2012hoax

Alignment of 1059

Planetary alignments (in astronomy called 'conjunctions'[4]) excite the public, and raise inevitable questions in their minds. Astronomers, especially those involved in public outreach programs, are used to answering these questions. However, when believers in various mystical systems use alignments as evidence for their own beliefs, many astronomers are at a loss to explain why the mystics are wrong.

Do you remember the Harmonic Convergence in 1987? That was supposed to be a Mayan/Planetary Alignment thing too, and was also promoted by Jose Arguelles. There was a spectacular alignment in May of 2000 which raised all kinds of doomsday theories. Several authors were calling it "The Great Shift". There are many 'alignments' that go unnoticed by us on Earth because they appear too close to the sun for us to see, which raises the question: Why is it only the alignments we can see that seem to have any effect?

The alignment argument

The argument for a planetary alignment goes something like this: Somehow, the planets will align, which will cause something else to happen, which will cause death and destruction on Earth.

There are several problems with this argument.

Alignments are not rare

First of all, alignments where the five naked-eye planets cluster together in the sky within a circle 25 degrees or less in diameter once every 57 years, on average. There was one in in 1962 which sent many people into a panic. There was another in 2000. They are fairly common. The next time it will happen is September 8, 2040. The 2040 grouping will include Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the crescent Moon. They will appear in the sky in a cluster well east of the Sun in the early evening.

No spectacular alignments in 2012

But what about 2012? Nope. Nada. Nothing. There aren’t any ‘alignments’, except for the normal conjunctions that happen every year. For a good page on what exactly is meant by ‘alignments’ (and some of the pseudo-scientific claims about them) take a look at this page by Dr. Donald Luttermoser at East Tennessee State University[2].

Alignments do not cause problems

Some sites claim that ‘unique alignments will cause sunspots and massive earthquakes’. The problem is that planetary alignments do not cause sunspots, and do not cause earthquakes.

Claimed alignments will not happen

Many of the claimed alignments are simply fiction, and so are most of the claimed consequences. Here’s a quote (from a crank site that shall remain unlinked)

The solar cycle of 2012 is more significant than any other for several reasons:
1. During this time the two biggest planets in our solar system, Saturn and Jupiter, will be in line with each other. The gravitational effects of the two planets on the Sun will cause it to wobble during it’s pole shift. This can have huge effects on the magnitude of the CME’s the Sun will be tossing into space. The Earth regularly gets hit with small CME’s and research says that the increased magnitude of these CME’s are one of the major causes of global warming, and changes in the ecosystem.

There is so much in that short paragraph that is wrong, it is hard to know where to start. We will break up the above statement into separate topics in order to tackle them.

Saturn and Jupiter, will be in line with each other.

No, they won't. First of all, any two points in space can be claimed to be 'in a line with each other'. If you remember your geometry, then you may remember this: A line can be defined by any two points. To talk about an alignment between two planets is meaningless. The term the author is looking for is 'conjunction', where two or more planets are within a few degrees of each other from a third vantage point.

But Saturn and Jupiter are not going to be in conjunction in 2012! Not even close!

The gravitational effects of the two planets on the Sun will cause it to wobble ….

Do they think that the gravitational effects of these two planets do not make the sun 'wobble' now? Did you know (for example) that technically the planet Jupiter does not orbit the Sun? It's true! The center of gravity between the Sun and Jupiter is a few hundred kilometers above the surface of the Sun! This means that the sun is displaced by a distance equal to slightly more than one diameter every 12 years (the period of Jupiter's orbit). This doesn't start suddenly during 2012, this has been going on for over 4 billion years!

… during it’s pole shift.

This jewel deserved a bit of special attention, because it is so delightfully, completely and utterly wrong, in only four words. The Sun doesn't have 'poles' like the Earth, or rather where the Earth has a single North and a South magnetic poles (which is called a "dipole", meaning "two poles"), the sun has dozens, sometimes hundreds of each! As complex and dynamic as the Earth's magnetic field is, it is simple, calm, and stable when compared to the Sun. The magnetic field of the Sun is a tangled mess!

The picture on the right was taken by the Yohkoh satellite, which mapped the magnetic fields of the sun by taking images in Hard and Soft X-Rays as well as Gamma Rays. The series of pictures was taken from the 1991 Solar Max through to the 1995 Solar Minimum. The appearance of the sun at Solar Max is quite striking, because each of those splashes of color indicates where strong magnetic fields are coursing through the solar atmosphere. There is no simple 'dipole', but each loop, prominence and flare is a magnetic field with a North and South pole. It can be thought of as a magnetic 'bottle' filled with hot, pressurized solar plasma. When the field lines 'short out' (called a 'reconnection') then the 'bottle' holding the plasma is broken, and the hot plasma is flung off into space. This is a Coronal Mass Ejection, and are often (but not always) associated with solar flares.

