Okay... so supposedly a whole bunch of planets are s'posed to be aligned this Friday and it's s'posedly going to cause a great deal of havoc. (It's the next y2k scare. Or something.)

Back when I used to be friends with a bunch of people that were batshitparanoid of stuff like this I knew a good bit about it, but these days, but like everything else from that time in my life, I put all information out of my head.

Does anyone else know about this?

Are you preparing for it?

Any theories?

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

Answers

Well, it's not the first time this has happened, and the event didn't cause any harm then, so why should anything happen this time around?

Of course, I'm not an expert on these matters. These guys are, and so are these. And they're all saying that nothing will happen as a result of the alignment. I'm gonna put my trust in them this time, even though they were responsible for crashing that UFO on Mars.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

Oh, puh-leeze!

Like Stijn says, this isn't the first time we've had "planetary alignment." Or "harmonic convergence." Or whatever the hell people are calling it this year. Nothing happens, except sometimes you get a nice, bright, pretty "star" (not really a star, a bunch of planets, but you know what I mean).

All I'm sure of is that someone is making money off making people hysterical.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

So, Tracy, what you're saying is that you have negative feelings on the subject?

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

*Absolutely* we're doomed. It's not too late to give up all your worldly possessions, ya know. I'll be happy to take that nice coffeemaker. :-)

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

Actually, what I was saying is that I would be hard pressed to think of *anything* that concerns me less.

Cheers,

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

I don't know nothing bout no planets, but it's Cinco de Mayo, a great day for Mexian lunches.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

This thing on Friday isn't exactly a planetary alignment. Several planets are going to be in a closer proximity to each other than normal. It's a phenomen called syzygy. And Stijn et al are right; ain't nothing gonna happen. The doomsayers have been pulling this kind of crap for a while. It's usually cuz they're selling something.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

On doomsday:

Well I don't think we're heading for apocalypse. But we are due for some kind of crisis in the next 5-10 years, it's just a question of how severe it's going to be. Just look at history.

However, the alignment of the planets, most likely, has little if anything to do with cycles in history.

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

This stuff happens all the time, doesn't it? And we don't get any disasters. I thought last time we had "harmonic convergence" it was supposed to start a spiritual awakening. I guess we still feel the need to attach personal significance to natural phenomena

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000

As I gather it, most (not all) of the planets will line up on Friday and actually be spread out over some 25 degrees of space. This alignment is therefore going to be pretty inexact and I don't know how many if any of the planets will actually fall into a straight line. In any case, the Earth will be on the opposite side of the sun to all the other planets, and even if it weren't the effect would only be minimal (supposedly the tides would be increased by only a quarter of a millimetre).

I think John Gribbin was the first to put out this fifth-of-the-fifth stuff back in the 1970s, in a book called "The Jupiter Effect" or "The Jupiter Menace" (not sure which). It was made into a documentary film in 1982, which was how I first discovered it. Coincidentally, 1982 was also the year that Jupiter would supposedly be on its closest approach to Earth and would cause all sorts of unspeakable troubles (hence the book/film's title). Well, we're all still here, and so I think Gribbin will be proven wrong tomorrow as well

-- Anonymous, May 03, 2000