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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 GM1M2/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.
“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.
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?
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?
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.
