Cripes. Is it already time for the annual "Mars will be as big as the Moon" email spam?
Yup. Cripes.
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I’ve been getting a steady trickle of emails from folks pointing this out to me. If you haven’t seen it yet, you will; it claims that in August Mars will be closer than it has been for thousands of years, and will look as big as the Moon in the sky, yadda yadda yadda.
I tire of debunking this every freaking year, so just read this post from last year, or from 2007, or 2006, or 2005, or 2003, when this evil viral thing got started by someone who I hope is now covered with a copious slathering of honey and ensconced in the ground near a fire ant mound, preferably surrounded by quicksand, a tar pit, and a bunch of TV sets all tuned to the Oprah show.
And I’m glad Non Sequitur gets it. Note the tags on the comic!
June 4th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Got the question at the star party last week…it will not die.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
I work in the consumer telescope business. I have already had to tell many people that Mars will not be making a close approach this year, just like last year.
Some people refuse to believe it.
Sales of everything we have related to Mars has started to take off..
June 4th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Email incoming from my sister in 3… 2… 1…
June 4th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
This one really reminds you that it almost doesn’t matter how unlikely the hoax is. As long as it has that certain appeal, it’ll continue its march through the wastelands of common sense.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Mars does vary distance from earth, and when it’s farthest or closest, it still looks like a red star. So that is not a big deal in difference (except for the people who look in telescopes, probably makes some differences in ability to reveal details).
The big as moon thing is a big whopper though.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
The May 25 Non Sequitur actually states that Mars will be “so close that it will appear as large as the Moon!” (http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2009/05/25/). I’m not quite sure that Non Sequitur gets it… their science dweeb is spouting the nonsense here.
The tags look like a user feature (crowdsourcing).
June 4th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
In looking in my Starry Night, Mars will have a magnitude of .98 on August 27th, where as on the actual close approach in 2003 was -2.88. That is about as bright as Jupiter.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Oh, ack ack ack. I’m so glad the garbage & lies e-mails from my grandmother go right into my e-mail trash, so hopefully I’ll be able to miss this nonsense this year. I’m sure it’ll be all over the F’book, too, though. Sighhhhh…
June 4th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Scopeslinger:
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #026 states: As the customers go, so goes the wise profiteer.
P.S. Rule #265: The customer is always right (… until you get their cash).
June 4th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
I had this conversation with a friend of mine last week:
Friend: In August, mars is going to be so close it’ll look as big as…
Me: No it isn’t.
Friend: But I read that…
Me: No.
Friend: But…
Me: Look, for Mars to be that big in the sky, it’d have to be only about twice the distance from Earth as the Moon. Besides, this is the same story that’s popped up every year for the past 6 years and it’s still not true.
Friend: Oh yeah, I think I remember that now.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
IVAN3MAN:
Part of me wants to fire them off to sales and let them be disappointed come August, but I prefer to educate, i.e, make them look stupid.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Phil,
Being a physics teacher, the students ask me about it. I finally found out where the quote “Mars as big as the Moon” came from. I got forwarded a power point presentation (a HORRIBLE one at that) that talks about MARs being close to the Earth but the PPT doesn’t give the actual year!! (hence the constant repeat of the info I guess)
On one slide it says …
“if you look at Mars through a 70X power telescope”
the next slide says
“Mars will look as big as the moon”..
if you would like this “fine quality” PPT I’ll pass it on..
Keep up the fight Phil…
cheers
jb
June 4th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
PHIL PLATE you’re HATRED of anti gravity transporters is NOT SCIENTIFIC!!!!!11!one
June 4th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I already got it a month or so ago, and even the BAUT forum (you remember that place don’t you phil?
) has to deal with it.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
The first year this came around, the version I got actually stated that Mars would look about the size of a full moon through a moderate telescope. Of course, the facts can’t get in the way of a good spam email for long…
June 4th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
When I read that Non Sequitur with my first cup of coffee last week, I groaned at the misinformation… Then it struck me that Wiley was making fun of it. I can be a little slow before my morning coffee (and I was on just my first cup).
Kudos to Wiley for Non Sequitur – one of the best comics out there right now.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Maybe they’re saying the moon will be really, really far away. A tiny moon would be waaay trippier than a giant Mars.