So, the Sun doesn't have 'poles' to shift, and the above four words make absolutely no sense at all.

This can have huge effects on the magnitude of the CME’s the Sun will be tossing into space.

No, it won't. The magnitude of the CMEs generated by the sun can be more intense near Solar Max, but even at Solar Minimum, the sun is quite capable of tossing a major CME our way. Flares and CMEs are more common during Solar Max, and not necessarily more intense.

The Earth regularly gets hit with small CME’s ….

Oh look! Finally something right!

… and research says that the increased magnitude of these CME’s are one of the major causes of global warming, and changes in the ecosystem.

Oh, and I had such high hopes for the rest of the paragraph too. Something right, followed immediately by something very very wrong. The magnitude of CMEs has a very small effect on the climate of the Earth. Any contribution due to CMEs hitting the earth is far outweighed by the amount of greenhouse gasses we're putting into the atmosphere. At most, an increase in CMEs would be a very minor effect.

The Sun contains 99.8% of the mass of the solar system. It outweighs everything else put together and then quite a bit more. Saying that a planetary alignment will cause the Sun to "wobble during it’s pole shift", or "cause sunspots", or "solar flares", or have an effect on the Sun’s rotation or magnetic field, is rather like saying that flies could pull apart a bowling ball simply by flying around it.

Alignments do not cause earthquakes

The ‘earthquakes’ claim appears to be that the gravitational influence of the non-existent alignments will cause earthquakes on Earth. However, the moon is much closer to us than any other astronomical object, so even though it is much smaller and lighter, it completely swamps out any gravitational or tidal effects caused by the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, or any other object. The Sun does cause tides on the Earth, and when these tides are combined with the moon tides (at the full and new moons) then they are called ’spring tides’. When they are counter to the moon’s tides (at the first and last quarter moons) then they are called ‘neap tides’. The primary influence on the Earth’s tides is the Moon. Other planets are too small and too far away to cause any noticeable effect.

Here is what Astronomer Phil Plait has to say on this subject:

Gravity depends on two things: the mass of the object pulling on you, and its distance. The more mass something has, the stronger it pulls, and the farther away it is, the weaker it pulls. As a matter of fact, the strength depends on the square of the distance. If you double the distance, the force of gravity drops by . If you put something ten times farther away, the gravitational force drops by . You can see that gravity gets weak pretty quickly with distance.

The tidal force is much like gravity, but it drops with the cube of the distance. This makes it much less important in our case! Say you double the distance to an object. Its tidal force on the Earth drops by . If you increase its distance by a factor of ten, the tidal force drops by 10 x 10 x 10=1000! So tides are in fact much weaker than gravity. (If you want a more detailed description of tides, what causes them and how they behave, I suggest you read my web page all about tides.)

So if we know the mass of an object and its distance, we can calculate the forces of both gravity and tides. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise to find out that the overwhelming winner in this game is the Earth's own Moon. It doesn't mass much (only about 1/80 of the Earth), but it is very close (Venus, the closest planet to the Earth, is at best 150 times farther away!). To make matters easier on us, let's say that the moon's gravitational force on the Earth is equal to 1 in whatever units gravity is measured in. That way we can see right away how strong the other planets are; a gravity of 10 means the planet pulls on the Earth 10 times as much as the Moon does. We can do the same with tides; assume that the tidal force is equal to 1 in tidal force units and see how the other planets fare. So, in units of Moon gravity and tides, below are the forces on the Earth from rest of the planets (the data for masses and distances are from the wonderful page The Nine Planets). The masses are in units of 10^22 kilograms (the Earth masses 6x10^24 kilograms, or 600 on this scale), and the distances in millions of kilometers. By the way, I used the distances of closest approach to the Earth to maximize the effect. Realistically, the force will be smaller than what is listed.

Planet	Mass (10^22 kg)	Distance	Gravity (Moon=1)	Tides( Moon=1)
Mercury	33	92	0.00008	0.0000003
Venus	490	42	0.006	0.00005
Mars	64	80	0.0002	0.000001
Jupiter	200,000	630	0.01	0.000006
Saturn	57,000	1280	0.0007	0.0000002
Uranus	8,700	2720	0.00002	0.000000003
Neptune	10,000	4354	0.00001	0.000000001
Pluto	~1	5764	0.0000000006	0.00000000000004
Moon	7.4	0.384	1.0	1.0

Let's look at gravity first. Right away you can see that even mighty Jupiter, king of the planets, only pulls about 0.01 (= 1%) as hard as the Moon does (just to show how I did this, Jupiter masses 27,000 times the Moon, but is 1640 times farther away. The square of 1640 is about 2.7 million, and 27,000/2.7 million=0.01). Venus is next, with only 0.6 % of the Moon's force. After that, the numbers drop a lot. The total pull of all the planets combined is 0.017, not even 2% of the Moon's pull!

