Your Iisight On March 19, 2011(Supermoon) Disaster Probability

" ... And one astrologer believes it could inflict massive damage on the planet ... ".

Think that says it all.

On March 19, the moon will swing around Earth more closely than it has in the past 18 years,

I wonder why there were no references to the massive disasters that took place 18 years ago.

The link suggests that it wasn't a full moon last time (cba to look it up for myself). Full moons make massiver disasters .

Thanks, I was too lazy to look it up.

Well, since I'm assuming I can't do anything to stop it, I guess it's time to make sure the liquer is well stocked............thanks for the heads up.

Maybe that because you can see better there's more light.

I thought it was the photon pressure.

I like your signature by the way, "whatta ride!!!"

I found a golf ball in my back yard monogrammed "Alan Shepard". Does this mean anything?

That'll be a keeper.......if we all live through this.

I feel a Challenge question coming on ...

Um...... Why didn't it burn up on reentry?

It's made of Unobtainium - duh!

Give me a break, I've been testing the liquor to make sure it's up to snuff for the end of the world.

Seems okay so far..........maybe just one more test.

You know.... people with your passion for 'likker' are just not doing your share. you are supposed to channel and focus your passion and become brewers of spirits etc... not just consumers. .

I kinda looking for a more scientific insight...I have some..but since this is your insight-->well, its probably not mine

Can you find any examples of scientists or engineers showing any concern regarding this event?

Not yet...

If it proves to be a fruitless search, then an indication as to an answer to the question may be inferred from it.

You should have known better than ask such a question here.

i'm not sure i know better, but should have started discussing like gravitational force effect or something like that.

How come low tide & high tide is caused by the moon. Conversely, why not the rotation(angular speed with respect to the earth) of the moon not affected by the sea and kept its motion conserve suspended in space, knowing forces and energy the moon exerts on the sea is losing something (subjected to entropy) might as well the moon losses angular speed-something like that.

Such stupidity is always nice to look at and scrutinize, isn't it?

Well, if i knew it all, i should have not ask.

Wikipedia?

We need Bruce Willis to go up there, while there's still time, to drill a hole and drop in a nuke and split that supermoon in two! We'll show that supermoon!!!

Otherwise there really is nothing to do but wait and see what happens.

yeah, man i agree and also, the space cow boys too! hahaha! It's fun though. it's making people to be seemingly lunatic.

Why worry about it. Next year the Maya calendar comes to end so we won't have to clean it up.

Yeah right, i just hope mayans were wrong having their calendar ended 2012 and recent data wont correlate their predictions. As we noticed tremors becoming more frequent nowdays. There must be something that have caused why it behave like that. Looking at energy balance inputs = outputs. Tremors are energy that the earth give up(output). The next question is-> whats the source (input). Well, some blame it on global warming- i say perhaps, some blame it on the earth cores activity- im not well literate on this, some blame it on planets alignment-could be possibly right looking at gravitational forces. Well, if you'll be a scientist to know this. Would you be telling the world at its few months left? I dont know. I could only hope for the 2012 to pass peacefully.

I don't think that geophysicists learn much about astrology when they study the gravitational dynamics of the Earth-Moon system, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say I don't think astrologers learn much about gravitational dynamics when they study the mystical influences of the moon.

I suppose in view of full disclosure, I should admit that I was born when the Sun was in the constellation Ophiuchus, and we Ophiuchans are known to be extremely skeptical of everything.

Well, as an artist I'm expected to study everything, and in my artistic opinion, this stuff about the supermoon is over-rated. A simplified view of the solar system does nothing for us.

Afaik from my esoteric studies, there are a number of KBO's or TNO's (that's Kuiper Belt or Trans-Neptunian object to the uninitiated) whose oppositions are indeed correlated with geophysical events, earthquakes, eruptions and tsunamis in the data that I have reviewed. These are slow moving bodies, and when they form near or exact oppositions, geophysical events are correlated with the passage of inner planets through that orb, especially if any of the outer planets are also aligned. The metaphor of a string that is plucked or caused to resonate comes to mind. I will also reiterate that the simplified view is a mistake imho, and new bodies are being discovered out there all the time, so my limited data shouldn't lead to false assumptions about a simplistic trigger. We don't have a full picture of the resonance of our solar system yet. Moon, schmoon.

