I find this quite interesting. It'll be weird to look up and see our sky with something similar to the "two moons" that we see in like, Star Wars and stuff.

Wow. Usually Mars is just a little red speck in the sky. I wonder what it'll look like?

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/mars-earth-close.html

Tricksy tricksy.

I'll probably look at it for about a minute.

Yeah, I was a bit baffled by the whole "like we have two moons" anyway.

That entire quote reaks of bs.

The link nly posted just adds to it.

damn, i wanted to see what it was like to have two moons. did seam bogus as the news would of covered something of this magnitude.

I think if Mars really did come close enough to us that it would seem like a second moon, we'd be in some deep trouble.

I concur. Mars is roughly half the size of Earth, and the moon is one sixth. For it to be as "big as the moon" It would have to come with in 3 Earth-Moon distances. That would put Mars only a scant 720,000 miles away. The article the NLY posted said that that mars was what? the better part of 56.5 million miles away AT ITS CLOSEST?

to put that into perspective,
_ Imagine that line is 10,000 miles. Earths circumference is a little wider.
________________________________________________________________________ Mars would have to be that far away to look as big as the moon.
Mars is ACTUALY...
______________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________ ...That far away. (ish)

What the people don't tell you, or understand, is that mars and earth are both orbiting the sun, and mars is almost twice as far out as earth is. When you compare the orbital periods, mars' year is about 2 times as long as ours. (Duh) But not exactly. This means that when earth and mars are "Close" it just means we happen to be on the same side of the sun at around the same time. Given that fact, and the fact that the closer to the sun you are the faster you orbit, it is a fact that yes, such close occurrences are rare, but the alignment itself happens about every 14 months.

The main reason that we get "special close passes" is because both of our orbits are elliptical, and the elliptic shape of the orbit tends to "walk" in the direction of orbirt slowly over time. (To see this work in your head, know that we are closest to the sun in winter, (in the northern hemisphere) and farthest away in summer. (coincidentally, that is also why the antarctic is colder on average then the arctic, btw.) Now imagine that this shape is an egg and the sun is the yolk, spin the egg slowly counter-clockwise over several hundred thousand years.) Because mars is the same way, for an extra close conjunction of the planets, both of the orbits have to be EXACTLY lined up so that they "nest" perfectly AND the earth and mars have to be on the exact same side of the sun at exactly the same time AND they both have to be at the "low" points in their orbits at exactly the same time as well. This probably only ever occurs on the order of 10's of millions of years apart. Astronomers get a thrill out of these things because it's like watching the odometer tick over in your car- every thing is lined up proper for a while.

but let's pretend that it's not bs (and also that staffy didn't post. just for good measure)

it still wouldn't change anyone's life at all to miss it or see it. and whether people are gathered to see a real or fictional event - they must have had some fun camping out in fields looking for ufo's back in the day. acutally... i might keep this one in mind for a camping out party, though would have to change the date.. friday or saturday would work better than a thursday for camping, you know with work and all.

but in reality - where did you even quote this From lantis?

Probably his inbox.

Please... do not stretch the board vertically, even if it's to make some sort of point (and we all know Mars is far away). It's annoying to scroll through it.