The news is out! There will be a series of planetary alignments in the year 2000. Will the earth tilt over? No. Will tidal forces trigger earthquakes? No. Will the polar ice caps melt? No. Will you even be able to see the alignments? Not really. But a lot of people want to know what is going on, so the Griffith Observatory has established this page with all the details and links.
The following is extracted from "Cosmic Doom in 2000!" by John Mosley, a feature article which appeared in the Planetarian, the journal of the International Planetarium Society, March 1996.
The planets align in May, 2000, and the world will end – or so many people will say. Anyone involved in educating the public about astronomy will be involved. It will be the Jupiter Effect and Nostradamus all over again, but on a global scale. These planetary alignments will be, for many people, the most significant astronomical event of the next decade.
Doom at the End of the Millennium
We will hear from all quarters--psychics, astrologers, pyramid experts, prophesiers of the apocalypse, and good old Nostradamus--in books, in videos, and on TV, that civilization – or the world itself – will end at the end of the millennium. Some will cite the planetary alignments in May 2000, and as astronomers we will be asked to explain, defend, and even reassure. The broadcast media has a strong sensationalist element and may do more harm than good; at the very least they will spread cries of doom quickly and widely. Recall the intensity of fears during pervious similar scares when a lot of people were genuinely frightened.
The thought that the world will end at a massing of the five planets
dates back to at least 300 B.C. Despite all we've learned a lot
about the mechanics of the solar system in the last 23 centuries,
ancient superstitions remain in full health. This time a massing
of the planets accompanies a change of millennium--a double whammy
for those who believe such coincidences are turning points in
a Master Plan for Human Fate.
Prophecies of chaos, whether triggered by planets or not, will be part of the general silliness that accompanies ends of centuries. For most people, it will be a milestone to be celebrated, not dreaded, and there should be some pretty good parties. Hillel Schwartz in Century's End documents the stories of past fins de siècles and comments at length on the coming century rollover. (Incidentally, he shows that fantastic accounts of terror throughout Europe as the year 999 approached are relatively recent fabrications.) What will be new this time is mass marketing. The millennium will be big business, involving everyone from hard-core apocalyptic doomsayers to clever entrepreneurs trying to make an honest buck. It has gone so far that a consulting firm has been established specifically to help others market the millennium. The broadcast media will not stand idly by as the craziness begins and they will be glad to fan the flames.
Mixed in with the joyful celebrations and silliness will be cries
of impending doom and destruction. Ultimately we will hear everything
from predictions by fundamentalists of the fulfillment of biblical
prophecies to planetary tidal forces run amok.
What will concern us astronomers even more as the digits roll
over are predictions of doom based on the positions of the planets.
Most members of the public will get their information on planetary
alignments not from desktop computer sky simulation programs,
but from sensational books and films. The most famous planetary
alignment of recent years was promoted in the notorious book The
Jupiter Effect. The world survived this so-called alignment
of 1982, but another book, called 5/5/2000 and subtitled
Ice: the Ultimate Disaster, by Richard Noone, is on the
shelves. This book was originally titled simply Ice: the Ultimate
Disaster, but was reissued with "5/5/2000" added
to the title and jacket blurb. Although the book is an unorganized
mish-mash compared to the ostensibly authoritative The Jupiter
Effect, it does make dramatic predictions that some people
will find scary. Like Gribbin and Plagemann, Noone too suggests
a chain of events culminating in catastrophe.
Noone's chain is extraordinarily shy on details about precisely
how things will happen, but the gist is that an Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn will align with the earth for the first
time in 6,000 years, and that will cause the ice that has been
building up at the South Pole to upset the earth's axis, initiating
sudden and catastrophic floods and earthquakes. The ancient Egyptians
warned us about this 6,000 years ago (it happened to them, too;
that's why they built the Great Pyramid), and Nostradamus simply
confirmed the warning.
I found six instances in his book where Noone mentions the alignments
of May, 2000: on pages 53, 129, 207, 213, 279, and 331 (but there
could be more because, like most books of the genre, there is
no index). Noone never even hints at how the planetary alignments
will cause the earth to self-destruct, arm-waving that contrasts
dramatically with the vector calculus he quotes at depth to quantize
the Great Pyramid's shape. He is, however, certain that the interval
is exactly 6,000 years, no more and no less. To Noone, the alignment
will be exact, too; he says "for the first time in 6,000
years all the planets of our solar system will be arrayed in practically
a straight line in space" (p. 53).
I've not been able to make much sense of his book or to discover
its organization, if any. Most of the book, however, is devoted
to the "dreaded date embodied in the Great Pyramid's mathematical
symbolism" (p. 213), but it ties together otherwise unrelated
topics as the Book of Mormon, dinosaurs that lived contemporaneously
with humans, Inca fortresses, the lost continent of Mu, the Ark
of the Covenant, Velikovsky, Atlantis, and so on ad infinitum.
