Although the article is a month old, it is relevant for today, so we decided to stick it in the main headlines * This year, the email claiming that Mars will look like the moon is repeating itself. In 2003, when it was at its closest distance, it looked like a bright star in the sky and very far from the moon, in order for it to be as big as the moon, binoculars that magnify 70 times were then needed, and even then it's a different experience
We wrote to you A year ago, And of course, too two years ago And we are forced to do it again. For six consecutive years, a message claiming that the planet Mars will look like the moon has been flooding our mailboxes. In the email in question there is an instruction to go outside after dark on August 27. "Mars will appear as big as the full moon" it said. "None of those alive today will see it again."
According to the NASA website, what will happen if you go outside on August 27 is that Mars will not be in the sky at all. Its distance will then be about 250 million kilometers from the Earth (almost on the opposite side of the Sun) and it will not be present in the sky at all in the early evening hours.
The Mars stretch began in 2003 when Earth and Mars actually came into a close encounter. On August 27 of that year, Mars was 56 million kilometers away from us, a 60-year record for the proximity of the planets. Someone sent an email alerting their friends about the event. The message included some misunderstandings and omissions, but what email doesn't sin with that? A piece of technology known as the forward button did the rest.
Tolerant readers claim that this is not a prank because there is no deliberate trick here. The author must have believed what he wrote in the message. If this is true, it is better to call it a misunderstanding of Mars or perhaps - the misleading email about Mars that should be deleted and not forwarded to anyone.
Another aspect of the Mars hoax - he says that indeed Mars will look like the full moon, if you magnify it with a 75x magnification amateur telescope. He does not say the same about the moon (p.s. in the Hebrew version the subject of the telescope disappears completely). Despite the magnification, this is not the case, because the experience of viewing Mars through a telescope compared to the experience of viewing the moon with the naked eye is a completely different experience.
A good example of this is the moon illusion. The moon near the horizon looks huge, while when it is overhead it looks smaller. In both cases, the moon is the same size, but the human brain perceives the moon's size differently depending on its environment.
Similarly, the perception of Mars is affected by the planet's environment. If you place it at the end of a small dark tunnel, it will look tiny despite the magnification.
To see Mars as the full moon, we will need a spaceship and this will still take time. In the meantime, beware of the Mars scam.
24 תגובות
Really a society is not in the shape of a box and really a war will break out or something will be called when it happens and don't say they didn't tell us because they told you and there is respect for it if it happens because there are many people who say it will be called
Yes, Vardy, why is everyone reacting in the form of anger? Read the email and ignore it or simply stop reading. I personally believe that such a thing is still barren and we will all see it, but only God knows when it will be.
By the way, when something like this happens, something at the same time will damage the earth or a war will break out
It's actually good that this news was on the website. I just received the email in question, the Google search took me straight here and I didn't even know you existed. So there you have it, you have gained a new reader (who will also forward the link to you back to the email distributor, and so on...).
Abby, this article encourages science readers and reminds them how many fools there are out there
My father, the article also has an impact on the science website, a number of very important websites have linked to this news, so that people can read the scientific explanation. There is a need to explain why from a scientific point of view the phenomenon in question does not make sense, and the science site is exactly the place for that.
And besides, she was not on the main page a week ago but a month ago. The only thing about it is that a permanent link to it was on the left side of the recommended links and it will be removed later today when the news ceases to be relevant.
Chal "someone sent" and not "someone of yours"
You don't think it's enough.. I'm a regular on the site and I don't need to see this article every week! The people who enter this site "your target audience" are not stupid and stop underestimating them, with this article it was famous on Vala or Facebook so maybe it had more influence on the idiots who spread spam.
Indeed this statement is serious and quite stupid in general, as you mentioned, and you are right. I simply assume that the people who comment here are not interested in turning the discussion into a stupid ynet-style talkback battle, and therefore refer to the article and the phenomenon more than the comments themselves.
