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From Skeptic vol. 4, no. 4, 1996, pp. 46-54.
The following article is copyright ©1996 by the Skeptics Society, P.O. Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001, (626) 794-3119. Permission has been granted for noncommercial electronic circulation of this article in its entirety, including this notice.
The Millennium is Coming!Cosmic Disaster in 2000 or Another Failed Prophecy?
By John MosleyAs we approach the year 2000 we will hear from all quarters-psychics, astrologers, pyramid experts, prophesiers of the apocalypse, and good old Nostradamus-in books, in videos, and on TV, that civilization, and perhaps the world itself, will end at the end of the millennium. The broadcast media have a strong sensationalist element and may do more harm than good; at the very least they spread cries of doom quickly and widely. Like it or not, skeptics will have to deal with the public and the media at yet another end-of-the-world scare. I am no prophet or psychic, but I predict that a unique planetary alignment in May of the year 2000 will generate a firestorm of activity amonst those who do claim to be prophets and psychics. The thought that the world will end with the alignment of the five planets dates back to at least 300 B.C.E. Despite all we've learned about the mechanics of the solar system in the last 23 centuries, ancient superstitions remain in full force. This time a planetary alignment accompanies a change of millennium-a double whammy for those who believe that such coincidences are turning points in a Master Plan for human history.
Hillel Schwartz in Century's End (1990), documents the
stories of past fins de siècles and comments at
length on the coming century rollover. Interestingly, and contrary
to what most skeptics believe, Schwartz shows that fantastic accounts
of terror that supposedly spread throughout Europe as the year
1000 approached are in fact relatively recent fabrications. What
will be different this time is mass marketing. The millennium
will be big business, involving everyone from hard-core apocalyptic
doomsayers to clever entrepreneurs trying to make a quick buck.
Even a consulting firm has been established specifically to help
others market the millennium.
Deja Vu All Over AgainWe've been through this before. As an astronomer at the Griffith Observatory, I survived two occasions when Los Angeles was to have been destroyed by earthquakes triggered by planetary alignments, and people only a few years older than me remember a third. All were major media events. Although the latter two of these were specific to Los Angeles, or at least to California, the May, 2000, events will effect the entire world. Let's recall what happened in Los Angeles in 1962, 1982, and 1988 to remind ourselves of what it will be like in a few short years when history repeats itself.
1962: The Planets Align. On February 4, 1962, all five
naked-eye planets plus the sun and moon were massed within a circle
17° in diameter, and at the same time there was an eclipse
of the sun! Robert S. Richardson, astronomer at Griffith Observatory,
described in the May, 1962, issue of the Griffith Observer
what happened in Los Angeles: Weeks beforehand we began getting inquiries from people wanting to know, "What was going to happen on February 4th?" "What does it mean?" was the next question....Then they wanted to know, "When was the last time it happened?"...This was one of those things an astronomer was supposed to have at his finger tips...Answering questions of this kind for hours can become quite a strain on the nervous system... Sunday, February 4...[the crowd at the Observatory] must have been the largest since it was opened to the public in 1935. By two o'clock...the road leading to and from the observatory was a solid mass of cars lined up bumper-to-bumper for half a mile.... Another woman was weeping so badly it was hard to understand her. She was practically on the verge of collapse. "I know it's silly to carry on this way," she gasped between sobs, "but I can't help myself."...In talking to these 'Alarmed' individuals, one gets the impression very strongly of an insecure personality, torn this way and that by vague doubts and fears. When confronted by a problem, they seem incapable of forming an independent opinion concerning it, but tend to rely on the judgment of others. They are so highly susceptible to suggestion that it would be very easy for anyone who has gained their confidence to take advantage of them. The barest hint that there might be something wrong could drive them to suicide or hysterics. 1982: The Jupiter Effect. The last time the planets were supposed to align and trigger mass destruction in Los Angeles was in 1982, the year of the "Jupiter Effect." According to the tabloid Midnight, "Astronomers and scientists are desperately worried that one of the most terrible disasters in the history of mankind may hit the United States...killing untold millions and reducing the American West Coast to rubble ...." The public was told that "all the planets in our solar system will be in line" and the Earth "will pass daily through the energy fields." I was not "desperately worried," but I was alerted. The planets were not to work their magic directly on the Earth, and as seen from Earth there was no alignment. It was a heliocentric alignment. At their closest, on March 10, 1982, as seen from the sun, the planets spanned 95°, which is more than a quarter of the sky. As seen from the Earth the naked-eye planets were spread across 130° of the sky. The "Jupiter Effect" was subtle. In a circuitous sequence of events, we were told that a rare heliocentric alignment of planets that occurs only once every 179 years exerts a strong tidal effect on the sun, which increases solar activity, which causes more sunspots, which propel more atomic particles towards Earth, which disturb the normal circulation of Earth's atmosphere, which causes sudden major storms, which cause abrupt changes in the Earth's rotation, which triggers a major quake along faults (specifically the San Andreas) already subject to strain. No chain is stronger than its weakest link, and this chain had some links that were very weak indeed.