All of his arguments are derivative. The assertion that too much
ice at the South Pole will cause the earth to tip over dates back
to Charles Hapgood who elaborated on earlier ideas that too much
ice at a pole would unbalance the earth.
The alignments seem to be a definite afterthought in a book that
is really about secrets of the Ancients. The alignments give the
book its title and dramatic cover illustration and they provide
a date in the alarmingly near future to focus on, but they are
entirely incidental to the book. The book devotes a total of less
than half a page out of more than 300 to the planets in the year
2000.
The details may not be important. What Noone and Nostradamus said
will be far less important as the year 2000 approaches than what
their followers will say. Noone is not active on the talk-show
circuit and Nostradamus is dead, but others will quote them to
bolster and lend legitimacy (!) to their own peculiar theories
of doom and disaster. It is these secondary, derivative predictions
and interpretations that will give us the most trouble.
Noone's arguments and his thick book will appeal to the new-agers
for whom all bizarre ideas are inter-related and who need nothing
more than a planetary alignment foreseen by the builders of the
Great Pyramid to raise the alarm of impending cosmic doom.
Deja Vue All Over Again
We've been through this before. As an astronomer at the Griffith
Observatory, I survived two occasions when Los Angeles was to
have been destroyed by earthquakes triggered by planetary alignments,
and people only a few years older than me remember a third. All
were major media events. Although the latter two of these were
specific to Los Angeles, or at least to California, the May 2000
events will be applied worldwide.
Let's recall what happened in Los Angeles in 1962, 1982, and 1988
and remind ourselves of what it will be like in a few short years
when history repeats itself yet again.
1962: The Planets Align
On February 4, 1962, all five naked eye planets plus the sun and moon were massed within a circle 17° in diameter, and at the same time there was an eclipse of the sun! Robert S. Richardson, astronomer at Griffith Observatory, describes in the May 1962 issue of the Griffith Observer what happened in Los Angeles:
Weeks beforehand we began getting inquiries from people wanting to know, "What was going to happen on February 4th?" "What does it mean?" was the next question. Then they wanted to know, "When was the last time it happened?" This was one of those things an astronomer was supposed to have at his finger tips. Answering questions of this kind for hours can become quite a strain on the nervous system
Sunday, February 4 [the crowd at the Observatory] must have been the largest since it was opened to the public in 1935. By two o'clock the road leading to and from the observatory was a solid mass of cars lined up bumper-to-bumper for half a mile.
Another woman was weeping so badly it was hard to understand her. She was practically on the verge of collapse. "I know it's silly to carry on this way,' she gasped between sobs, 'but I can't help myself." In talking to these 'Alarmed' individuals, one gets the impression very strongly of an insecure personality, torn this way and that by vague doubts and fears. When confronted by a problem, they seem incapable of forming an independent opinion concerning it, but tend to rely on the judgment of others. They are so highly susceptible to suggestion that it would be very easy for anyone who has gained their confidence to take advantage of them. the barest hint that there might be something wrong could drive them to suicide or hysterics.
There was similar craziness around the world, especially in India.
1982: The Jupiter Effect
The last time the planets were supposed to align and trigger mass
destruction in Los Angeles was in 1982, the year of the "Jupiter
Effect." According to the tabloid Midnight, "Astronomers
and scientists are desperately worried that one of the most terrible
disasters in the history of mankind may hit the United States
killing untold millions and reducing the American West Coast to
rubble ." The public was told that "all the planets
in our solar system will be in line" and the earth "will
pass daily through the energy fields."
I was not "desperately worried," but I was attentive.
The planets were not to work their magic directly on the earth, and as seen from earth there was no alignment. It was a heliocentric alignment. At their closest, on March 10, 1982, as seen from the sun, the planets spanned 95°, which is more than a quarter of the sky. As seen from the earth the naked-eye planets were spread across 130° of the sky. The Jupiter Effect was subtle. In a circuitous sequence of events, a rare heliocentric alignment of planets that occurs only once every 179 years exerts a strong tidal effect on the sun, which increases solar activity, which causes more sunspots, which propel more atomic particles towards earth, which disturb the normal circulation of earth's atmosphere, which causes sudden major storms, which cause abrupt changes in the earth's rotation, which triggers a major quake along faults (specifically the San Andreas) already subject to strain. No chain is stronger than its weakest link, and this chain has some links that were very weak indeed.
