The planetary alignment happening over the next few weeks would be a non-event for most astronomers, yet many use it as an opportunity to spread pseudoscience.
From Wednesday until February 20, people will be able to view five of the solar system’s planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – before dawn.
No telescope or professional equipment is needed, but observers will have to wake up 45 minutes before sunrise to see the event in the south-east.
“The effect on Earth will be immeasurably small,” said Case Rijsdijk, vice-president of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa, who denounced the unscientific claims about planetary alignments.
“The alignment poses no danger to people at all,” said Rijsdijk, who added that many pseudo-scientific beliefs encouraged people to believe the planets would affect their lives.
Many strange claims have circulated that planetary alignments could lead to earthquakes and cause volcanoes to erupt.
Other claims suggested that the planetary alignments would determine the fate of children born on that day.
“The stresses of childbirth are far worse than the effect of the planets,” joked Rijsdijk.
Part of the problem came from the book Jupiter Effect, written in 1974 by astrophysics PhD John Gribbin.
The book claimed that planetary alignments would have catastrophic effects on Earth.
“I find that a disgrace to the profession for someone with a PhD in astrophysics,” said Rijsdijk.
Although Gribbin did later apologise for his book, and people became more informed over the years, Rijsdijk said they still received a few phone calls asking whether the aligning planets would have consequences.
Rijsdijk added that people loved the claims leading up to doomsday prophecies, such as the 2012 doomsday Mayan calendar prophecy.
“But no one ever goes back to these people afterwards and asks what happened,” said Rijsdijk.
The planets would seem aligned, but that was not really the situation. “They are simply positioned in their orbits such that we see them in one portion of the sky.
“In other words, if you were to take a ‘helicopter view’ from above the solar system, the planets would not form a straight line away from the Sun, they are not truly aligned,” Rijsdijk said.
The planets, although not truly aligned, appeared so from Earth’s perspective. – ANA