A salient feature of the "Jupiter Effect" was that it
was promoted by scientists, and this gave it extra validity. A
local feature for those of us who live in California is that the
specific fault that was supposed to fail was the San Andreas,
a major fault that extends nearly the length of our state. The
authors referred repeatedly to "the next great California
earthquake," and this was even the title of one chapter.
My immediate predecessor at Griffith, Edward Upton, recognized
early what was going on, and in the January 1975 issue of the
Griffith Observer he wrote: But The Jupiter Effect has not been written to appeal to the scientific mind. It is written for those who are more impressed by dramatic language than by precise reasoning...it is truly a novelty to receive it from the hand of two scientists whose training and education, if not entirely wasted, should have taught them better. It is difficult, indeed, to resist the suspicion that they do know better and that The Jupiter Effect is a gigantic deception directed at the ever-present gullibles....On page after page we find repeated the warning that great earthquakes are going to occur in 1982 along the San Andreas Fault. Why this one-track emphasis on impending disaster in California, as if it were the only place on earth subject to major quakes? Why are there no similar predictions concerning Chile, Alaska, Japan, Indonesia, or a hundred other places? Could it be because in California, better than any other place on earth, one finds a fear of earthquakes combined with a proven market for sensational books? Untold millions did not die in 1982, but a lot of people were scared. Despite the focus of the book, concern was not limited to California. The San Diego Vista Press reported on March 10, 1982: "We've literally had people ask, 'Should I sell my house and move away?'" said Kevin Atkins of Gates Planetarium [in Denver, Colorado]....The institute reported 130 phone calls in five hours Monday....One small Christian sect in the Philippines is building a maze of padded cubicles and trying out padded suits in readiness for disasters their leader, Casiano Nasair, predicts." According to the book this planetary alignment was directed specifically to California and little mention was made of other places. Yet it made the national news. 1988: Nostradamus. The last great planet-causing earthquake flap came six years ago. We at Griffith Observatory learned about it when we received a rash of phone calls asking, "Can you tell me when the planets are going to line up and cause that big earthquake?" Puzzled, we asked the callers the source of their (mis)information. It came from a 1981 movie about Nostradamus, called The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, that had just been shown on cable TV. As far as I could tell, it was this so-so movie suitable only for late-night TV that brought Nostradamus into the popular eye and initiated concern and fear over the "alignment." It's no surprise that the modern American public receives its information on many vital matters via day-time talk shows and late-night TV. The Man Who Saw Tomorrow referred to an earthquake that was supposed to happen in California in 1988, but it also referred specifically to more dramatic events that are supposed to happen at the end of the millennium and that will affect the entire globe. Filmed in a docudrama format it presents predictions of the future that are less than comforting. Narrated by Orson Welles, it tells the story of Nostradamus in a sympathetic way that cannot fail to convince someone who is unfamiliar with the subject that here was a man with supernatural powers who could indeed see the future and who wrote his quatrains to warn future generations of troubles to come. It is full of archival footage of horrors of the past (World War II atrocities, for example) and scenes of disasters lifted from old science fiction films. Because it appears to be a documentary, many who see it are genuinely alarmed. Not surprisingly for a film produced by David Wolper, the movie is full of exaggerations and outright fabrications. In one example of the movie's manipulation of facts, a dramatic scene which is presented as a true historical incident shows looters opening the grave of Nostradamus during the French Revolution. To their dread and amazement, the looters find a plaque on the body inscribed with the month and year they opened the grave! One looter mockingly recalls a curse upon whoever disturbs the prophet's bones-and is promptly shot dead by a stray bullet. Narrator Welles looks you in the eye and asks you to be the judge if this can only be coincidence. The reality is that the tomb of Nostradamus, like so many others, was indeed looted during the Revolution, but no dated plaque was found. A local French priest created the legend that a soldier who helped open the tomb died in battle the next day in an effort to scare off