5/5/2000

[Snappy Plissken]

Hallo. I'm sure some of y'all have heard how on May 5th, 2000, all (or most? I'm unsure) of the planets will align and supposedly the Earth will ah, suffer severe gravitational pulls and the magnetic field will collapse, and there'll be lots of earthquakes and tornadoes and volcanic eruptions until we're all dead and gone.

What do y'all think of this? Hogwash? Slight truth in the matter? Oh-My-God-We're-All-Gonna-Die?

Personally I believe we'll have slightly higher tides/waves, we'll feel heavier, magnets might be a li'l off...but that's it.

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Snappy, The Crazy Toddite - Friend of Skippy

[manhattan]

Don’t worry about it. Scientists are creating a whole new Big Bang on Long Island later this year, so there won’t be any planets to align for a good 3-4 billion years.

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Livin' on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine

[David B]

Oh, no -- the planets are aligning...again.

Yes, again.

We've been through this before. Some guys even wrote an allegedly non-fiction book that predicted all sorts of horrible things when the planets "aligned" back when I was in junior high. Needless to say, the book had to be moved out of the non-fiction section...

[Persephone]

Didn't the planets align just a few years ago?

[tracer]

David B wrote:

We've been through this before. Some guys even wrote an allegedly non-fiction book that predicted all sorts of horrible things when the planets "aligned" back when I was in junior high. Needless to say, the book had to be moved out of the non-fiction section...

I remember this book. It was titled The Jupiter Effect. The cover depicted all 9 planets lined up in a row on one side of the sun. There really was a planetary alignment due to happen when the book said it would, but this "alignment" only involved having all of the planets within the same 95-degree arc of one another on the same side of the sun.

Oh, and needless to say, the world did not end. :)

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I'm not flying fast, just orbiting low.

[Snappy Plissken]

My mother read the book 5/5/2000 and now preaches to me about...it all. I understand why it's a big moment in astrological/astronomical history since...it's kinda rare to get them in a perfect line and all, but...eh, world didn't end afore, shouldn't end now. I read the first chapter...gawl, it was horridly stupid. I mean, was telling about animals/people hiding in little holes in the ground until...radiation? or something just kinda killed them all. It cracked me up!

Just now talked to mom. She said, "Awww" at the reactions of y'all. Hehehe.

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Snappy, The Crazy Toddite - Friend of Skippy

[hansel]

I believe it was in Skeptical Inquirer where I read that I exert more gravitational influence on you when standing three feet away, than all other eight planets would if they were in a perfectly straight line, which they never are.

Theories about the disastrous gravitational effects of planetary alignments display nothing more than a profoud misunderstanding of the distances involved.

[Just Ed]

Hmmm . . . I guess we're all assuming we're going to get to 5/5/2000. Good to see the Y2K paranoia isn't as widespread as I had thought.

[AuraSeer]

The Master himself has written on this subject: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_159b.html

[Strainger]

Aw, man! That's really gonna screw up Cinco de Mayo!

[bantmof]

Hallo. I'm sure some of y'all have heard how on May 5th, 2000, all (or most? I'm unsure) of the planets will align and supposedly the Earth will ah, suffer severe gravitational pulls and the magnetic field will collapse, and there'll be lots of earthquakes and tornadoes and volcanic eruptions until we're all dead and gone.
Yeah! We're all gonna die!!! There has of course never been a planetary alignment before in all of time, and the effects will rip the earth apart! Scientists know this and are conspiring to withhold the information from the public to avoid creating mass panic. The stock market will crash. It's gonna be bad, man!
we'll feel heavier, magnets might be a li'l off
You're not going to feel heavier. And how would magnets be affected?

Why not get a pocket calculator and run the numbers yourself if you're worried about it? You can find all the required masses and distances on the web, and the formula is G*M1*M2/D^2 - you sum the results per body - you can probably assume they're all colinear and ignore the cosine effect. Don't forget to add in the moon and the sun.

After you do that, get back to me on just exactly how you'd feel heavier and what the deal with the magnets is, coz maybe I won't have to go into survivalism mode after all.
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peas on earth

[skupla]

"The Master Himself" had something on how many degrees the arc was before.

-- for example, 83 degrees in 1817, and 46 degrees in 1307--

does anyone know just how many degrees its supposed to be this time??

Anyway if it was serious, and I dont think it is. I think the Americans would've panicked already. You know, they'd be digging themselves into the ground and starting all kinds of new religious groups.

Okay, recently I've been informed that civilization as we know it will end on the following dates; 9 September 1999, 1 January 2000, 30 January 2000 (but only if the Bills win the Superbowl) and 5 May 2000. Are there any other dates I should watch for? I'm planning next year's vacation schedule and I'd like to avoid a conflict with the end of the world.

[vanillanice]

People born on that day will have really unbalanced horoscopes!

