Has anyone else heard this?

[celestia671]

My daughter told me today that her teacher had been talking about Mars moving close to the earth this weekend and would be as visible as the moon. I've been looking and haven't been able to find anything about it.

[mzteris]

1. snopes is your friend

and the teacher's.

OLD News.

http://www.snopes.com/science/mars.asp


edit: forgot the ding dang apostrophe. jeesh.

[celestia671]

2. I forgot all about snopes!

Thanks! I'll print that out for her to give to the teacher.

[youngdem]

3. Bogus. Too bad your daughter's teacher is relying on spam emails to teach your child

I would say something to the teacher, personally.

I would ask that she NOT teach based on spam and Nigerian email scams.

[Individualist]

4. or, at the very least, the teacher should attempt to find out whether info is factual or not.

One has to wonder how many times she's been victimized by phishing schemes. :shrug:

[tjwash]

5. Woohoo...good surfing this weekend!!

:woohoo:Man, a mass that size the of Mars coming within a half a million miles of the earth should make the swells around 200 feet or so:woohoo:

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

6. The Teacher Should Be Fired.

[Mojorabbit]

7. I think that was in 2003 and was kind of a hoax re mar's size

though I think we are coming close to mars again soon.
Here is an article on it.
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/070822_mars_watch.html
Here is a snip
Mars and Earth Converge
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 22 August 2007
06:07 am ET

By the time you finish reading this sentence, you'll be about 25 miles closer to Mars, according to NASA calculations.

Earth and Mars are converging, setting up a great skywatching opportunity for later this year.

Here's what's going on: Earth has the inside track as the two worlds orbit the sun. Inner planets orbit more quickly than outer planets because of the laws of gravity. Earth requires 365 days to go around the sun once, whereas a year on Mars is 687 Earth-days.

So every 26 months, Earth passes Mars on this orbital trek.

When the pass occurs, Earth and Mars are on the same side of the sun, as seen from above, with all three objects lined up in a row, and astronomers say Mars is at opposition.

As our planet catches the red planet, the distance between them shrinks dramatically. (It's an opportune time for sending missions to Mars, such as the recently launched Phoenix Lander.)

Right now, the distance between the two worlds is shrinking at a rate of 22,000 mph, or about 25 miles per sentence, NASA figures.

By late September, Mars will be one of the brighter objects in the night sky. The closest approach will occur in December, when Mars will be brighter than every star in the sky.

[spag68]

8. The exact date is Aug. 27th.

Mars will not be that close again for a couple hundred years.

[spag68]

9. The exact date is Aug. 27th.

Mars will not be that close again for a couple hundred years. sorry I hit this twice.

[blogslut]

10. Actually

There's some red star (I can't remember the name) that hangs in the heaven in close proximity to Mars. Apparently, when Mars gets close to Eath, the sky appears as if there are two red eyes peering down upon us mere mortals. That's suppose to happen this month. I don't know if it's a naked-eye type event but I sure would like to know the name of that star and when this is suppose to happen. The star name starts with the letter "A".

EDIT UPDATE: Found it:

So ... you should forget about Mars on August 27th, right?

Not so fast. While there won't be Two Moons on August 27th, there will be Two Eyes. At 3 o'clock in the morning on that date, Mars will rise in the eastern sky alongside the red giant star Aldebaran. The two red lights side-by-side will resemble two eerie, unblinking eyes. This is worth waking up for!

link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Hurtling_Toward_Mars_999.html