A salient feature of the Jupiter Effect was that it was promoted
by scientists, and this gave it extra validity. A local feature
for those of us who live in California is that the specific fault
that was supposed to fail was the San Andreas, a major fault that
extends nearly the length of our state. The authors referred repeatedly
to "the next great California earthquake," and this
was even the title of one chapter. My immediate predecessor at
Griffith, Edward Upton, recognized early what was going on, and
in the January 1975 issue of the Griffith Observer he wrote:
But The Jupiter Effect has not been written to appeal to the scientific mind. It is written for those who are more impressed by dramatic language than by precise reasoning it is truly a novelty to receive it from the hand of two scientists whose training and education, if not entirely wasted, should have taught them better. It is difficult, indeed, to resist the suspicion that they do know better and that The Jupiter Effect is a gigantic deception directed at the ever-present gullibles. On page after page we find repeated the warning that great earthquakes are going to occur in 1982 along the San Andreas Fault. Why this one-track emphasis on impending disaster in California, as if it were the only place on earth subject to major quakes? Why there no similar predictions concerning Chile, Alaska, Japan, Indonesia, or a hundred other places? Could it be because in California, better than any other place on earth, one finds a fear of earthquakes combined with a proven market for sensational books?
Untold millions did not die in 1982, but a lot of people were scared. Despite the focus of the book, concern was not limited to California. The San Diego Vista Press reported on March 10, 1982:
"We've literally had people ask, 'Should I sell my house and move away?'" said Kevin Atkins of Gates Planetarium [in Denver, Colorado]. The institute reported 130 phone calls in five hours Monday.
One small Christian sect in the Philippines is building a maze of padded cubicles and trying out padded suits in readiness for disasters their leader, Casiano Nasair, predicts.
And according to the Silver City Daily Press, New Mexico, of March 8, 1982:
Boston's Charles Hayden Planetarium has been inundated with calls, according to assistant director Walter Webb. And at New York's Hayden Planetarium, phone lines were so busy that secretary David Ross had no time to talk.
According to the book this planetary alignment was directed specifically to California and little mention was made of other places. Yet it made the national news. Predictions for catastrophes the end of the world in 2000 will be global in scope.
1988: Nostradamus
The last great planet-causing earthquake flap came six years ago.
We at Griffith Observatory learned about it when we received a
rash of phone calls asking, "Can you tell me when the planets
are going to line up and cause that big earthquake?" Puzzled,
we asked the callers the source of their (mis)information? It
came from a 1981 movie about Nostradamus, called The Man Who
Saw Tomorrow, that had just been shown on cable TV. As far
as I could tell, it was this so-so movie suitable only for late-night
TV that brought Nostradamus into the popular eye and initiated
concern and fear over the "alignment." It's no surprise
that the modern American public receives its information on many
vital matters via day-time talk shows and late-night TV.
The Man Who Saw Tomorrow referred to an earthquake that
was to have happened in California in 1988, but it also refers
specifically to more dramatic events that are to happen at the
end of the millennium and that are to affect the entire globe,
as described earlier. The video will probably resurface again,
even though many of the events dramatically predicted in it have
decidedly not come to pass as predicted. I recommend purchasing
a copy on video cassette for your own self-defense.
The Man Who Saw Tomorrow is a docudrama that warns that
certain predictions of the future are not comforting. Narrated
by Orson Welles, it tells the story of Nostradamus in a sympathetic
way that cannot fail to convince someone who is not familiar with
the subject that here was a man with supernatural powers who could
indeed see the future and who wrote his quatrains to warn future
generations of troubles to come. It is full of archival footage
of horrors of the past (World War II atrocities, for example)
and scenes of disaster lifted from old science fiction films.
Because it is appears to be a documentary, many who see it are
genuinely alarmed.
Not surprisingly for a film produced by David Wolper, the movie
is full of exaggerations and outright fabrications. In one example
of the movie's manipulation of facts, a dramatic scene which is
presented as a true historical incident shows looters opening
the grave of Nostradamus during the French Revolution. To their
dread and amazement, the looters find a plaque on the body inscribed
with the month and year they opened the grave! One looter mockingly
recalls a curse upon whoever disturbs the prophet's bones--and
is promptly shot dead by a stray bullet. Narrator Welles looks
you in the eye and asks you to be the judge if this can only be
coincidence. The reality is that the tomb of Nostradamus, like
so many others, was indeed looted during the revolution, but no
dated plaque was found. A local French priest created the legend
that a soldier who helped open the tomb died in battle the next
day in an effort to scare off future looters.
Following the late-night showing of the film, astrologers, psychics,
and doomsayers of all persuasions crawled out of the woodwork
and added their own spin on Nostradamus' predictions. We were
assured from them that, yes, the Master had predicted earthquakes
for Los Angeles or San Francisco for May, 1988. We were told this
despite the fact that the quatrain quoted in the movie was a fabrication
created by joining two lines of one quatrain with two lines of
another (Century I, #87 atop Century X, #67), and that the actual
warning was that "hailstones would fall larger than an egg."
