Cosmophobia [noun]: from cosmos (space) + phobia (fear), irrational fear or fear of outer space or catastrophes coming from space
Well, it’s the end of the year, and that means it must be time for more BS astronomical claims from the final judgment of the trial by crackpots and tabloid cloths.
These appear every few months and are usually very heated ideas recycled from the last the time the Earth was not destroyed. And here we are again.
Of course, it’s 2020, so maybe you’re shrugging your shoulders and thinking, “Oh, is that something about the end of the world? Yeah, add it to the stack.” But right now we have real problems we have to deal with (you may have noticed) and a lot of people don’t know astronomy enough to understand the nonsense of these claims.
The statements I see are, strangely, almost the same as last time and from the same people. Mayan prophecy, gloomy shepherds who have bizarre drafts on YouTube, and the like. I dismissed these things in June 2020 (please go read them first), but here you have them again, with always slightly different material.
The novelty is that they are added to the Jupiter / Saturn conjunction, the solstice and a newly discovered asteroid. Let’s take a quick look at these.
On December 21, 2020, the two giant planets Jupiter and Saturn will appear so close together in the sky that they will almost look like an object. They have been approaching for some time, and are being noticed in the lower southwest after sunset. At just 0.1 degrees difference on the 21st, it is the closest event (called a conjunction, although many prophets on the Day of Judgment prefer the term alignment) in about 400 years, and will not be repeated for many more.
So, is it dangerous? Can the combined gravitational force of the two planets add up, causing earthquakes or planetary destruction here on Earth?
No. Jupiter and Saturn are huge planets, but they are very far away, and gravity weakens very rapidly with distance. 20 years ago there was a “big alignment” of many planets, causing the same fears, so I did some math on my old Bad Astronomy website, showing that all the planets together have a much weaker gravitational pull. on Earth than the Moon. At best, the effect of Jupiter on Earth is only 1% as strong as that of the Moon.
Not only that, but the Moon’s orbit is elliptical, so its gravitational effect on Earth changes cyclically every month, strengthening and weakening much more than all the other planets combined. Yes that it does not destroy the Earth, then neither do the planets.
Think about it this way: if an alignment like this can cause widespread death and destruction, why not? last when did this happen?
As it happens, the conjunction is the same day as the December solstice. But that doesn’t mean anything. Equinoxes and solstices depend on the axial inclination of the Earth (that 24 ° point seen over the globes) relative to its orbit, which has nothing to do with Jupiter and Saturn. There is no gravitational effect or anything else. It’s just a fun coincidence.
I’ve also heard of a newly discovered asteroid that could pose a threat to Earth. The asteroid, called 2020XR, is actually what is called a potentially dangerous object (or PHO), one more than 140 meters wide that can approach Earth at more than 7.5 million kilometers. An impact of this object could be very bad. 2020XR is a PHO in the sense that it is probably between 300 and 400 meters in diameter and can get closer to Earth than our own Moon.
However, it is not less than 2 million kilometers from us for at least 170 years and, in its next step, on January 2, 2021, we are missing for a fairly comfortable comfort. 50 million kilometers margin. So it doesn’t just do that no it passes us to the solstice, but we miss a substantial fraction the size of the Earth’s orbit. Heck, the people at JPL who track dangerous items don’t even have it included in their place. In fact, there are no known asteroids that have been coming close to us for quite some time.
This is not to say that there are no rocks that we do not know, but their probabilities are extremely low at a given time. Also, the rocks we usually lose are small and don’t hurt as much, if at all.
The thing is, it’s these prophets, seers, charlatans, crackpots, whatever mal.
And that kind of thing really hurts me. On the one hand, every time – every time – They talk about things like this, people who are afraid of what they have heard put me in touch. Some of these people may have cosmophobia (fear of space) or other anxiety problems, but they certainly don’t deserve to be antagonized by people who twist science and truth.
And that’s the other part that bothers me. The conjunction between Saturn and Jupiter is an amazing thing, a rare and beautiful event that can be shared by millions of people all over the planet, people who can experience a little joy.
And these hucksters make it a horrible thing. They use it to scare people. And whether they really believe it or not, I don’t care as much as they do they are wrong.
So get out and enjoy these wonders of heaven and remember, if you want to know what it is really happening in the Universe, listen to what scientists are saying about it. It’s what they do and they do it pretty well.