future looters. Following the late-night showing of the film, astrologers, psychics, and doomsayers of all persuasions crawled out of the woodwork and added their own spin on Nostradamus' predictions. We were assured that, yes, the Master had predicted earthquakes for Los Angeles or San Francisco for May, 1988. We were told this despite the fact that the quatrain quoted in the movie was a fabrication created by joining two lines of one quatrain with two lines of another (Century I, #87 atop Century X, #67), and that the actual warning was that "hailstones would fall larger than an egg." A curious aspect of the 1988 flap was that the movie did not claim that the planets would align. The quake would happen when the planets would be in specific, but very ambiguous, positions ("Mars in zero"). There was no question of tidal or other unknown forces acting on the Earth; it was pure astrology. Yet the impact was strong, and the news media ate it up. If all this could come from a bad video that didn't even quote Nostradamus correctly and at a time when there were no planetary alignments, I shudder in fear of what will happen at the turn of the century/millennium. In a curious coincidence, at the height of the Nostradamus scare it was revealed to the nation that the First Lady used an astrologer to plan Ronald Reagan's presidential calendar. Her astrologer, Joan Quigley, boasted, "I got heavily into the relationship between the superpowers and the ending of the Cold War" (L.A. Times, Jan. 4, 1996).
Most news coverage was rational and balanced, but we were appalled
by some investigative-reporting programs (one of which was filmed
on our roof without our permission) that ranked with the most
shameful examples of tabloid journalism. They fanned the flames
during prime time, and I lamented that they reached more people
with their nonsense in one half-hour broadcast than I will in
the planetarium theater in my entire career. What follows are
examples of honest (as opposed to shameful) reporting that reminds
us of what to expect next time: Associated Press, April 24: Videocassettes of The Man Who Saw Tomorrow are causing...hundreds of calls from nervous Californians to therapists and seismic officials. "This has gone beyond fun speculation. People are close to panic," said Santa Clara County geologist Jim Berkland. "Some are even selling their homes and moving away." Jittery residents also are keeping their doctors' lines busy. "People are suffering from everything from mild panic attacks to acute anxiety of this," said Dr. Donald Dossey of the Phobia Institute in Westwood. Evening Outlook, Santa Monica, CA May 3: The Red Cross has been busy fielding calls from frightened residents, said Peggy Brutsche, a specialist in earthquake preparedness there. "We've had a number of calls from people clearly inquiring because of the Nostradamus thing," she said. "Some of the public seem to be genuinely frightened from what they've heard." Los Angeles Times, May 6: Travel agents, moving company workers, bottled-water suppliers, real estate agents and earthquake preparedness specialists say they're observing a small but significant minority of Southern Californians either getting out of the area or getting prepared to survive the Big One. Stand-up comic/weatherman Fritz Coleman...found his station's phones "ringing off the hook"..."A lot of people are taking this real seriously," says Coleman..."The thing that makes me mad is that we have satellites and all this technology and people would rather believe this guy with a beret from the 16th Century." Earthquake jitters are translating into sales for companies specializing in bottled water and other disaster rations. Extend-A-Life, a Pasadena firm that calls itself "the largest purveyor of disaster supplies in America," claims that the Nostradamus prediction has triggered a 10-fold increase in sales that week of pouches of purified water, 1,200-calorie survival cookie bars, first-aid kits, thermal blankets and "hand-cranked"AM-FM radios. Herald Examiner, Los Angeles May 9: "We have people taking amphetamines to stay awake so that when the quake hits they will be at their best," said Robert R. Butterworth, a psychologist who has been taking calls from people who are anxiety-ridden because of the predictions. "There is one man who is building a stainless steel top on his bed to protect him from the earthquake. It is the only way he can sleep soundly," Butterworth said. Associated Press, May 8: "The phones are ringing pretty steadily," said Brenda Searcy, a nurse who was answering crisis line phones at Charter Hospital in Long Beach Friday night. "They're really panicking. Some of them are shaky and crying," Ms. Searcy said. "I've had a lot of parents call and say their children can't sleep at night because of the predictions." Butterworth has told some who were so distraught as to be inconsolable to simply leave town for the month of May.