That ain't much. But is it enough to destroy the Earth?

No, it isn't. Think of it this way: the Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse, which means that sometimes in its orbit it is closer to the Earth than others. At perigee, or closest approach, it is about 363,000 kilometers away, and at apogee, or farthest point, it is about 405,000 kilometers away. If you use these numbers like we did above, you see that the Moon's own gravitational effect on the Earth fluctuates by about 25% every orbit! The Moon orbits the Earth in about a month, incidentally, so it goes from apogee to perigee every two weeks. So every 14 days we see a change in gravitational effects from the Moon more than 10 times greater than all the other planets combined!

So Dr. Plait is pretty clear on this issue: there is no way that a planetary alignment of any kind can cause earthquakes. The premise (that planetary alignments can cause earthquakes) is incorrect.

The 2012 proponent site goes on to say:

2. Right now the Sun’s south magnetic pole is in line with the Earth’s north magnetic pole. Since opposites attract, the Sun, along with it’s gravitational influence from Saturn and Jupiter, may cause the Earth to switch magnetic poles too! With the magnetic field of the Earth switching in a matter of minutes, there can be huge disruptions in the Earth’s geological and ecological system. It can cause mass earthquakes and volcano eruptions all over the world. After it’s all done, compasses will point South, the Sun will rise in the West and set in the East. But remember, this is a magnetic switch only.

Again, we'll tackle this paragraph bit by bit.

2. Right now the Sun’s south magnetic pole …

It doesn't have one.

… is in line with the Earth’s north magnetic pole.

No it's not, because it doesn't have one.

Since opposites attract…

Oooh! Something right again!

… the Sun, along with it’s gravitational influence from Saturn and Jupiter, may cause the Earth to switch magnetic poles too!

Ah, well, such high hopes. So, which is it? Gravity or magnetism? Does the author understand the difference? Is magnetism affected by the gravity of the Sun, Saturn and Jupiter? What is the strength of the Sun's magnetic field at Earth's orbit?

With the magnetic field of the Earth switching …

Not in 2012.

… in a matter of minutes …

There are about 525,960,000 minutes in 1,000 years, which is about how long a real pole shift takes.

Geologically speaking, a magnetic pole shift goes by unnoticed.

It can cause mass earthquakes and volcano eruptions all over the world.

There is no evidence for this.

After it’s all done, compasses will point South, …

Probably true.

… the Sun will rise in the West and set in the East.

Not true at all, unless the author means that it will rise on the compass point marked as 'West' after the pole shift. But, why didn't they say that?

But remember, this is a magnetic switch only.

Not according to what they just said.

The magnetic field of the Earth is not dictated by the magnetic field of the Sun, or by the gravity of the Sun, or by the magnetic fields or gravity of Jupiter, or Saturn. It is dictated by the magnetic geodynamo in the Earth’s core. Then the author claims that the “Sun will rise in the West and set in the East” (which would indicate a change in direction of the earth’s rotation) and then contradicts himself in the next sentence, saying it would be a magnetic switch only. We can only conclude that the author doesn't have the faintest clue of what they are talking about.

No unique alignments in 2012

As it turns out, claims of ‘unique alignments’ are also easy to dispense with. Compare this image[1] taken from one of the crank websites (a different one than we quote above) with this image[1], generated by the NASA/JPL Solar System Simulator[3]. Notice anything? Yeah, that’s right… the claimed alignments don’t exist. The crank website graphic is just plain wrong.

First, look at the 1 degree view[1]. Mercury and Venus are not in conjunction. Rolling the date backwards, the conjunction appears to occur on December 18.

Now, look at the 2 degree view[1]. Note the angle between the Sun and the Earth?

Now check the 5 degree view[1] and see where Jupiter is, looks like 10 or 15 degrees off. Indeed, the opposition occurs on November 28th, not December 21st.

Now, zoom out to the 20 degree view[1], and we see Saturn. Again, while it is close to the line of Mercury and Venus, it is still off by quite a bit.

Recently someone familiar with astrology told us that astrologers consider anything within 30 degrees an alignment. Maybe this is the basis for the claim? Then why are we hearing that there will be an exact alignment?

Conclusion

Conclusion: The claims of alignments in 2012 and the consequences of alignments in general are false. We have shown that planetary alignments occur frequently with no ill effects, and are insignificant events to everyone except astronomers and rocket scientists. They do not cause noticeable effects on the Earth or on the Sun.

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