Mars Swings Unusually Close to Earth

amazon10x writes "Mars will come unusually close to the Earth on Saturday; the second time in 60,000 years. The last occurrence was in 2003. 'This is the best we're going to see Mars, so we should strike the iron while it is hot,' said Kelly Beatty, executive editor of Sky & Telescope magazine. The Red Planet will be 43.1 million miles from Earth at 11:25pm [Eastern time]." Update by J : Starting a few hours after sunset, look fairly high in the eastern sky.

And for those without ESP:

[Elrac]

What time zone is that time in?

That's close!

[Anonymous Coward]

Road trip!

Hunker Down

[chkMINUS]

With all the natural disasters lately, I'm stocking up on food and water in case it hits.

Oh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

Call Bruce Willis and Professor Frink!

War!!!

[BarryNorton]

Don't tell me this, just as I'm (re-)reading War of the Worlds!

Re:Wow.

[ozmanjusri]

Given advances in technology by that point, it should make a great time to put men on Mars.

How long will we have to wait intil we're advanced enough to put women there as well?

Re:Time zone?

[Jaruzel]

So that's 3:25am UTC Sunday morning?

Great - The UK (and many other countries) flip back to GMT\UTC Sunday morning, so now my head hurts trying to work out when I have to set my alarm so I can get up, get get dressed, go outside, and stand disapointedly staring at a cloud covered sky :(

-Jar.

Re:Time Zone

[squoozer]

This is obviously a Martian invasion plan. First they submit a story to /. that doesn't contain the timezone which confuses us a bit. Then they choose a time zone that plenty of people don't know (judging by the other comments). Then, and this is the one that really convinced me it's an invasion, they make sure that the conversion from the given timezone to to the ones used in Europe is as difficult as possible (most of Europe switches from daylight savings time to standard time on that night). This is a cunning ploy to keep us on the back foot while they get their ships of death in place. It should be evidence enough for any one.

To arms, the Martians are coming.

P.S. There are some dubious looking bumps in the sand on Mars. I think they might be hiding WMDs!

Re:Strike while the iron is hot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't underestimate the Martians. They got one out of three spatial probes so far.

Doom

[MacGod]

This is just so the demons can use those teleport pads to beam themselves to Earth. Here's hoping that by the time they arrive, we've figured out how to hold a flashlight AND a gun!

Re:The early Catholic church rang...

[grimJester]

It sounds like CNN looked up the orbital distance from Mars and assumed that it orbits the Earth...

This controversy should be taught in schools. Gravity is a theory, not a fact.

Some calculations

[jschmied]

The attraction between earth and mars is then

6.67*10^-11*6*10^24*6.4*10^23/(54*10^9)^2 = 8,7*10^16 Newton
(metric units)

it seems a large number but if you see the mass of the earth 6*10^24 it means every kg recives a force of 1,5*10^-8 Newton.

My weight is about 80 kg it means the mars attracts me with 1,2*10^-6 N what is about 0,12 mg.

Just to get some idea of relations...

Re:Time zone?

[csjavi]

the time change is done at 2:00am always

In which time zone?

Re:Time zone?

[m4dm4n]

A true geek knows only two times, coffee time, and, and... Okay only one time.

Re:The Distance...

[Breakfast Pants]

Couldn't be much more from the heart.

Mars will be unusually close to Earth this weekend

[kurbchekt]

but, honestly, they're still just friends

Re:Wow.

[tourvil]

How long will we have to wait intil we're advanced enough to put women there as well?

We can't very well send both men and women since they wouldn't be able to control themselves [slashdot.org]. :)

Re:In galactic scales...

[Aumaden]

An it will continue to pass closer and closer until *SPLAT*.

Haven't you noticed? 5 years ago, it would have been rare to meet 2 dense induhviduals in a week! Now, I usually encounter at least 1 a day. This accumulating density is subtly increasing the Earth's gravitational field. (Yes, yhat's also why your scale keeps going up.)

I believe reality television is to blame. I eagerly tuned in to the first season of Survivor, thinking "Oh boy! Televised Darwin Awards!" But, wha?? They *vote* people off? The smart people? This isn't "survival of the fittest", it's survival of the weaseliest. (It is so a word, Dilbert [dilbert.com] says so and that's good enough for me!)

And weaselness is closly related to denseness. Don't believe me? Take a minute to talk to your upper management. Then another minute to see what they get away with. See!?

Re:people please

[hobo sapiens]

Oh, I disagree. I got this eMail a few weeks back, and it, like, said that Mars would be as big as the moon in the sky. I'd say that's pretty reliable. You, Mr. Science, are not at all reliable with all of your facts measurements and stuff like that. Jeez! If congress says Mars will be big then it must be true! They like, know stuff.

Re:Time zone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they are reporting on Mars that Earth is passing unusually close. Does mars even use universal time?

Re:In galactic scales...

[ponds]

They use this new sort of witchcraft called 'math,' along with arcane properties such as trajectory, velocity, etc.

Re:Wow.

[Lab Wizard]

Woman won't go to Mars until there are shoe shops waiting for them.

Re:Doom

[trongey]

Forget the flashlight. Somebody's gotta get busy scattering boxes of shotgun shells all over the place! Well, that and developing body armor that automatically jumps off of the ground and puts itself on you when you step on it.
But what about the Leather Goddesses?

Re:Doom

[elrous0]

Forget the flashlight. Somebody's gotta get busy scattering boxes of shotgun shells all over the place!

You get to work on that and I'll brief everyone on the importance of putting their door and locker codes on their datapad.

-Eric

Re:For those who aren't in the 19th century anymor

[Anonymous Coward]

> also, /. has tons of non-American (or non-British) readers.
For your information, a ton is 1000 kilos which is 2207,50551 lb (there are both US, UK and international tons - I was calculating with the "metric ton").

This was a public service announcement brought to you by jchillerup (who is Danish and uses SI-units in his country).

junk science

[ChrisCampbell47]

I am so tired of this story. Every 22 months it comes back and I have to explain it to all the non-technical members of my extended family who ask me about it, expecting a freaking flash in the sky or a moon sized UFO or some crazy crap like that.

Think about this: all of these people are voters. Now extrapolate to environemental policies, energy issues, stem cell research ...

Freedom is on the march!

Once in a lifetime event!

[MojoSF]

As I frequently tell my visitors to the telescope ...

"It's a once in a lifetime event! Of course in astronomy we get five or six of those a year."

Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers [otastro.org]