Interest on the part of the news media and the public peaked the
day before the supposed catastrophe, with many of the Hollywood
rich and famous arranging to be out of town "just to be safe."
When nothing had happened by the late afternoon of the fateful
day, media interest evaporated so quickly you could hear the loud
POP as air rushed into the vacuum it left behind. I stood on the
Observatory steps waiting to be interviewed about the earthquake
that hadn't happened and the prediction that failed, but "that
was not news" and I stood alone. NostradamusThere seems to be a special fascination with the 16th-century physician, astrologer, mystic, and social commentator (disguised as a prophet-see Randi, 1990) Michel de Nostredame. Although the quatrain that we were told predicted an earthquake was a fabrication as presented in the popular press (and it could be referenced to no identifiable year), the situation is quite different this time. The fact is that Nostradamus did predict big trouble for 1999.>From 1550 to 1567 Nostradamus published a series of 942 predictions in rhyme about future world events. His followers credit him with predicting the European influenza epidemic of 1918-19, the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and an impressive list of other events. It would appear he had a fascination for the second half of the 20th century! Nostradamus looked into the future by gazing into a bowl of water on a brass tripod, much the same way that a fortune-teller gazes into a crystal ball. He wrote his predictions in verse, obscuring them by using a bewildering mixture of anagrams, symbols, puns, Old French, and Latin. He also invented a number of words and place names. Of course, if you write a thousand nonsense verses and wait a few centuries, inventive people will eventually find events to fit to some of them. Nostradamus himself said that the quatrains' were unclear so that "they could not possibly be understood 'till they were interpreted after the event." How convenient!
Nostradamus wrote for a contemporary French audience and most
of the places he mentions are in or near France. He referred frequently
to noble French families, and although he specifically mentioned
numerous obscure French towns and rivers, he ignored the New World.
Most significantly, although he made up plenty of words, he never
wrote "bombe atomique," "Kennedy," or "Los
Angeles." Quatrain 10-72 is the only quatrain with a date
still in the future, and as such it is unique. This is the last
opportunity for his followers to score a direct hit by stating
explicitly what their master predicted and then reaping all the
glory that comes with successfully predicting the future. According
to the translation by Edgar Leoni in his monumental Nostradamus
and His Prophecies, quatrain 10-72 reads: L'an mil neuf cent nonante neuf sept mois, The year 1999, seventh month, (Angolmois can be interpreted as an anagram for Mongolois; it could also refer to the French royal House of Angouleme. Or maybe it will only make sense after the fact.) Today this widely quoted quatrain is variously thought to refer to a tyrant from Libya (guess who) or Persia, but not necessarily China or Mongolia. The Man Who Saw Tomorrow dramatizes the ultimate Middle East act of terrorism as a blue-turbaned despot lets the missiles fly, initiating World War III. This is followed by earthquakes (starting in California), followed by world-wide natural disasters. The war becomes nuclear in 1999 when an Antichrist from the "Kingdom of Mohammed" invades the west. Fortunately, after 27 years, the good guys eventually win and a thousand years of peace follow. Sadly, the world ends in 3797 C.E. 5/5/2000Since the world survived the predicted disasters of 1962, 1982, and 1988, a new prediction had to be constructed. In 1994 5/5/2000, subtitled Ice: the Ultimate Disaster, by Richard Noone, hit the bookstores. Although the book is an unorganized mish-mash compared to the ostensibly authoritative The Jupiter Effect, it does make dramatic predictions that some people will find scary. Like the authors of The Jupiter Effect, Noone suggests a chain of events culminating in catastrophe.Noone's chain is extraordinarily shy on details about precisely how things will happen, but the gist is that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will align with the Earth for the first time in 6,000 years, and that will cause the ice that has been building up