2012 Doomsday Predictions

Archive for the ‘Planet Alignment’ Category

Look Up! A Planetary Alignment visible from Earth

It was the Mayans or maybe the Romans or the Greeks or the Sumerians — who called the shot this time, evidently on a day Nostradamus phoned in sick. Apparently, a rogue planet named Nibiru (which frankly sounds more like a new Honda than a new world) is headed our way, with a cosmic crack-up set for next year.

No matter who’s behind the current prediction, there are enough people ready to spread and believe in this kind of end-of-the-world hooey that you have to wonder if the earth isn’t starting to take things personally.

First of all, it is impossible for all the planets to form a straight line out from the Sun (or viewed superimposed on each other in the sky) because each planetary orbit is tilted slightly (and sometimes not slight at all in the case of Pluto) with respect to the Earth’s orbit (whose plane we trace out on the night sky as a line completely around the sky and is called the ecliptic). These zealots confuse the term planetary alignment with the more accurate words that should be used, planetary configuration or a loose grouping of the planets in the sky.

Actually the event that occurred in 1983 was that the planets (all eight of them — we are on the ninth, Earth) would be within 96° of each other in the sky — not in a straight line as most people would misinterpret with the term alignment. To have all of the planets on the same side of the Sun and virtually all within the same quadrant (i.e., 90°) happens approximately once every 200 years — rare as far as humans are concerned, but not rare as far as the solar system is concerned.

The last series of planetary configurations or perhaps more accurately called multiple planetary conjunctions occurred in the year 2000. Did the Earth tilt over? No. Did tidal forces trigger earthquakes? No. Did the polar ice caps melt? No. Were you even be able to see the conjunctions? Not really.