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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Castellan" data-source="post: 175193" data-attributes="member: 639">It was, in fact, May 5, 2000, that there was a planetary alignment of similar proportions as the current one. The catch, as Mark's post shows, is that the alignment happened too close to the Sun for people to really be able to see it.Nevertheless, this didn't stop speculations about the End of the World. The best fear-mongering I heard two years ago was that the alignment of the planets would cause disproportionate gravity in the Solar System and eject the Sun entirely! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" /> Aside from the individual clearly not having attended class the day the physics/astronomy teacher informed the students that the planets go wherever the Sun goes, the concept that the alignment of planets could do anything at all is just plain silly. But, it wasn't that long ago that the Milky Way was so named because of a belief that the gods on Mount Olympus were spilling milk on the sky...The greatest misconception about alignments is that you could draw a straight line between the Sun and each of the involved planets as you step outward toward the edge of the Solar System. In fact, the planets always appear to be in a "straight line" from our point of view on the Earth, because we're all revolving about the Sun in nearly the same plane. The planets themselves are still scattered about the Solar System, but you could only tell this by flying over it and viewing it from, say, 10 or 12 AUs distance.The likelihood that the planets will all get into a perfectly straight line before the end of the Solar System? To quote HHGttG, "as small as makes no odds."<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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