at the South Pole to upset the Earth's axis, initiating sudden and catastrophic floods and earthquakes. The ancient Egyptians warned us about this 6,000 years ago (it happened to them, too; that's why they built the Great Pyramid), and Nostradamus simply confirmed the warning. Unfortunately Noone never hints at how the planetary alignments will cause the Earth to self-destruct, and this arm-waving contrasts dramatically with the vector calculus he quotes in depth to quantize the Great Pyramid's shape. He is, however, certain that the interval is exactly 6,000 years, no more and no less. To Noone, the alignment will be exact: "for the first time in 6,000 years all the planets of our solar system will be arrayed in practically a straight line in space" (p. 53). I've not been able to make much sense of his book or to discover its organization, if any. Most of it, however, is devoted to the "dreaded date embodied in the Great Pyramid's mathematical symbolism" (p. 213), but it ties together otherwise unrelated topics such as the Book of Mormon, dinosaurs that lived contemporaneously with humans, Inca fortresses, the lost continent of Mu, the Ark of the Covenant, Velikovsky, Atlantis, to name a few. All of his arguments are derivative. The assertion that too much ice at the South Pole will cause the Earth to tip over dates to Charles Hapgood who elaborated on earlier ideas that too much ice at a pole would unbalance the Earth. The alignments seem to be a definite afterthought in a book that is really about secrets of the Ancients. The alignments give the book its title and dramatic cover illustration and they provide a date in the alarmingly near future to focus on, but they are entirely incidental to the book. The book devotes a total of less than half a page out of more than 300 to the planetary alignments in the year 2000. (Incidentally, recent studies indicate that the Antarctic ice sheet is among "the most stable geologic features on the planet" and unlikely to change suddenly-"Preservation of Miocene Glacier Ice in East Antarctica," Nature, pp. 412-414, Aug. 3, 1995. Its present trend is to contract at 1.4% per decade.) Planetary Alignments in 2000In contrast to the "Jupiter Effect" and Nostradamus' 1988 prediction of doom - where there were no planetary alignments - in May 2000 there is a nice series of alignments. They were first pointed out by Jean Meeus in 1961 and they figure into Charles Berlitz's 1981 book Doomsday 1999 A.D. Astrologers and other doomsayers know of these alignments, which are common knowledge among people who keep track of such things. There is even a discussion board in the Astronomy section of America Online devoted just to this topic. With sky simulation programs on everyone's personal computer, the cat is out of the bag. Here is a narrative description of what will happen astronomically in 2000.The year begins with the planets dispersed over 160° of sky and all but Mercury visible. Venus is prominent in the morning sky while Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are in the evening sky. Mercury moves to the evening sky and becomes visible early in February. All planets are then moving eastward (none are in retrograde) and their spread is decreasing. On February 28 their span has decreased to 90°. A few days later Mercury swings back to the morning sky. The first conjunction of many occurs when Venus passes Mercury on March 15, and the two inner planets are 2.1° apart at their closest at 22:44 UT, or Universal Time. (Times here are of closest approach, not conjunction in Right Ascension or ecliptic longitude, and are computed by the Voyager II program for the Macintosh. Times are accurate to within a few minutes.) At the same time Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars span 20° in the evening sky. These three outer planets continue to converge (Mars is overtaking Jupiter which in turn is overtaking Saturn), and on April 6 Mars passes Jupiter (they are 1.0° apart at 6:24 UT) with Saturn 6° to the east. This conjunction happens while Mars and Jupiter are 30° from the sun and it is easily visible. The prettiest evening sight of the suite of planetary groupings comes at about 7 p.m. local time on Saturday night, April 6, (for middle latitudes in the United States), when the thin crescent moon is near Saturn and the moon and four planets fit within a circle about 9° in diameter. Daylight Saving Time begins the following morning in the