weather patterns to the point of cataclysm. This is almost as bad as the “Paint the moon prank” of late 2007 by one of the beer companies. They said they were going to project an advertisement onto the surface of the full moon. theoretically feasible in some ways, but impractical and crazy in most. But there were people getting ready to protest it because they didn’t know it was a prank, and didn’t bother to even consider the unlikeliness of it.
@ Kitty: Anji and Ross are most likely Virgos, not Leos. One could probably consider them late into the cusp of Leo/Virgo.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrological_sign )
Thanks Theo…..terrible at the horoscope thing.
Oh well, I guess I won’t spend the night in my hammock in the middle of my back yard tonight after all. On second thought, maybe I will get an e mail tonight that Santa is in the sky 4 months early this year.
yeah! happy birthday to all of us virgos on earth.
my b-day is aug. 29! that makes the three of us a nice trio: 29, 30 and 31 birthdays!
Happy Birthday Anji and Ross! And me too!
Happy Birthday Maria!!!