June 4th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I call it the Mars Zombie Email since IT WILL NOT DIE!!!
I’ve only gotten one question about it so far this year, but I predict I will get more (through calls to the department or emails or at the public viewing nights) before the end of the summer.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Some people don’t put any thought into why this isn’t possible. If you get an anonymous email saying it’s true, then it must be true. BTW, a Nigerian prince left some money in a bank account I can only access if you give me your private banking information…I’ll share the money with you if you’ll help me. Honest!
June 4th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I got this powerpoint as well actually. The powerpoint is very poorly made, but it is actually reasonably accurate (as far as I can tell anyway) to the 2003 approach. Like jb said, it just doesn’t specify a year and is very misleading with the moon size comparison.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
This isn’t the sort of thing that needs aggressive debunking every single time. Anyone who looks at the sky will see for themselves whether it’s true or not. One should choose battles wisely. Some battles needn’t be fought at all. This is one of them.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
“every freaking year”? What happened to “frakking”?
June 4th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Not to discourage you, Phil, but the “NASA-discovers-missing-day” email is coming back around again, too, and it wasn’t any fun telling my family that it’s completely false. No rest for the weary when it comes to defending science and truth.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
There are days when I think the only thing EMail is even used for anymore, is spreading B.S. like this all over the world.
I always respond to bogus EMails like this, with a simple link to the write-up on Snopes. To help expedite this process for everyone here, just copy & paste the link below, it’s to the whole “Mars Close To Earth” Email non-sense.
http://www.snopes.com/science/astronomy/brightmars.asp
June 4th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Phil: what happened in 2004? you mentioned 2008,2007, 2006, 2005 and 2003 as years you posted about the mars thing.
is that the year you were in intensive care due to the blunt head trauma of beating your head against a wall when the mars thing came up again after 2003?
how did you stay out of intensive care the other years? i myself can barely keep from pounding my head on the wall here.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
My mom thought that her’s and my sister’s birthdays would have an extra day between them in a leap year, even though their b-days are in October and November, respectively. Maybe the missing day falls between their birthdays in a leap year. Irony….?
And fo*g&t anybody who doesn’t think it would be trippy if the moon appeared to be the size of Mars. Would that not be weird?
June 4th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
O, fine, BUT, I did hear that all the Outer Planets are going to line up, and earthquakes, volcanoes, and mounds of jiggly jello will crush us silly! It’s true, ’cause I read it on the internet!
June 4th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
@Michael L: Indeed that is true. It also happened on May 5, 2001. That was a day to remember, eh?
June 4th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Here’s hoping my mom remembers that I debunked this for her last year.
June 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
June 4th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Ah, my Birthday Hoax! Every year, to celebrate my birth, Mars balloons to the size of the full moon! How thoughtful!
In 2003, though, Mars was pretty dang cool. Not the size of full moon, but still pretty bright and prominent.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Well poo! Now I’m definately cancelling my Galileoscope order..
June 4th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Is this comic still in reruns from 2005?
June 4th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I say play it up. “Well, you better get a telescope before August then!” Who knows, maybe some of them will actually start to use said telescopes, and heaven forbid, learn something that their email didn’t tell them.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I just shake my head and say “you people ever heard of Snopes.com?” and I point them to the link to the Mars Hoax page there.
I made sure I twittered about in from my club’s twitter account, and my own (where I was less than nice.)
June 4th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
That’s fake? Wow.
The first time I heard about it was during the great blackout where most of Ontario and a good chunk of the states all lost power for 24 hours or whatever.
First time I’ve seen the starts in their unmitigated splendor, and Mars was there extremely obvious in the sky, so that lent a lot of credibility to the hoax.
June 4th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
@ Hoonser
That blackout was actually very close to the REAL Mars opposition in 2003 that spawned this hoary old chestnut. Mars WAS extra bright that August… But not the size of the full moon!
June 4th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
A couple weeks ago I put up an article about this due to being spammed by many people about this issue:
http://www.squidzone.ca/the_squid_zone/2009/05/mars-will-not-be-as-big-as-the-full-moon-ever.html
June 4th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
The version I keep getting says “In a modest telescope at 75x Mars will appear as large as the full moon” ie, mars will appear to be 75x smaller than the full moon – but most people miss the first part.