Mike, I know I've heard this somewhere, but I can't remember the exact date mentioned -- the 'theory' (hehhah! thet's a kneeslappur, thet iz!) that the Mayan calendar ends sometime in the century after next (IIRC?), which is supposed to mean, time ends. Anybody else hear this or know more about the alleged 'exact' date?

[Alphagene]

The date the Mayan calendar ends is 13.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 K'ank'in.

Oh, you want that in Gregorian? December 23, 2012.

[DSYoungEsq]

30 January 2000 (but only if the Bills win the Superbowl)
Yeah, like THAT is gonna happen! <hurridly checking to see that the Cubs are still in last place> <giggle>

[Snappy Plissken]

Well ya see, if the magnetic field is disrupted...oops. Didn't mean...magnets. Hehe. Meant um...compasses. Pardon. But I can see how everyone'd know why *those* got all screwed up. And you'd feel heavier because all the gravitational pulls (as per se mi mama) from all the planets and junk would...not only affect tides and stuff but the Earth's gravity. I suppose we'd all feel like post-menopausal women and feel fat and bloated and cranky? Eee. We kinda didn't die this last Sept. 9, did we? Or am I...in heaven?

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Snappy, The Crazy Toddite - Friend of Skippy

Dammit, now I'm going to have to replace all that cheapass Mayan software I bought before 2012 or my computer will crash because of the Y13-4A3K problem.

[MrKnowItAll]

What is the freakin' deal! Are people just not happy unless they can see oblivion in the near future? It's always something, isn't it?

[bantmof]

But I can see how everyone'd know why *those* got all screwed up.
I give up. How?
I suppose we'd all feel like post-menopausal women and feel fat and bloated and cranky?
You find that pocket calculator yet, Snappy? Gonna let us know (1) the size of the total gravitational effect of all the other planets, compared to that from the moon and sun, and (2) the gravitational differential across one earth-radius from same?

Come on - I wanna know how worried I should be!
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peas on earth

[Jeff Alberts]

All I wanna know is are my subscription to Healing Crystal of the Month still be intact?

That was a joke, by the way, just felt I should point that out so no one would think I was serious.

It's amazing what people will believe. This is worse than the Dark Ages!

Jeff

[E1skeptic]

Aw, man! That's really gonna screw up Cinco de Mayo!

Hey, hey! At least we can celebrate Dieciséis de Septiembre in peace...

BTW, you already had your 4th of July screwed by aliens, didn't you?

[C K Dexter Haven]

Civilization already ended. It happened back in 1968, when Richard Nixon was elected to the Presidentistry. There has been no civilization since.

[Snappy Plissken]

bantmof:
Aww...I dun wanna do more schoolwork. I spent 6 and a half hours yesterday doing school work!...stupid grrr math...ehehe. I did no math or anything to figger out...anything. I just took what effects the book was talkin' about, and like...simplified them. So I'm prolly really wrong. Just what my brain turned out for me, so I put it down.

Sorry to lead you anywhere. I wouldn't trust my brain if I were me.

...er...

Myself is dumb. =D Nevermind.

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Snappy, The Crazy Toddite - Friend of Skippy

[tracer]

Snappy Plisken wrote:

Well ya see, if the magnetic field is disrupted...oops. Didn't mean...magnets. Hehe. Meant um...compasses. Pardon. But I can see how everyone'd know why *those* got all screwed up.

Um ... I don't know why.

How would a change in gravity or gravitic tidal forces affect a magnetic instrument?

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I'm not flying fast, just orbiting low.

[bantmof]

I did no math or anything to figger out...anything.
Yes, I can tell. :-)

Here, I'll do it for you; it only takes a few moments. Here are the relative gravitational effect on us from the other planets, assuming the moon is 1 by definition:

Moon: 1
Mer: 0.00002
Ven: 0.0001
Mar: 0.00001
Jup: 0.0045
Sat: 0.0005
Ura: 0.00002
Nep: 0.00001

So all told, assuming I haven't made too many typos in the process, all the other planets taken together make considerably less than 1 percent of the difference the moon alone does, as far as making you feel heavier or lighter (do you feel lighter when the moon is overhead? How about the sun?). And most of the effects the doomsayers are talking about would only come about via gravitational differential, which is much smaller effect indeed; truely unimaginably small.

Now I'll leave the same-side-of-the-sun case and the gravitational differential computation up to you as a learning experience. :-)

Ok, not to pick on Snappy in particular, who for all I know is just goofing around... but there _are_ people who believe in stuff like this, and people make money writing books about it. What's up with that? If people really think there are going to be all these terrible effects, why don't they just spend 2 or 3 minutes and work it out for themselves? Anyone who graduated from high school and owns a pencil should be able to manage.

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peas on earth

[johnh/metalgod]

if I remember right, this also happened in 1982? yes, no, maybe?

[Polycarp]

Well, according to the Jehovah's Witnesses, the world came to an end in 1914. The problem is that nobody but them noticed. (This paragraph is not a joke post; they seriously believe this!)

You are all aware that your zippers will stop working at midnight on 12/31/1999, right? It's the YKK bug. :)