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Index of Subjects Good afternoon, everyone. The important question to consider is ... Was this email forwarded and forwarded repeatedly, like some are? If so, it might have originated longer ago than you might imagine, meaning that whatever grain of truth it contained referred to something that happened a few years ago. That's true in the case of the Mars email "hoax". It's been floating around cyberspace for at least the past two years. While Mars could never be as bright as the Moon, it became fairly bright back on October 30, 2005, and that's the date referred to in this email. A close encounter also occurred on August 27, 2003. In fact, since Mars' orbital period is 687 days (longer than Earth's 365.24 days), we can expect occasional (almost periodic) variations in its brightness as its distance from Earth varies. The NASA website has a complete explanation at: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/07jul_marshoax.htm If you want a way to detect and explain similar hoaxes, visit the following website, and use it regularly to check out any messages whose veracity you suspect: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBSearch.html I entered the search string "Mars" and, sure enough, the entry about the "Mars spectacular" popped up, at: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBHackedHistory.shtml#mars cheers, Bob Lindsay Dartmouth Heather Drope wrote: > I rec'd an email from a friend saying that there were to be > two moons on the 27th of Aug. Mars being as bright as the > moon. Is this a hoax or truth? Heather D > >
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