United States. A week later Mars is roughly midway between Jupiter and Saturn and the three planets fit within a circle 5° in diameter. Mars is closest to Saturn (2.2°) at 14:24 UT on April 15. Mars then leaves Saturn and Jupiter behind and the three planets slowly become strung out in line. Meanwhile, Mercury and Venus have been approaching superior conjunction and their separation with the sun (and with the other planets) has been decreasing. On April 20 the five planets (and sun) span 39°, with Venus and Mercury in the morning sky and Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in the evening. Weather permitting, the five planets should be visible, although not simultaneously, to people with binoculars and clear eastern and western horizons. On April 28 at 14:56 UT Mercury passes 0.3° from Venus, but the two are less than 12° from the sun. The five planets and sun now span 30°. The moon joins the five planets a few days later, and it remains between Venus, which is the westernmost planet, and Mars, which is the easternmost, from 9:37 UT on May 3 until 8:08 UT on May 5 as measured in ecliptic longitude and as determined by Meeus. The moon is new at 4:12 UT on May 4. Because Venus is moving eastward faster than Mars, the grouping of the five planets plus moon and sun continues to compress during the time it takes the moon to move eastward and reach the longitude of Mars. All seven classical solar system bodies span their smallest geocentric arc in ecliptic longitude - 25° 53' - at 8:08 UT on May 5, as determined by Meeus. This moment is the focus of the book 5/5/2000 and is the culmination of the celestial massings. The sun is near the center of the massing, so all that will be visible will be Mars and the crescent moon, both 16° east of the sun in the evening sky, and perhaps Venus, 10° west of the sun in the morning sky. This is as seen from Earth. As seen from the sun, the five planets, which in order from left to right are Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, span 50°. The Earth is in the opposite direction. As seen from far above the sun they do indeed look aligned - as they actually are. After passing Mars at 8:08 UT on the 5th, the moon leaves the sun and planets behind, but the five planets continue to converge (and to become even less easily visible). In sequence, Jupiter is in superior conjunction, Mercury passes Jupiter, Mercury is in superior conjunction, Saturn is in superior conjunction, and Venus passes Jupiter. This last conjunction, which takes place at 10:30 UT on May 17, determines the smallest geocentric spread in longitude of the five classical planets (and the sun, but not the moon), which span 19° 25'. The moon is in a kind of alignment by being 170° opposite the sun and 21 hours before full. This is a second instant for astrologers and psychics to focus on. All planets are too close to the sun to be seen. After this moment, Jupiter's slower eastward motion causes it to lag behind the others and the planets begin to spread out. A notable feature of the May 17 minimum span is that Venus and Jupiter are separated by only 42 arcseconds! Venus almost occults Jupiter. It would be a wonderful sight were they not less than 7° from the sun. This close conjunction has already been compared to the 2 B.C.E. conjunction of the same planets that is often identified as the Star of the Magi in the Book of Matthew. Conjunctions continue as Mercury passes Mars with a minimum true angular separation of 1.1° at 9:04 on May 19 (as determined by Voyager II). They are 12° from the sun and possibly visible. Jupiter passes 1.1° from Saturn at 13:20 on May 27. Venus is in superior conjunction with the sun on June 11 (and literally behind it), by which time both Jupiter and Saturn have become visible in the morning sky, where they rise 2° apart. Venus passes 0.2° from Mars at 17:04 on June 21 (both are far too close to the sun to see). Another interesting massing (and a last chance for astrologers whose earlier predictions were not fulfilled) comes on July 1 and 2 when, for 11 hours, the moon, sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars fit within a circle 8° in diameter. The massing will not be visible, of course. Every astrologer and psychic will put his own spin on these alignments. They occur over so a wide a span of time that there should be plenty of opportunities to link at least a few natural and political disasters to planetary positions.