I remember during the real opposition in ‘03, I was set up at the Ontario Science Centre where ~6000 people showed up to look through ~30 scopes. People kept asking if Mars would be as big as the moon, as if it would suddenly appear huge for one night only.
Typical response: Mars is TWICE as big as the moon. But it’s 150x farther away!
June 4th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
@scopeslinger Are you selling Mars bars? A mars a day helps you work rest and play!
June 4th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
@Naked Bunny
You win.
That little screed of yours at #13 was finished off with delightful subtlety.
Nice!
[stands, claps slowly]
June 4th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
A propos de rien, I just noticed that an article to be published in the International Journal of Astrobiology (C.A.L. Bailer-Jones, arXiv:0905.3919) concludes that “there is little evidence for intrinsic periodicities in biodiversity, impact cratering or climate on timescales of tens to hundreds of Myr. Furthermore, Galactic midplane and spiral arm crossings seem to have little or no impact on biological or climate variation above background level.” It’s outside of my tiny field of science, so I shouldn’t say too much about it, but I recall reading a bit about Galactic midplane crossings in Death From the Skies!, so it might be of interest.
See: “The evidence for and against astronomical impacts on climate change and mass extinctions: A review“.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Quit your Whining!
Instead of whining about people who don’t believe you(and why should they), why not teach them how to measure the moon and measure mars and learn the truth for themselves.
Don’t tell people your truth, help them find it themselves.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Every year this makes me think how cool it’d be if it was actually true
June 4th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
28. Naked Bunny:
Ah yes, May 5, 2001… who can forget it…. why the memories of that night will live on forever.
She was a sweet ol’ gal. She took a lot of mileage… and a lot of pounding…
I remember her well, screaming down the highway with her…. Willie Nelson blarin’ thru the speakers… good ol’ Willie… why next thing I knew, sparks was a flyin’… rubber was a burnin’ in the cool evenin’ air….
Then bits of the ol’ girl started flyin’ off… a hubcap here… a muffler there… Then, all I heard was a ”thud’… then I knew the ol’ girl couldn’t take anymore poundin’… no more pedal to the metal for that babe… no sir…. not with pieces of the ol’ tranny strung out fer miles behind us…
Yeah… she was a good ol’ girl…
An’ every now an’ then, when Mars gets to be the size o’ the Full Moon… I look up an’ smile… An’ I just start a pickin’ an’ a strummin’…”On The Road Again… Just can’t wait to get on the road again…”
June 4th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
Sad thing is, this started out as a legitimate message about the extremely bright opposition of Mars a few years back. But deleting the “through a 200x eyepiece” part really screwed things up.
At least anyone who mentioned this on their blog can count on a spike in traffic each Summer!
June 4th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
-NOW- I see the tags! I’m a little slow sometimes.
Too bad the Sunday funnies doesn’t have the tags…
June 4th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Well you mentioned the Moon so my question is if the Moon is moving away from the Earth, why is Phobos moving closer to Mars?
June 4th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
NelsonH (#43), you mean like how I did in all those links I provided?
June 4th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
When I look at Mars through the little end of my binocular it looks much larger. When I look at the moon through the big end of my binoculars it looks much smaller but still dwarfs Mars. When I look at Jupiter through the big end of the binoculars and pretend it’s the moon, it looks about the same size as Mars. Yes! I now have my Mars = Size of Moon proof!
June 4th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
I swear it’s only astronomy/science professionals who receive this email from their relatives. I’ve received all sorts of spam over the last 15 years or so, but I’ve never received the “Mars as big as the moon” one. I’m feeling kinda left out.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I saw this again on Snopes a couple weeks ago. What I am having trouble figuring out is how anyone still believes this after like 6 years. You would think that people would remember that Mars didn’t appear as big as the Moon in ‘03, ‘04, ‘05 etc. etc. I guess not.
Oh, and Phil, love the new editing ability on the comments. Kudos to the hive overmind.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
A lesson in how the caveats are quickly dropped from a science story in its passage to the public. Yet there was one part of the caveat that was omitted even from the original. Through a 200x eyepiece, mars will appear to subtend 1/2 degree to the observing eyeball. Without a telescope, the moon subtends 1/2 degree to the naked eyeball. In other words, comparing apples and oranges. To the naked eyeball, then, Mars subtends 0.5 / 200 degrees, or about 9 seconds of arc. IOW, a starry dot that just does not twinkle. Much. Mars is a tough subject; 200x is over the typical useful magnification for your typical amateur terrestrial telescope. 150x is pushing it even for an 8″ Celestron. Not so much the optics, its the atmosphere. On a really good night I managed 400x, the theoretical max for 8″ aperture (50x per 1″ aperture is the heuristic. More than that and you are just looking at bigger fuzzy blobs).
June 5th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Heck, go with it.
If people are interested in space, go with it! Yes it may be from a terrible source, but if it gets people positive about space exploration and manned missions, I say that’s a good thing. A few more interested people, and a few less saying “Why waste money in space when we have problems on earth, blah blah blah”
Give ‘em some real facts about Mars:
Methane coming from the surface that might signal life
Probable hematite pebbles just laying about for mining
Percolate in the soil, ripe for making oxygen or fuel – the same substance Russia used to use for back-up oxygen generators
That’s more interesting than Mars being “Super close”
June 5th, 2009 at 1:58 am
[OT] Oh, for t3h g33k out there: HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNIX!
June 5th, 2009 at 2:43 am
MARS-MOON NO POEM:
My contribution starts below.
Add the next line below…lets get a poem going — one line only per contributor with, say, upto ten words
“Oh Moon, oh Mars up in the sky”
John (Author of new Moon Atlas — more on my name above)
June 5th, 2009 at 3:04 am
@ Steve #10 – had the same conversation
I also had this one (in the blackout) :
neighbour: what’s that your looking at
me: Mars
neighbour: can’t be, it isn’t big enough
me: yes, it is. Now where did you hear that nonsense?
neighbour: email
me: it’s not true, that’s as big as it gets
neighbour: really?
me: really, want to see it through my scope
neighbour: sure
…
neighbour: ooo, nice!
I’ve also pointed out the orbits don’t line up every year because a Mars year is a bit less than 2 Earth years. So this could only happen at best every other year.
But nothing helps like a visual, so I actually showed this to someone. Try this:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?orb=1&sstr=1
Click the orbits drop downand select in order: No Orbits, Earth and Mars
Turn off the distance label
Zoom in a bit to get Ceres out of the picture
Set the wayback machine to Aug 27th 2003 (use date or just run it backwards)
Rotate the frame so Earth and Mars are front and centre
Set the interval beside the date to 1 year.
Step forward and back.
Hmm, while in 2009 Earth Mars are on the same side of the Sun they’re nowhere close. And won’t be until 2019, 2036, etc.
Mind you IFF Mars ever came close enough to be as large as the full Moon it would be well inside the stable part of Earth’s Hill Sphere. And IFF that ever happened …. Dunt Dunt Dah … call out Bruce Willis and company.
I’d read that the original comparison was made by an astronomer, who must be hiding their head in shame at being so badly misconstrued. Of course, I read that on the Internet …
@Dean #32 Pity they picked a year where Saturn’s rings were nearly edge on
@Mark#51 Just so you don’t feel left out, please post all your relatives email addresses. I pretty much guarentee your relatives will be sending you copies of the email before long
June 5th, 2009 at 3:46 am
Always happy to encourage poetry, but what form? Doggeral, haiku, couplet, iambic etc?
Anyway, here’s my line, so let’s make it couplet form (2 rhyming lines, followed by 2 different rhyming lines):
“You are both so beautiful to mine eye”
June 5th, 2009 at 5:27 am
@sophia8
for your contribution.
Couplet it is…and let’s limit it to, say, four couplets. That leaves six lines, six ‘different’ contributions. The poem, must reflect, in the end, Phil’s debunking of “Mars’s big as the Moon”. Hope others will get involved…and thanks Sophia
MARS-MOON NO POEM (so far)
Oh Moon, oh Mars up in the sky
You are both so beautiful to mine eye.