The supermoon, according to this model, could have a predictable correlation with a geophysical event if it happened to impinge on the present opposition of CM114 and RA215/Neptune consistent with my trivial observations. I haven't looked at the chart of the supermoon, nor of today's quake.. maybe it proves these past observations wrong. I expose myself to your debunkery!!! Go ahead, souse me with data, and I'll happily admit my wrong.

I have a planet in Ophiucus as well, ol Jupiter, which you know I was...

In one sense, may impossible to disprove these "nonstandard" hypotheses, but one can at least do some basic arithmetic with g ∞ m₁m₂/r².

The sun exerts about 46% of the moon's gravity on earth, making the moon the dominant influence on our tides.

Next in line are probably Jupiter and Venus; I haven't checked which order. Each is already way less than the moon. Next would be Mars (on average, anyway, though its closest approach to earth might outdo Venus's farthest. Next Saturn/Neptune/Mercury in some order, but way less than the previous. Then Pluto and Charon, again way less than before.

The moon's effect far and away outweighs everything but the sun, and the moon's variation is vastly greater than the total variation of all but the sun, whether aligned or not. It's just arithmetic. This swamping-out would make the lesser effects all but undetectable, and most unlikely to be influential.

That doesn't absolutely rule out such minor-minor-minor influences.

well dammit, moon schmoon, I have now wasted my time checking astrological data and debunking my own theory. Poo.

I'm now going to be antisocial for a bit. Got a pot of mussels to boil. What a silly thread.

I'm really not bad at predicting the local weather though. But I cheat by reading the satellite images and radar.

Yum.......mussels.

Before I can worry too much about this moon event, I have to see if I'll live through St Patrick's Day. Being Irish, that is a yearly event that always holds the possibility of catastrophic consequences.

No driving involved.

@ Tornado: I agree with your post, but want to point out that tidal forces follow an inverse r³ law (i.e., 1/r³). This doesn't negate what you said, it's just additional info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_forces

Thanks for the reminder. I had read that (and not too long ago), but it slipped my mind. Of course, that makes it even less likely that remote bodies will have any detectable tidal effects on the earth.

I am looking for an astrologer who can tell me how can I use those astrological effects of sun and moon to make a soler tracking device that is hot topic on CR4 now a days.

Ask Phil Plait.

Bad Astronomy - No, the "supermoon" didn't cause the Japanese earthquake

This says it all!

I don't believe the moon gets that close all at once. I'm pretty sure sure it was gradual and March 20th won't be much different than March 18th.

Right know I'm more interested in March 14th. yum..........

Where is all this noise coming from?

How can this be happening

Didn't we all die in 1982?

_{Jeez, we're all dead. That explains a lot.}

^{_{(Aside: are you familiar with the Scots toast:}}

^{_{"Here's tae us wha's like us!"}}

^{_{The response is:}}

^{_{"Gie few, an' we're a' deid!"}}

^₎

^{_{Heehhheee, yep they all mad that lot}}

^{_{(Aside: do you think if put on my best baying vol, at the right moment, I could avert the collision and get on Oprah?)}}

^{_{(GO FOR IT!)}}

Aaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

_{Better Dead than Read under the Bed!}

^{(I'm checking the quality of the liquor at present - that's my story and I'm sticking to it).}

"bed"? _{Oh ... I din mean 'on Oprah' -- just be like on her show}

Dirty tricks dept. - or what? Click _here for frustration.

My understanding was that the only difference between a new moon and a full moon was the amount of light we see being reflected off of it from our perspective here on earth but the actual mass and gravitational effects are still the same for both visual phases.

In new and full moons, the earth moon and sun are more or less in line (so the sun's slight tidal effect amplifies the moon's effect. This produces more dramatic tides.

None of which has anything to do, of course, with Japan's earthquake, disasters, human personality, etc, etc. "Supermoon" is total BS.

Except maybe in the sense of a great big bare butt right in one's face....

In my view, 'great big' rather depends on the proximity and La Lune is fine with me.

There is good reason to debunk astrology. There way too many people claiming to know how to do it that really don't. Not saying I do, but, I think there is something to it. I also think that the real insight always comes from the human mind and therefore, just like clues in any mystery -- scientific or a criminal case -- only someone with inspired insight actually puts all the pieces together, when looking at an astrological "chart" to reveal the truth.

As far as "scientific" validation of the Moon's influence on life, here is a starting point... and another.

No-one but an idiot would say that the moon does not affect life on Earth - one only has to look at the tides.

The point in question is stated in the title of the thread.