And maybe not…
It's strange that everyone here attacks the scientific ignorance, which is serious in certain subjects, but in the case of Didan it is nothing more than disturbing. But when dark creatures like white blood write comments that show social ignorance and racism that (at least in my opinion) are much more serious, no one here bothers to condemn. Can science understand prejudices about entire populations?
By the way, this is not the first time on this site that comments in this style have been written (perhaps the fault of some commenters who are indeed ignorant of science and what to do, including religious ones), and I have yet to see anyone bother to draw the line between denying false opinions, and outrageous racist statements.
I believe (want to believe) that the author of comment 2 did it as a joke, and she even made me laugh a little... Anyway, I think the ultimate punishment for all those people who show their ignorance by forwarding the email is to just sit up all night and wait for the sunrise of Mars, see you in the morning ... by the way, I think that the email circulation even increases from year to year, it didn't reach me until this year...
In response to the article in the "Teva HaHavid" monthly, I wrote the following letter to the editor, and only in retrospect did I see the article and the lovely thread that followed it. Nevertheless, I think that my letter adds a number of things, mainly to explain the creation of "Mars Bluff".
The truth behind the "Mars Bluff"
The unfounded predictions that "on August 27th, Mars will appear the size of the full moon" or "two moons will be seen in the sky" that repeat and appear on the Internet every year, are due to mistakes, translation errors and irresponsible distribution on the Internet. As an astrophysicist who every year receives quite a few questions on the subject, I follow the "Mars bluff (hoax)" phenomenon on the Internet; It is interesting to understand how the false rumor mill developed.
The source of the news is a fundamentally correct astronomical fact - every two years and two months, Mars and the Earth come closer in their elliptical orbits around the Sun to the closest point, at which time their distance varies between 56 and 100 million km. On August 27, 2003, Mars and the Earth came closer to a distance of about 56 A million km, the smallest distance between them in hundreds of years. (But even then, to the naked eye, Mars does not appear larger than a bright star). Since then, the rumor about the approach of Mars on August 27 has been repeated (when the distributors of the message bother to update the year). Needless to say, on August 27.8.2009, 2010, Mars will not appear the size of the Moon, nor will it be at its peak brightness - the closest approach will be in January XNUMX.
Anyone who remembers an iota of geometry lessons at school can easily understand why it is impossible to see Mars from a moon-sized Earth. The diameter of Mars is approximately twice the diameter of the Moon, while its distance from Earth at its closest point (56 million km) is approximately 150 times greater than the average distance of the Moon. A simple calculation shows that even at its closest point, Mars will appear 75 times smaller than the Moon.
As for the "the two moons/Mars the size of the moon" rumors, they probably started not with deliberate deception but with a simple translation error. In the English original it was written "Mars will be seen near the full Moon" (which was probably true on the original date, August 27, 2003). A failed translator replaced the word "near" with "nearly", and got "almost the size of the full moon".
Another source may be a distortion of the news that "a telescope with a magnification of 75 times Mars will see the full size of the moon", (an internet charlatan simply omitted the telescope) but to the disappointment of the owners of the telescopes who will try it, this description is also inaccurate, as described on the NASA website which explains the "Mars Bluff" http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/09jun_marshoax :
"Even to an observer with a telescope, Mars will not look like the moon... to see Mars as the full moon, you need not a telescope but a spacecraft" (for the sake of clarity I would add, "a spacecraft that will bring the observer to a distance of about 800,000 km from Mars, 75 times closer than its distance from a sphere the country at the nearest point").
Dr. Omri Vandel,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
N.C.:
I don't know why no one commented but I know why I didn't.
I just don't think this is something worth considering.
It was clear to me that every sane person understands that this is nonsense and those who are not sane will never understand.
If no one has addressed comment 2, maybe I will.
This is a stretch in the Yehuda Barkan style and not a stretch in the physical sense.
You understand?
N.C.,
No one paid attention to his nonsense because at that exact time the moon was close to the horizon and because of the increased gravity the oxygen could not reach the brain.
Why didn't anyone comment on this idiot in Avi Levy's response 2?