John
June 5th, 2009 at 5:30 am
I’m with #6: the tags are users pointing out the dumbness of the comic, unfortunately.
June 5th, 2009 at 6:05 am
Running a bit late
My Mum got an email about this a good month ago. (And had to listen to me ranting about the idiots who keep perpetuating this myth for five-odd minutes.) She also asked me about the 2012 thing yesterday… I am slowly (slowly!) making her more skeptical. Hurrah! (She’s already given up on astrology, and has doubts on homeopathy.)
June 5th, 2009 at 6:45 am
Ugh, I dorked up post #30… Forgot the quote marks… Let’s try again.
Oh, BTW, today is the 43rd anniversary of the earth making a complete orbit about the sun since the date of my birth.
EDIT TO ADD: Uh oh, the preview is looking “odd”, did I dork it up again?
June 5th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Of course it will appear as large as a full moon. They just forgot to mention that the moon in question is Deimos.
P.S. How does one submit links/suggestions to Phil? I posted a link to one of the comics in the “Mars as big as the Moon” series in the “How to get NASA funded” thread.
June 5th, 2009 at 9:44 am
@Ken B, I think it may be a luck of the draw. You can also attempt to email him directly (I’ll leave it to you to find his email though).
June 5th, 2009 at 9:57 am
While no one has SENT me this email (so far this season) I have been asked by a number of people, when its going to happen. Two of the people who asked me are the same ones I explained it to LAST YEAR!!!!
Ignorance is not a crime. It can be cured. Stupidity just seems to go on forever.
June 5th, 2009 at 11:14 am
@Steve,
I had to have the same conversation with my father once about waking up in a bathtub full of ice with your kidney removed. He insisted he heard about it happening “on the news.” When pressed, he finally admitted to a friend hearing about it “on the news” and then to his friend e-mailing him the “story.” He finally broke down and admitted that it was likely an urban legend, but then added “but it probably happened somewhere.” *face palm*
June 5th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
My father-in-law sent a copy to me. I am an astronomy research assistant and have taken enough physics, astronomy, and math to feel insulted. I had to remind myself that he either honestly didn’t know it was fake or sent it because he thought it was funny. That worst part, his was dated 2008, so if he thought it was real, he should have thought it odd that he didn’t remember looking up and seeing Mars.
June 5th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
[...] For more info check out the Bad Astronomy Blog [...]
June 5th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
@Naomi: Good for you. Most people like to believe their space cult and naturopathy stories.
June 6th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Yeah,
I’m always the guy who hits “reply to all” for the “Mars as big as the Moon” E-mails. My advice, if you ever see that run! (I don’t know where but run…not that it’ll help it’s just the spirit of the thing…)
rod
BTW: STILL can’t find Mars with my Binos but I”m not giving up.
June 7th, 2009 at 1:53 am
@Sophia8
Ah well..no poets amongst us
John
June 7th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
[...] 7, 2009 by Nicole The Bad Astronomer once again says, “Mars. Moon. No.“ Once again, the junk chain email traffic going ’round the internets includes the [...]
June 9th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Oh the sad day for a science teacher when one of her students came up to share this little “gem”, and what glee he had for going home and telling his mum she was wrong.
June 10th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
[...] strange little hoax about Mars seems to pop up about this time every year. Propagated via email, it claims Mars will approach [...]
July 29th, 2009 at 8:54 am
I can’t believe I got sucked into this. I’m usually the guy in my circle of friends that tells them that what they just sent me is BS. For some reason I didn’t bother to check this out, though in the back of my mind I was wondering how much larger Mars was than the Moon. Duh!!!
August 20th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I would think that IF Mars were to appear to us Earthings as large as the full moon, we’d be in deep doo-doo. It would mean Mars would have jumped its orbit and a rogue planet might be barrelling toward us. I imagine the gravitational effects here on the Home Planet might be nearly cataclysmic.
August 28th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Mars, being at such a close location, would pull Earth from it’s orbit enough to destroy mankind. The fools who believe this, if anything, should be terrified out of their pants. Whomever started this rumour go jump off a cliff into shark infested waters. Don’t forget to strap yourself to fresh dead fish!