I learned how tightly foreseers of the future stick together as
they clamber on their bandwagon once a prediction has caught the
eyes of the media, regardless of how bogus the initial source
may be. This bodes poorly for May 2000; a prophecy of doom has
a life of its own once it starts, and even a small flame can start
a big fire.
A curious aspect of the 1988 flap was that the movie did not claim
that the planets would align. The quake would happen when the
planets would be in specific, but very ambiguous, positions ("Mars
in zero"). There was no question of tidal or other unknown
forces acting on the earth; it was pure astrology. Yet the impact
was strong, and the news media ate it up. If all this could come
from a bad video that didn't even quote Nostradamus correctly
and at a time when there were no planetary alignments, I shudder
in fear of what will happen at the turn of the century/millennium.
In a curious coincidence, at the height of the Nostradamus scare
it was revealed to the nation that the First Lady used an astrologer
to plan Ronald Reagan's presidential calendar. (His astrologer,
Joan Quigley, boasted, "I got heavily into the relationship
between the superpowers and the ending of the Cold War."
L.A. Times, Jan. 4, 1996). For we defenders of rationality,
it was a double-whammy. We were busy.
Most news coverage was rational and balanced, but we were appalled
by some investigative-reporting programs (one of which was filmed
on our roof without our permission) that ranked with the most
shameful examples of tabloid journalism. They fanned the flames
during prime time, and I lamented that they reached more people
with their nonsense in one half-hour broadcast than I will in
the planetarium theater in my entire career.
Interest on the part of the news media and the public peaked the
day before the supposed catastrophe, with many of the Hollywood
rich and famous arranging to be out of town "just to be safe."
When nothing had happened by the late afternoon of the fateful
day, media interest evaporated so quickly you could hear the loud
POP as air rushed into the vacuum it left behind. I stood on the
Observatory steps waiting to be interviewed about the earthquake
that didn't happen and the prediction that failed, but "that
was not news" and I stood alone.
Nearly forgotten now is the new age Harmonic Convergence, a wild and crazy New Age non-event in California and elsewhere in August, 1987. Second generation hippies gathered on Mt. Shasta and at other galacto-magnetic vortices while Mercury, Venus, and Mars converged near the sun. The purpose was to establish a field of trust via a bio-electromagnetic battery and sense-field matrix so that, among other events, the ancient Mayans, who had departed in UFOs, would return to usher in a new age of galactic synchronization. As far as I could tell, nothing happened other than a crafts fair.
Planetary Alignments in 2000
In contrast to the Jupiter Effect and Nostradamus' 1988 prediction
of doom, when there were no planetary alignments, in May 2000
there is a nice series of alignments. They were first pointed
out by Jean Meeus in 1961 and they figure into Charles Berlitz'
forgettable book Doomsday 1999 A.D. published in 1981. Astrologers
and other doomsayers know of these alignments, which are already
common knowledge among people who keep track of such things. There
is even a discussion board in the Astronomy section of America
Online devoted just to this topic. With sky simulation programs
on everyone's personal computer, the cat is out of the bag.
Here is a narrative description of what will happen astronomically in 2000.
The year begins with the planets dispersed over 160° of sky and all but Mercury visible. Venus is prominent in the morning sky while Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are in the evening sky. Mercury moves to the evening sky and becomes visible early in February. All planets are then moving eastward (none are in retrograde) and their spread is decreasing. On February 28 their span has decreased to 90°. A few days later Mercury swings back to the morning sky.
The first conjunction of many occurs when Venus passes Mercury on March 15, and the two inner planets are 2.1° apart at their closest at 22:44 UT. (Times here are of closest approach, not conjunction in Right Ascension or ecliptic longitude, and are computed by the Voyager II program for Macintosh by Carina Software. Times are accurate to within a few minutes.) At the same time Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars span 20° in the evening sky. These three outer planets continue to converge (Mars is overtaking Jupiter which in turn is overtaking Saturn), and on April 6 Mars passes Jupiter (they are 1.0° apart at 6:24 UT) with Saturn 6° to the east. This conjunction happens while Mars and Jupiter are 30° from the sun and it is easily visible. The prettiest evening sight of the suite of planetary groupings comes at about 8 p.m. local daylight saving time on Thursday evening, April 6, for middle latitudes in the United States, when the thin crescent moon is near Saturn and the moon and four planets fit within a circle about 9° in diameter.
April 6, 2000, 7 p.m. The three planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, plus the thin crescent moon are visible during evening twilight from mid-latitudes. Alt-azimuth grid squares are 5° apart. All illustrations here were created with Voyager II for the Macintosh.
A week later Mars is roughly midway between Jupiter and Saturn and the three planets fit within a circle 5° in diameter. Mars is closest to Saturn (2.2°) at 14:24 UT on April 15. Mars then leaves Saturn and Jupiter behind and the three planets slowly become strung out in line.
