Did you get the email this year?
NASA
It's another coffee shop moment for me in a sunny yet slightly chilly UK. Checking through my emails I wonder if it's going to happen again this year. If it does, then I can look forward to a flood of calls from media and news agencies asking me if it's true.
I refer, of course, to the Mars Hoax that has become an annual event, rearing its very ugly red head this time every year. At least it has done since 2003.
This rather curious hoax stems from a poorly worded piece of communication describing the closest approach between Mars and the Earth for about 250,000 years.
All the planets orbiting the Sun (Earth included) follow an elliptical path, something like a slightly squashed circle. For Earth, we are at our closest point to the sun during the winter months of the northern hemisphere and most distant during the summer months. I'm sure that in itself surprises people, but it's the tilt of Earth toward the sun during the summer months that gives us the warm weather (unless you live in the UK), not our proximity to the sun.
Anyway, back to the plot. The elliptical nature of the planets' orbits is a complex dance that was described mathematically by 17th Century astronomer Johannes Kepler in his laws of planetary motion. We have come a long way since then -- or so I thought -- and we can now precisely calculate planetary positions so accurately that we are able to send space probes to them with pin-point accuracy.
With all these planets moving around at different speeds and along paths with varying distances from the sun, it comes as no surprise that the distances between the planets vary over time. August 27, 2003 was one such occasion when Mars and Earth were especially close; a distance of 55.7 million kilometers compared to our current distance of approximately 313 million kilometers.
The sentence -- in an original email about the 2003 close approach -- that caused all the fuss read: "At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye," which is not so far off the mark. Through a telescope, Mars certainly did look very big but it was a confusing use of language that led to the text of the email being edited and re-sent year after year. The email did the rounds and many unsuspecting readers looked out for a huge Mars in the sky as big as a full moon.
Due to its size, if Mars were to look the same size as the full moon to the naked eye, it would have to be a snitch under 800,000 kilometers away, not the 55.7 million kilometers as it was in 2003 and certainly not its current 313 million kilometers! Sorry folks, it just isn't going to happen.
Besides, if Mars really did look the same size as a full moon, then I suspect there would be some catastrophic gravitational and tidal impacts to the Earth. I for one, wouldn't be spending lots of money on a cruise around the Mediterranean in September.
Actually if it did happen, then it would probably be Game Over for humanity. So on second thoughts, maybe I would. Drinks are on me folks!
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