Father, when the moon is close to the horizon it is no closer to the earth and the effect of mutual gravitation remains the same 3 hours later when it is in the sky.
It appears larger because its size can be compared to the size of objects on the surface of the ground. And it appears redder because the light from it passes through a larger and denser layer of air.
P.S. write high and not low...
Legal. I wanted to include both Mars and the moon in the same sentence 🙂 We will save Rabbi Popik Arnon's famous sentence for another occasion.
For white blood - the problem is not only with us, but all over the world, when everywhere it takes a different form. In the USA, for example, it takes the form of a violent messianism that harms doctors who perform legal abortions and a sea of cults. And in both places, apart from the return to the absolutist religions, there is a very strong tendency towards the New Age (by Sherry Arison).
Avi:
What happens with those people who are proud of their "scientific ignorance" is that they slowly begin an evolutionary process of a dome on their head, which gradually blackens and turns into a hat, because the oxygen stops flowing to the brain and is ejected out - into the dome.
And as a result of that they also stop shaving and start getting fat and develop OCD and start talking to themselves, and also to the food before they eat it and do all kinds of strange rituals and swing all the time etc.
And after all the lobes in the brain are paralyzed, they start spewing out all kinds of half-sentences and words that are unrelated to each other, such as: "It has been scientifically proven that the Torah is true!" / "there is a God!" / "There is life after death!" / "It is allowed to play Lego on Saturday" etc. etc.
Maybe instead of "Oh moon, oh moon, what did you do..." you should have chosen "Only Mars, on the side of the vapors..." out of shame for the ignorance...
post Scriptum. Due to depression from the state of education, I doubt if many will know which song the paraphrase in the title is about, unless they accidentally sing it in Kochav Nold.
It is not certain that the man exists... as soon as something is released on the Internet, it is not really dead...
It is simply propagated to infinity. I am sure that this email is received by several people during the year but is not forwarded and thus dies out and dies slowly, but when it reaches the threshold of its relevance (or actually lack of relevance) in the month of August then it is enough that one person received this email (which was originally distributed in 2003!) will forward to his friends and then the chance that the author of the post (and me and the readers) will receive it precisely now when it is relevant (very not!) increases drastically.
Such an array of redundancy exists in many networks for example in our brain.
We need to catch the idiot who starts redistributing this email every year and...
Congratulations in advance. Not every person is blessed with a once-in-sixty-thousand-year astronomical phenomenon on each of their birthdays.
You are doing a holy job when it comes to debunking nonsense that is running around in emails. I am personally discouraged by this email, because it indicates that things that were once clear even to the Babylonians and the ancient Greeks are not self-evident.
The Babylonian astronomers noticed that phenomena related to Mars repeat themselves once every two years and two months, without even knowing that the reason for this is the ballistics between the planets. Annual phenomena are exclusively related to the sun, monthly phenomena (Hebrew month in this case) to the moon and Mars approaches us once every two and a half months.
If someone checks, they will see that NASA launches spacecraft to Mars not randomly but once every two and two months to take advantage of this approach and reach it in a few months rather than years and of course to save fuel.
The celestial ballistic details have known all this for thousands of years, and we have to teach it anew every year, because the education system and the media betray us and inject nonsense into the minds of the youth (astrology for example), and do not even bother to teach the simple scientific truth. I'm sorry for that. Such emails make people think that science is boring and that every time something interesting is brought up the scientists reject it to make them angry. Then those people who received the spoiled education and were proud of their scientific ignorance, grew up and today 120 of them decide for us how to live.
Every year I write about this email in "irrelevant" because August 27th is my birthday and I'm glad to have a chain letter that commemorates that fact.
This is not a matter of stretching, there is an interesting dynamic of networks here. In this case the Internet.
The reason such an email survives and appears every summer is the fact that the people make sure to pass it on - this is its return mechanism - or if you want the infection mechanism, because the same dynamic occurs with viruses on the network. In fact, the viruses are not completely dead and every now and then there is a new epidemic (outbreak) and yes I am not just talking about computer viruses.