Bad Astronomy

I asked Mark "Skywise" Filetti, About.com's Space Guide, to assess the claims from a scientific point of view.

"Two words," he chuckled. "Preposterous and pathetic."

In spite of seemingly realistic evidence amassed by some of the "researchers," astronomers remain unimpressed. "The problem," says Filetti, "is that little to none of it is scientifically supported."

It is claimed, for example, that five planets lined up in a row could exert enough gravitational force to cause earthquakes and tidal waves on earth. Scientists say nothing could be further from the truth. The other planets do exert infinitesimal amounts of force on us, but the gravitational pull of all of them combined at their closest approach to earth amounts to less than 2% of the moon's. And if you take into account the fact that in this case the planets are massing on the opposite side of the sun from us, it all adds up to a big, fat non-event.

But what of the gravitational effects of this alignment on the sun? Some have theorized that due to tidal stresses on the solar surface there will be massive flares causing catastrophic upheaval on the earth. Again, scientists balk. Although astronomers acknowledge a correlation between planetary alignments and solar stress, they also point out that there have many times during the last 400 years when that stress was at a higher level than it will be on May 5 (the most recent being January 1990) – and no natural catastrophes resulted.

What do scientists expect to happen when the planets roughly line up on May 5?  Absolutely nothing. The event won't even be visually spectacular, since the massing will occur on the far side of the sun.

Thank God It's Doomsday

You want my prediction?  May 5 will pass without cataclysm, like any other day. Life will go on and doomsayers will find another excuse to prophesy imminent death and destruction. In case you haven't notice, there's always someone doing it.

Why?  To put it simply, it's wishful thinking. For many people, salvation awaits on the far side of catastrophe. The world we live in is too corrupt, too immoral, or simply too boring to tolerate. Doomsayers see the end of the world as an opportunity for a new beginning, a return to the Promised Land.

If they truly expected to see the earth reduced to a cinder, they wouldn't be selling survival gear, would they?

Ted Daniels, a folklorist who studies millennialism, comments:

The central idea of the millennium legend is that the Earth will be transformed into what it was in the beginning: a place of perfect harmony and justice, free from all suffering and strife. Often this involves the return of a hero, who established things the way they are in The First Place.

Since that time, things have gone awry, to the extent that the world is so corrupt, poisoned, unjust, and full of suffering that it is no longer fit to live in. It must be restored. Progressivists believe this change will come about gradually through human effort, perhaps with divine guidance. The most dramatic and often poetic movements are those that foretell some form of Armageddon.

– The Millennium Legend

The same themes emerge in secular doomsday thinking. Survivalists yearn for liberation from what they see as a corrupt and oppressive social order. Salvation awaits in the form of a life based on individualism and self-reliance. And, in purely psychological terms, the expectation of catastrophic change promises a release from the alienating sameness of everyday life (see the existential novels of Walker Percy).

There has never been a time when people weren't predicting – and to some degree hoping for – an end to life as we know it. We see the extremes of it in the bizarre behavior of some doomsday cults – feverish preparations for annihilation followed by mass suicides when the expected cataclysm doesn't occur. Unfathomable as it may seem, even fatal hysteria such as this has its roots in universal human longings. Who among us, in anticipation of earthquakes, hurricanes or even manmade calamities such as war, famine or a major league baseball strike, hasn't felt the secret thrill of imminent disaster?

Sources and further reading:

The End is Nigh -- Again
From Space.com: "Scientists say 'No way' to solar tidal doom"

Harmonic Con(game)vergence
From Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy home page

The Millennium Legend
By Ted Daniels, Millennium Watch

Who's Afraid of the Millennium?
Excellent article from Encarta Online

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