Meanwhile, Mercury and Venus have been approaching superior conjunction and their separation with the sun (and with the other planets) has been decreasing. On April 20 the five planets (and sun) span 39°, with Venus and Mercury in the morning sky and Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in the evening. Weather permitting, the five planets should be visible, although not simultaneously, to people with binoculars and clear eastern and western horizons.
On April 28 at 14:56 UT Mercury passes 0.3° from Venus, but the two are less than 12° from the sun. The five planets and sun now span 30°.
The moon joins the five planets a few days later, and it remains between Venus, which is the westernmost planet, and Mars, which is the easternmost, from 9:37 UT on May 3 until 8:08 UT on May 5 as measured in ecliptic longitude. The moon is new at 4:12 UT on May 4. Because Venus is moving eastward faster than Mars, the grouping of the five planets plus moon and sun continues to compress during the time it takes the moon to move eastward and reach the longitude of Mars. All seven classical solar system bodies span their smallest geocentric arc in ecliptic longitude – 25° 53' – at 8:08 UT on May 5. This moment is the culmination of the celestial massings. The sun is near the center of the massing, so all that will be visible will be Mars and the crescent moon, both 16° east of the sun in the evening sky, and perhaps Venus, 10° west of the sun in the morning sky.
May 5, 2000. The five classical planets plus the sun and moon span 26°, their closest separation since 1962 and their closest until 2675. Only Venus in the morning and Mars and the crescent moon in the evening might be visible. Ecliptic grids are 5° apart.
May 5, 2000, as seen from the sun. The five naked-eye planets span 50°. The earth is in the opposite direction. Note that Jupiter and Saturn are nearly aligned. Ecliptic grids are 5° apart.
May 5, 2000, as seen from above. From a vantage point high above the sun the planets do indeed look aligned. From bottom to top they are the earth, sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The moon, not shown, is near new and also aligned.
This is as seen from the earth. As seen from the sun, the five planets, which in order from left to right are Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus, span 50°. The earth is in the opposite direction. As seen from far above the sun they do indeed look aligned – as they actually are.
After passing Mars at 8:08 UT on the 5th, the moon leaves the sun and planets behind, but the five planets continue to converge (and to become even less-easily visible). In sequence, Jupiter is in superior conjunction, Mercury passes Jupiter, Mercury is in superior conjunction, Saturn is in superior conjunction, and Venus passes Jupiter. This last conjunction, which takes place at 10:30 UT on May 17, determines the smallest geocentric spread in longitude of the five classical planets (and the sun, but not the moon), which span 19° 25'. The moon is in a kind of alignment by being 170° opposite the sun and 21 hours before full. This is a second instant for astrologers and psychics to focus on. All planets are too close to the sun to be seen--but we can demonstrate what is happening in our planetarium theaters! After this moment, Jupiter's slower eastward motion causes it to lag behind the others and the planets begin to spread out.
A notable feature of the May 17 minimum span is that Venus and Jupiter are separated by only 42 arcseconds! Venus almost occults Jupiter. It would be a wonderful sight were they not less than 7° from the sun. This close conjunction has already been compared to the 2 B.C. conjunction of the same planets that is often identified as the Christmas Star in the book of Matthew.
May 17, 2000. From left to right (east to west), Mars, Mercury, the sun, Saturn, and Venus and Jupiter (which are in very close conjunction) span a geocentric arc of 19.5°. The moon is one day before full. Ecliptic grids are 5° apart.
Conjunctions continue as Mercury passes Mars with a minimum true angular separation of 1.1° at 9:04 on May 19 (as determined by Voyager II). They are 12° from the sun and possibly visible. Jupiter passes 1.1° from Saturn at 13:20 on May 27. Venus is in superior conjunction with the sun on June 11 (and literally behind it), by which time both Jupiter and Saturn have become visible in the morning sky, where they rise 2° apart. Venus passes 0.2° from Mars at 17:04 on June 21 (both are far too close to the sun to see).
Another interesting massing (and a last chance for astrologers whose earlier predictions of disaster were not fulfilled) comes on July 1 and 2 when, for 11 hours, the moon, sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars fit within a circle 8° in diameter. The massing will not be visible, of course. Further groupings of lesser interest continue on and on ...
Every astrologer and psychic will put his own spin on these alignments. They occur over so a wide a span of time that there should be opportunities to link at least a few natural and political disasters to planetary positions.
Alignments Summary planets date UT time true separation Venus-Mercury March 15 22:44 2.1° Mars-Jupiter April 6 6:24 1.0° Mars-Saturn April 15 14:24 2.2° Mercury-Venus April 28 14:56 0.3° Mercury-Jupiter May 8 18:08 0.8° Venus-Jupiter May 17 10:30 0.01° Mercury-Mars May 19 9:04 1.1° Jupiter-Saturn May 27 13:20 1.1° Venus-Mars June 21 17:04 0.2° minimum span in longitude of sun, moon, and five planets May 5, 8:08 UT 25° 53' minimum span in longitude of five planets (plus sun) May 17, 10:30 UT 19° 25'
How Often Do the Planets Align?
