Science and Common Sense

There is a certain amount of gullibility that we all have, every one of us has fallen for that prank that absolutely smacks of truth played on us by friends or even frienemies. However when a hoax or joke goes viral and 557,000 people buy into the prank (Thanks Facebook…) it makes me wonder about people's common sense and their knowledge of basic science.

As a writer I do a lot of research, especially when I am dealing with science in any form, when dealing with fantasy there is a greater amount of leeway, although even in fantasy common sense plays a large part of the logical consistency of the world and race involved.

So it absolutely kills me when I see the double-moon hoax being spread across the digital landscape again.

According to the hoax, tonight, August 27th, 2013 the planet Mars going to loom large in the night sky and it will be something that no one alive today has seen or will see again. Mars will be the closest it comes to Earth that the combined orbits allow; 34.6 million miles.

Mars supposedly will appear as a second moon in our sky. Except that it won’t.  There are several reasons for this, while Mars is larger than our Moon, almost double at a diameter of 4,223 miles (The Moon’s diameter is 2,160 miles) the distance the red planet allegedly will be at, 34.6 million miles will still make it nothing more than a point of light in the sky, unless you use a telescope.

The reason our Moon looms large in our sky is its proximity to us. Our Moon at its closest point is 221,456 miles and at its greatest distance is 252,711 miles. Much, much closer than the 34.6 MILLION miles that Mars is supposed to be at.

However if you want to see Mars, I suggest you wake earlier on Wednesday morning and look to the lower left of the night sky, just above the horizon.  Draw a line from the last quarter of the moon through the planet Jupiter below and to the left of the Moon, you may be able to spot the faint red planet Mars.