The Persistent Myth About Planetary Alignments

History does not record who the weeping woman was who joined the giant crowd at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Feb. 4, 1962. But she was inconsolable. “I know it’s silly to carry on this way,” she said with a hitching breath to a reporter from the Griffith Observer magazine. “But I can’t help myself.” The cause of her profound distress: On that day, the Sun, the moon, and all five non-Earthly planets from Mercury to Saturn were arranged in a cosmic conga line within a tiny 17-degree patch of the sky. The alignment foretold terrible things, said many: earthquakes, floods, a devastating rending of the Earth itself from the gravitational pull of so many other bodies at such close range. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The day, for the record, ended peacefully, as all such things work out when the planets align. That’s worth remembering this week, as five planets—Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, and Uranus—form a similar alignment near the moon, in an arc that will stretch from close to the horizon, up to the top of the bowl of the night sky. The alignment is, of course, an illusion. The planets remain separated by tens and hundreds of millions of miles. Mercury and Uranus, which will appear to be keeping close company this week, for instance, are actually 1.75 billion miles apart. But when numerous planets happen to gather on one side of the sun, they take on a pearl necklace appearance that gives the...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Space Source Type: news