Email 'clogged' about Mars size

A spectacular email about Mars's size in the sky on August 27 has been released over the past five years. And where is the truth?

The anonymous letter comes from some vague place that says the red planet '. will be the size of the Moon' in the night sky, and that 'no one in existence has a second chance observe this phenomenon again. '

The announcement was sent to the e-mail box of many people around the world in the past 5 summers. Now the fabricated story about Mars has become a spam content in the virtual world - and astronomers are trying to erase this trick.

'Notice that you will be watching the large-scale Mars as the Moon stimulates many people's imagination,' said Marc Jobin, an astronomer working at the Montréal Planetarium in Quebec.

'The sad thing is that many victims do not have enough astronomical knowledge to understand that this is just a trick.'

Truth

In fact, there is a related truth that has sparked this joke.

The planets do not rotate in a completely circular orbit, and in the elliptical movement around the sun, the exact distance between planets will change over time.

For example, in the orbit of Mars, the distance to Earth can range from 34.6 million miles (55.7 million kilometers) to nearly 250 million miles (401.3 million kilometers).

On August 27, 2003, Mars had a rare close distance, when it was only 34.7 million miles from Earth (56 million kilometers).

Such close distance has never happened in the last 60,000 years, and will not repeat until August 28, February 2, 1987.

In 2003, space models sent notices to astrologers about this true astronomical event.

(Photo: nationalgeographic.com)

'At that time, Mars looked through a moon-sized telescope with a naked eye,' said Geza Gyuk, an astronomer at the Adler Institute Planetarium, Chicago.

Through high telescope eyepiece telescopes, observers can even describe the many surface characteristics of Mars.

'An email with the above content has been circulated popularly on the Internet, but unfortunately, the content about' telescope observation 'has been omitted, people only pass on the information about 'size by the Moon' only. '

With the naked eye, Mars is still just an orange star glowing in the sky.But the email trick was born.

The end for life on Earth?

Fortunately for all humans, Mars will never show up to the size of the Moon in the sky.

If the red planet is as big as the description of the scrapped email, then it is only 466,000 miles (750,000 km) from Earth, twice the distance from the Moon.

Jobin astronomer from the Montréal Research Institute Planetarium said, with this distance, life on Earth will come to an end.

Under the gravity effect between the Sun and planets, such a Mars near Earth will have a huge effect on the Earth's orbital shape - our planet will move when it is close to the face. heaven, when it is far more than the present, ' he said.

'Since then, the earth's climate will be completely changed, with two very hot and very cold extreme weather conditions, creating very complex and harsh living conditions, but not necessarily higher evolutionary life forms. today can withstand. "