Other Alignments. The two main groupings of multiple objects
that will draw the greatest attention are the minimum separation
of all seven classical solar system bodies on May 5 and the even
smaller minimum separation of five planets plus the moon on May
17. However, within this time frame there are other alignments
that involve fewer objects but that are also interesting both
astronomically and astrologically. From past experience we know
that astrologers feel free to attach significance to whatever
dates are available. In 1988 so many alternative dates were proposed
that, by the time May rolled around, someone had picked almost
every day of the month for the earthquake.
How Often Do the Planets Align?Inevitably when discussing a planetary alignment, someone asks, "How often does this happen?" or "When will it happen again?"It is hard to give a short and satisfying answer if more than two objects are involved. Of course, no series of alignments repeats exactly, but simply saying it that way is interpreted as avoiding answering the question. People have the instinctive feeling that even if a particular alignment doesn't repeat exactly, it repeats in a general way and there must be a way of putting a number to its rarity. This is certainly true of eclipses (the most interesting alignments), and it is true of planetary alignments too. If the alignment is a simple conjunction of two planets, the answer is easy. But if it is several planets massed together, perhaps with the moon, and if they need to be in one of the "water" signs of the zodiac, for example, the answer is not obvious.
An analogy I like to use is to compare a complex series of alignments
to a baseball game. Many games end with the same score, but no
game is ever repeated-just as no alignment is ever repeated. The
Belgian astronomer Jean Meeus has looked into planetary alignments
and compact groupings, and his several publications are invaluable
resources. The information in the two sections below is taken
from his work. Heliocentric: All Planets (except Pluto). Meeus (1961) published dates when all planets except Pluto fit within a sector of less than 90° as seen from the sun between the years 0 to 3000. He lists 25 dates, which work out to one every 120 years, although of course they do not occur periodically. The minimum heliocentric spread of the planets during these 30 centuries occurred on April 11, 1128 (Julian), when the eight planets spanned 40° (Pluto was outside the sector). The last two dates when the eight planets spanned less than 90° were September 19, 1666 (85°) and June 9, 1817 (83°). The next two times will be May 19, 2161 (69°) and November 7, 2176 (78°). In none of these four cases is Pluto within the sector. The last time all nine planets lay within a 90° sector was on February 1, 949 (Julian); 80° and the next will be on May 6, 2492 (90°).
Geocentric: Naked-Eye Planets. In 1994, De Meis and Meeus
published a list of 102 groupings between the years -3101 and
+2735 where the five naked-eye planets fit within a circle 25°
or less in diameter, which is an average of once every 57 years.
(This expands on Meeus' earlier 1961 list which spanned the years
1000 to 2400.) Of these 102 groupings, on 10 occasions the five
planets fit within a circle 10° in diameter (an average of
one every 584 years). The minimum separation of the naked-eye
planets within this long time span, which includes all of recorded
history, was 4.3° on February 27, 1953 B.C.E. (Apparently
the Chinese calendar began with the following new moon on March
5). The last two close groupings were on April 30, 1821 (19.7°)
and February 5, 1962 (15.8°). The next two will occur on
May 17, 2000 (19.5°) and September 8, 2040 (9.3°). The short answer to the question "when will this (the May, 2000 alignments) happen again" depends on the parameters. If you mean "when will the naked-eye planets and the moon fit within a span of 19.5° or less," as they do on May 17, the answer is "September 8, 2040-and then the planets will span less than half as wide an arc as in 2000." If the question is "when will all five planets plus the moon and sun fit within a span of 26° or less, as they do on May 5, the answer is March 20, 2675, when these seven bodies will span 22.6°. They are almost as close (and still less than 25.9°) one lunar month later. (On November 25, 2516 they span 26.5°, which is almost as close as in 2000.)
The short answer to the question, "when was the last time
the five planets plus sun and moon were this close," is "1962,
when there was a solar eclipse to boot-and nothing happened."
