NASA has debunked this Mars hoax for years. Why does it persist?

Supposedly Mars will appear in the night sky Thursday night like Earthlings have never seen before – equal in size to the moon.

|
JPL-Cal­tech/NASA/Reuters
This computer-generated view depicts part of Mars at the boundary between darkness and daylight, with an area including Gale Crater beginning to catch morning light, in this handout image provided by NASA.

In what has become an annual tradition, a hoax is circulating on social media and email chains saying that on Thursday night “Mars will look as large as the full moon” and “no one alive will ever see this again.”

If you do happen to go outside looking for Mars tonight, don’t be surprised if you see absolutely nothing. Zilch. Zero. Nada.

Unfortunately, the red planet will be more than 150 million miles away from home and simply not in the night sky that day.

What’s curious is why this hoax has persisted all these years. NASA's public relations department has been repeatedly debunking the myth for years.

Mars has been an object of human fascination since its discovery, from the Roman god of war to H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, the planet’s similarities to Earth gives it a special place in the celestial pantheon.

"When you put it in the perspective of, Mars may have had life at some point, or Mars is this complete other world that we've sent spacecraft to, maybe the idea that Mars will be as big as the moon doesn't sound so crazy," Joshua Bandfield, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute and the University of Washington, told Live Science.

The hoax actually does have its origins in actual science, well kind of. In 2003, Mars and Earth actually did have quite a close visit, astronomically speaking of course. On Aug. 27 of that year, Mars was less than 35 million miles away, which was the closest the two planets have pulled together in 60,000 years.

Apparently, some over-eager amateur scientist heard this fact, and, with a few choice misunderstandings and a hefty use of the forward button, the hoax spread into inboxes across the country.

Some people have made the argument that if you follow the Mars hoax to the letter, namely using a backyard telescope to magnify the view 75 times, that it does look the same size as the moon.

But even with the extra telescopic help, it simply won't work.

The hoax also got a bit of a revival in 2005, when Earth and Mars again had a close encounter, prompting another NASA public information blitz.

As technology has evolved, so have the ways that the Mars hoax has spread. More recently, Facebook and Twitter have become the preferred medium for perpetuating the myth. In this year’s edition, a doctored photo showing two moon-size objects over some temple-like structure is providing an illustration for the hoax.

Mars will be more visible in September, but as a tiny bright dot over the horizon that rises sometime around dawn. A bit less exciting than the hoax, though still interesting for astronomy buffs.

People who do want to get an up-close and personal view of the red planet, and Matt Damon, could turn to theaters in October to see the upcoming Ridley Scott film "The Martian.”

Or for a more physical encounter, there’s always the Orion spacecraft being developed by NASA, which is planning to take a manned journey to the planet sometime in the mid 2030s.

Follow CSMonitor's board Astronomy on Pinterest.
You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to NASA has debunked this Mars hoax for years. Why does it persist?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0827/NASA-has-debunked-this-Mars-hoax-for-years.-Why-does-it-persist
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe