Doomsday: The May 2000 Prediction

Jean Meeus

In the twentieth century, however, this brand of doomsaying cannot be justified. When, in May 1910, Earth was about to pass through the "poisonous" tail of Halley's comet, some people panicked. When, on June 14, 1968, the minor planet Icarus passed within only four million kilometers of Earth, there were predictions of a possible collision, although astronomers insisted that the orbits of Earth and Icarus did not cross and that consequently a collision was out of the question.

In 1974, John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann published their book The Jupiter Effect, which stated that in 1982 "all the planets will be aligned on the same side of the Sun" (p. 101). As a result of a complicated chain of related events, the authors predicted for 1982 a very high sunspot maximum and great earthquakes affecting principally the Los Angeles region. Alas, no planetary alignment took place, the smallest heliocentric sector containing all nine planets being 95 degrees, on March 10, 1982 (Meeus 1979); the sunspot maximum occurred in November 1979; and Los Angeles survived these events.

Today, some cranks have invented something new. They now predict a catastrophe for the year 2000, because in May of that year the planets Jupiter and Saturn will be simultaneously behind the Sun as seen from Earth. Indeed, this prediction is correct, astronomically speaking: In A.D. 2000 the two planets will be (almost) simultaneously in conjunction with the Sun-namely, Jupiter on May 8 and Saturn on May 10. (All dates in this article are based on Universal Time, the civil time of Greenwich). The date for the "catastrophe" is sometimes given as May 5, which is rather strange, since it's obvious that May 9 is a much better date.

In fact, the Sun-Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of May 2000 will have no effect whatsoever on the Sun or on Earth. Those who hold an opposite view should consider that groupings like that of May 2000, though relatively rare, did happen several times in recent centuries. In May 2000, the Sun-Jupiter and the Sun-Saturn conjunctions will occur at an interval of 64 hours-more than two and a half days. But since the year 1600 there have been four occurrences where the interval was less than two days, resulting in a closer "matching" than the 2000 grouping. Those four cases are shown in Table 1. Nevertheless, nothing unusual happened during those epochs. This suffices to refute the 2000 prediction.

TABLE 1

Apparently some people did not learn from the Gribbin-Plagemann affair, and they take this new type of astrology seriously. Why did they not predict catastrophes for April 4, 1989, when Mercury and Venus will be in superior conjunction with the Sun with a time difference of only ten hours? If you object that Mercury and Venus are small planets, while Jupiter and Saturn are giants, let me reply with Table 2 (Meeus 1975).

TABLE 2

The values given here are for the mean distance to the Sun. However, due to the large eccentricity of their orbits, the values for Mercury and Mars are given for both perihelion (P) and aphelion (A).

The tidal effect of one celestial body upon another body is inversely proportional to the cube of the separating distance. For this reason, the tidal effect of Venus on the Sun is almost as large as the tidal effect of the giant, but remote, Jupiter. And Mercury's effect is always larger than that of Saturn.

If, however, you think of tidal effects on Earth, why did nothing happen on April 3, 1985, when Mercury and Venus passed almost simultaneously at inferior conjunction, between the Sun and Earth, with a time difference of only eight hours?

It should be pointed out, once and for all, that even an exact alignment of all planets cannot have the slightest effect on the Sun or on Earth. Calculation shows that the height of the tidal "bulge" on the Sun, due to the planets, would be less than two millimeters. And for Earth, consider the fact that the tidal action of the Moon far surpasses that of all planets combined, even when the planets are simultaneously at their closest distance to Earth.

And now let me make a prediction. When the year 2000 passes without having brought a catastrophe, doomsayers will provide us still another date for the end of the world. Well, let me propose August 27, 2003, when Mars will come closer to Earth than at any time in the past several thousand years, namely, to 55.76 million kilometers (Goffin and Meeus 1978)-although this is not much closer than the preceding record (55.78 million kilometers, on August 22, 1924). Or doomsday could take place on May 28-29, 2048, when Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets in the sky, will be in superior conjunction with the Sun with a time difference of less than 12 hours-or on any date you like.

References

• Goffin, E., and J. Meeus. 1978. Mars' closest approach to Earth Sky and Telescope, 56:106-107.
• Gribbin, J., and S. Plagemann. 1974. The Jupiter Effect. Macmillan.
• Meeus, J. 1975. comments on "The Jupiter Effect." Icarus 26:257-267.
• Meeus, J. 1979. Planets, sunspots and earthquakes. Mercury, 8:72-74.

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