Inevitably when discussing a planetary alignment, someone asks,
"How often does this happen?" or "When will it
happen again?"
It is hard to give a short and satisfying answer if more than
two objects are involved. Of course, no series of alignments repeats
exactly, but simply saying it that way is interpreted as avoiding
answering the question. You'll be seen as obstructionist. People
have the instinctive feeling that even if a particular alignment
doesn't repeat exactly, it repeats in a general way and there
must be a way of putting a number to its rarity. This is certainly
true of eclipses (the most interesting alignments), and its true
of planetary alignments too. If the alignment is a simple conjunction
of two planets, the answer is easy. But if it's several planets
massed together, perhaps with the moon, and if they need to be
in one of the "water" signs of the zodiac, for example,
the answer is not obvious.
An analogy I like to use is to compare a complex series of alignments
or a massing of planets to a baseball game. Many games end with
the same score, but no game is ever repeated--just as no alignment
is ever repeated. Another short answer, which is an over-simplification
but which might be useful when time is short, is that all nine
planets will never "line up" for the same reason you'll
never flip an honest coin and get heads a million times in a row--the
solar system won't last long enough for such an unlikely event
to occur.
The Belgian astronomer Jean Meeus has looked into planetary alignments
and compact groupings, and his several publications are invaluable
resources. The information in the two sections below are taken
from his work.
Heliocentric: All Planets (except Pluto)
In a letter-to-the-editor to Sky & Telescope (1982), Meeus published dates when all planets except Pluto fit within a sector of less than 90° as seen from the sun between the years 0 to 3000. He lists 25 dates, which is one every 120 years, although of course they do not occur periodically. The minimum heliocentric spread of the planets during these 30 centuries occurred on April 11, 1128 (Julian), when the eight planets spanned 40° (Pluto was outside the sector). The last two dates when the eight planets spanned less than 90° were September 19, 1666 (85°) and June 9, 1817 (83°). The next two times will be May 19, 2161 (69°) and November 7, 2176 (78°). In none of these four cases is Pluto within the sector. The last time all nine planets lay within a 90° sector was on February 1, 949 (Julian; 80°) and the next will be on May 6, 2492 (90°).
Geocentric: Naked Eye Planets
In 1994 De Meis and Meeus published a list of 102 groupings between the years -3101 and +2735 where the five naked-eye planets fit within a circle 25° or less in diameter, which is an average of once every 57 years. (This expands on Meeus' earlier 1961 list which spanned the years 1000 to 2400). Of these 102 groupings, on 10 occasions the five planets fit within a circle 10° in diameter (an average of one every 584 years). The minimum separation of the naked eye planets within this long time span was 4.3° on February 27, 1953 B.C. (Apparently the Chinese calendar began with the following new moon on March 5). The last two close groupings were on April 30, 1821 (19.7°) and February 5, 1962 (15.8°). The next two will occur on May 17, 2000 (19.5°) and September 8, 2040 (9.3°).
The De Meis and Meeus list does not note whether the sun is within
or outside the span of the five planets, but this can be checked
with desktop planetarium programs. Most groupings do include the
sun and are not observable, but the 2040 grouping, which includes
the crescent moon at no extra charge, occurs well to the east
of the sun and will be spectacular at 7:30 p.m. in the evening
(mark your calendar now).
Myles Standish of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered
that the five planets plus sun and moon will next form a tighter
grouping than on May 5 in April, 2438.
When Did This Last Happen? The short answer to the question, "when was the last time the five planets plus sun and moon were this close," is 1962 -- when there was a solar eclipse at the same time!
minimum separation of 5 planets + sun + moon event date separation last February 5, 1962 15.8° present May 5, 2000 25.9° next April 22, 2438 24.0° minimum separation of 5 planets + sun event date separation last February 5, 1962 15.8° present May 17, 2000 19.5° next April 9, 2675 18.3°
Other Alignments
The two main groupings of multiple objects that will draw the greatest attention are the minimum separation of all seven classical solar system bodies on May 5 and the even smaller minimum separation of five planets plus the moon on May 17. However, within this time frame there are other alignments that involve fewer objects but that are also interesting both astronomically and astrologically. From past experience we know that astrologers feel free to attach significance to whatever dates are available. In 1988 so many alternative dates were proposed that, by the time May rolled around, someone had picked almost every day of the month for the earthquake. And as I write this, Mercury is in conjunction with Uranus, an alignment a local astrologer finds quite important. Astrologers, psychics, and doomsayers of all sorts will seize on the minor events of 2000 too.
The Venus-Jupiter conjunction on May 17 at 10:30 UT is extremely
close. The planets' centers are separated 42 arcseconds, or about
0.01 degree. Both planets are full phase with apparent polar diameters
of 9.8 and 30.8 arcseconds respectively (as calculated by AstroVizier),
and at closest their limbs are separated by only 22 arcseconds.
It's a shame they won't be visible!
I used Voyager II to search for close Venus-Jupiter conjunctions
and then Starry Night and AstroVizier to examine the circumstances
with greater precision. The last time Venus and Jupiter were closer
than on May 17, 2000 (separated by less than 42 arcseconds) was
at 3:47 on July 21, 1859, when their centers were 32 arcseconds
apart (there was no partial occultation). The next time will be
at 12:45 on November 22, 2065, when their centers will be 16 arcseconds
apart and the northern edge of Venus passes in front of Jupiter.
These values should be correct to within a few minutes and a few
arcseconds--adequate to answer the question.
Meeus pointed out in 1988 that some astrologers will focus on
the almost simultaneous superior conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn,
which happen 64 hours apart. He found that since the year 1600
there have been four occurrences (1623, 1742, 1881, and 1921)
when the interval was less than 48 hours, resulting in an even
closer matching. There were no major earthquakes nor were wars
started on those dates.
Circumstances of conjunctions between the planets for the period
1990 to 2020 are listed in Part One of Astronomical Tables
of the Sun, Moon and Planets by Meeus, second edition. (The
first edition covers the period 1976-2005.) This invaluable reference
will tell you, for example, the dates of the last and next Mars-Saturn
conjunctions before and after April 15.
Planetary Alignments and Earthquakes
Many (most?) people believe that, when the planets align, they
have an effect on the earth. People assume that somehow their
gravity is focused and magnified, increasing their tidal forces
and triggering an earthquake. To a person who doesn't understand
tides (or gravity, or science), it must be easy to imagine that
this is so. During past alignments many callers simply wanted
to know about the "planetary alignment that will cause an
earthquake."
Usually the closeness of the alignment is overstated. In 1982,
the year of the "Jupiter Effect," the tabloid Midnight
reported that "all the planets in our solar system will be
in line" and the earth "will pass daily through the
energy fields." The covers of the books The Jupiter Effect
and 5/5/2000 Ice: the Ultimate Disaster both show the planets
perfectly aligned. This is common imagery and is the public perception.
It is useful to make the point that generally the alignment is
not so dramatic (in 2000 it is pretty good), but regardless of
how precisely the planets line up, we can still evaluate the idea
that planets cause earthquakes. We can take two separate approaches.
First, it is supposedly gravitational tidal forces that trigger
earthquakes. We can calculate the tidal force that each planet
has on the earth, and this is shown below. The sun has 1 unit
of tidal force on the earth; the moon has a little more than twice
the effect of the sun; the other nine planets together with all
their moons add only another one five-thousandth as much. If all
the planets were to align perfectly, their gravity would raise
the ocean tides by one twenty-fifth of one millimeter. Clearly,
the contribution of the planets is entirely negligible, and it
makes no difference to the earth whether they are aligned or not.
Tidal Forces of the Sun, Moon, and Planets on the Earth
(The sun's tidal force equals 1.00)
ref: Thompson, 1981moon 2.1 sun 1.00 Venus 0.000113 Jupiter 0.0000131 Mars 0.0000023 Mercury 0.0000007 Saturn 0.0000005 Uranus 0.000000001 Neptune 0.000000002 Pluto 0.0000000000001
The tidal force depends on distance and mass--but especially
distance. A book you are holding in your hands exerts a billion
times as much tidal force as the planet Mars when Mars is at its
closest.
Second, we can make lists of past earthquakes and of planetary
alignments and compare them to see if there is a correlation.
This is a very simple thing to do that requires no theory and
almost no knowledge--just pads of paper and lots of time. There
are 11,000 earthquakes each year in the Los Angeles area alone
that are strong enough to be recorded, which is more than enough
to do a proper statistical sample.
One study published in Nature 13 years ago (Kilston and
Knopoff) claimed to find a weak correlation between large earthquakes
on strike-slip faults in California and daily and semi-daily tidal
stresses. That appears to have been the last word on the subject,
however. From conversations with seismologists in the preparation
of this article, it appears that the study has been either ignored
or forgotten (or both). The feeling seems to be that a very weak
correlation for a certain type of fault in a certain geographic
area is not something to be excited about, and as far as I have
been able to determine there is no interest in repeating the study.
However, the basis of the claims in The Jupiter Effect
is that the tidal forces act on the sun, not on the earth, and
that changes in the sun trigger seismic activity on the earth.
This certainly didn't work in 1982, and it probably hasn't worked
in the past.