The following chart is a handy reference:
Planetary Alignments and EarthquakesMany people believe that when the planets align there is some dramatic effect on the Earth. People assume that somehow gravity is focused and magnified, increasing tidal forces and triggering an earthquake. To a person who doesn't understand tides (or gravity), it is easy to imagine that this is so.Usually the closeness of the alignment is overstated. In 1982, the year of the "Jupiter Effect," the tabloid Midnight reported that "all the planets in our solar system will be in line" and the Earth "will pass daily through the energy fields." The covers of the books The Jupiter Effect and 5/5/2000 both show the planets perfectly aligned. This is common imagery and is the public perception. It is wrong, as is the assumption about the tidal forces. First, it is supposedly gravitational tidal forces that trigger earthquakes. We can calculate the tidal force that each planet has on the Earth, and this is shown below. The sun has 1 unit of tidal force on the Earth; the moon has a little more than twice the effect of the sun because, though much less massive, it's much closer; the other nine planets together with all their moons add only another one five-thousandth as much. If all the planets were to align perfectly, their gravity would raise the ocean tides by one twenty-fifth of one millimeter. Clearly, the contribution of the planets is negligible, and it makes no difference to the Earth whether they are aligned or not. The tidal force depends on distance and mass, especially distance. A book you hold in your hands exerts a billion times as much tidal force as the planet Mars when Mars is at its closest. Tidal Forces of the Sun, Moon, and PlanetsWith the sun's tidal force equal to 1.00, the following values are given in Thompson (1981):
Second, we can make lists of past earthquakes and of planetary alignments and compare them to see if there is a correlation. This is a very simple thing to do that requires no theory and almost no knowledge-just pads of paper and lots of time. There are 11,000 earthquakes each year in the Los Angeles area alone that are strong enough to be recorded, which is more than enough to do a proper statistical sample. One study published in Nature (Kilston and Knopoff, 1983) claimed to find a weak correlation between large earthquakes on strike-slip faults in California and daily and semi-daily tidal stresses. That appears to have been the last word on the subject, however. From conversations with seismologists in the preparation for this article, it appears that the study has been either ignored or forgotten (or both). The feeling seems to be that a very weak correlation for a certain type of fault in a certain geographic area is not something to be excited about, and there appears to be no interest in repeating the study. However, the basis of the claims in The Jupiter Effect is that the tidal forces act on the sun, not on the Earth, and that changes in the sun trigger seismic activity on the Earth. This certainly didn't work in 1982, and it probably hasn't worked in the past. In an attempt to correlate Chinese earthquakes with heliocentric planetary alignments since 1000 C.E., W. H. Ip (1976) finds that of the 11 earthquakes with an intensity greater than 8 since 1000 C.E., none coincide with a heliocentric planetary alignment. Ip concludes that "It appears that such an arrangement of planetary orbital positions has no effect on the triggering of earthquakes." Ip also summarizes a 1975 study by Yu Shen that has not been translated from Chinese into English. Shen attempted to find a correlation between 38 centuries of seismic activity in northern China and the 179-year heliocentric alignment of the planets much touted by the authors of The Jupiter Effect prior to 1982. Since 780 B.C.E. there have been 15 or 16 heliocentric alignments and 125 earthquakes in northern China with intensities greater than 6 on the Richter scale, but only one of these earthquakes (in 1624) coincided with a heliocentric alignment. Again the conclusion is that "heliocentric planetary alignments have nothing to do with the triggering of earthquakes, at least in Northern China." Anyone can look for a correlation between tides and earthquakes and the first person to find such a correlation would be famous. Yet no one has yet found a convincing relationship - probably because there isn't one. Earthquakes are caused by motions within the Earth. We would like to predict them for obvious reasons, but an appeal to the planets or to astrology won't help. If we are talking about gravitational and tidal forces of the planets, the situation is clear. Unfortunately, some believers will dismiss the entire effort. In a posting to the "2000 Planets Align Discussion Board" of America Online (Dec. 14, 1994), "M" says: "What does 'seeing' the planets from Earth have to do with it? What we will see is not the planets themselves, perhaps, but the intersection of the great Cosmic forces they represent." Sigh. The conjunction of a prediction by Nostradamus, a series of planetary alignments, and the end of the millennium will generate innumerable predictions of doom and gloom. We have survived the "end of the world" before and we will again, but it will be a busy time for defenders of rational thought. 13 EMBARRASSING QUESTIONS TO ASK ASTROLOGERS |
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