Day of the Beast End of Mayan Time Year 2038 Bug Planets Align Y2K Again
False Leap-Year Cover Page Index Appendix

Planets Line Up

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Threat Level: None-Low

Throughout the ages, everytime the planets in our solar system align, there is panic and talk of mass distruction. These alignments have happened countless times in the past and yet no distruction has ever taken place. Is this date going to be any different?

Explanation

Planets in our solar system revolve around the sun in an eliptical orbit. Each planet revolves at a different rate therefore every 30 to 50 years are so, all the planets will just happen to be aligned, not perfectly of course, but within a relatively small arc of the night sky.

On September 8, 2040 at around 7:30-7:40pm, what is known as a Geocentric planetary alignment will take place. There are two types of alignments, Heliocentric and Geocentric. Heliocentric means an alignment of all the planets (with the exception of pluto) within a 90 degree sector whereas Geocentric refers to the alignment of all planets visible to the naked eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) again, within a 90 degree sector.

In this case, the geocentric alignment will feature the 5 visible planets within a 9.3 arc, which is substantially closer than the 19.5 degree arc in the last geocentric alignment (May 5, 2000). Also, this alignment is going to include the Moon as well (the largest gravitationsl force acting on the earth second only to the sun).

So the addition of these two facts (closer arc, inclusion of the moon) lead some skeptics to believe that this alignment will have a substantial gravitational effect on the earth, compared to the alignment in 2000 where nothing happened.