In an attempt to correlate Chinese earthquakes with heliocentric
planetary alignments since 1000 A.D. ("Chinese Records on
the Correlation of Heliocentric Planetary Alignments and Earthquake
Activities," W.-H. Ip, Icarus, 29, p. 435-6, 1976)
Ip finds that, of the 11 earthquakes with an intensity greater
than 8 since 1000 A.D., none coincide with a heliocentric planetary
alignment. Ip concludes that "It appears that such an arrangement
of planetary orbital positions has no effect on the triggering
of earthquakes." Ip also summarizes a 1975 study by Yu Shen
that has not been translated from Chinese into English. Shen attempted
to find a correlation between 38 centuries of seismic activity
in northern China and the 179-year heliocentric alignment of the
planets much touted by Gribbin and Plagemann prior to 1982. Since
780 B.C. there have been 15 or 16 heliocentric alignments and
125 earthquakes in northern China with intensities greater than
6 on the Richter scale, but only one of these earthquakes (in
1624) coincided with a heliocentric alignment. Again the conclusion
is that "heliocentric planetary alignments have nothing to
do with the triggering of earthquakes, at least in Northern China."
Anyone can look for a correlation between tides and earthquakes
and the first person to find such a correlation would be famous.
Yet no one has yet found a convincing relationship--probably because
there isn't one.
Earthquakes are caused by motions within the earth. We would like
to predict them for obvious reasons, but an appeal to the planets
or to astrology won't help.
If we are taking about gravitational and tidal forces of the planets,
the situation is clear. Unfortunately, some members of our audience
will dismiss the entire effort. In a posting to the 2000 Planets
Align Discussion Board of America Online (Dec. 14, 1994), "M"
says: "What does 'seeing' the planets from earth have to
do with it? What we will see is not the planets themselves, perhaps,
but the intersection of the great Cosmic forces they represent."
Sigh.
Dr. Brian Monson made a small QuickTime Conjunction Movie of the planets' motions. He posted it on his web server at http://drumright.ossm.edu/astronomy/movie.html. It shows a QuickTime animation of the motion of the planets during the time period surrounding 5/5/2000. If you are using a Windows based computer you will need Apple's QuickTime for Windows package installed before you can view it. You can download it for free from Apple. It was created using StarryNight for PowerMacintosh, v. 2.1.3, from Sienna Software. The movie shows the position of the planets at 0600 UTC everyday from 4/6/2000 to 5/26/2000. The time between frames is 1 day. The horizontal green line across the frame represents the ecliptic (the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun ). The red reference circle is 20º in diameter.
The information above was extracted from "Cosmic Doom in 2000!" by John Mosley, which appeared in the Planetarian, the journal of the International Planetarium Society, March 1996. The article was also reprinted with modifications in Skeptic, vol. 4 #4, 1996. Skeptic is the quarterly publication of Southern California's Skeptics Society. Please contact the Skeptic Society to purchase back issues. A discussion of tidal forces is at Truman Collins' May 2000 Alignments and Destructive Potential page.
"Cosmic Doom in 2000!," John Mosley, Planetarian, pp 6-23, March 1996.
"The Millennium is Coming!," John Mosley, Skeptic, vol. 4 #4, 1996 (reprint of Planetarian article).
"5-5-2000," Wade E. Allen, Planetarian, pp. 15-6, Sept. 1994.
"Compact Planetary Groupings," Jean Meeus, Sky & Telescope, pp. 320-21, Dec. 1961.
"Doomsday: The May 2000 Prediction," Jean Meeus, Skeptical Inquirer, pp. 290-92, Spring 1988.
"Great Earthquake Hoax," Edward Upton, Griffith Observer, pp 14-18, Jan. 1975 (reprinted pp. 2-8, Jan. 1982).
"Planetary quadrants and minimum sectors, 0 to 3000," Jean Meeus, Sky & Telescope, pp. 5-6, January 1982.
"Lunar-solar periodicities of large earthquakes in southern California," S. Kilston and L. Knopoff, Nature 303, pp. 21-25, July 1983.
Mask of Nostradamus, James Randi, Scribners, 1990.
"On the Trail of the Jupiter Effect," L. G. Thompson, Sky & Telescope, p. 220, Sept. 1981.
"Quintuple planetary groupings -- Rarity, historical events and popular beliefs," Salvo De Meis & Jean Meeus, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 104, #6, pp. 293-297, December 1994.
"Science in the bear-pit," Tony Jones, New Scientist, pp. 70-71, Oct. 7, 1989.
"The 'End of the World' at the Griffith Observatory," Robert S. Richardson, Griffith Observer, pp. 62-5, May 1962.
Also see Planetary Groupings and the Millennium: Why Panic? By Jean Meeus, from Sky & Telescope magazine.
An especially good general treatment is at the National Solar Observatory/Sacramento Peak Planetary Alignments page.
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