This phenomenon occurred last year (and in 2003), so this means that the next occurrence is in 2007, not this year. This email is such a classic example of a hoax, it’s totally amazing that people still fall for it and distribute these lies to everyone they know. Email statuses “This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars”. It takes Earth 365 days to complete one orbit around the sun. Earth’s orbital path is smaller than the orbital path of Mars, so it takes Mars longer to complete an orbit around the sun. Now explain to me how Mars orbits the Sun twice in a matter of two months.
“Mars hasn’t gotten this close to Earth in the last 5,000 years, but it may take up to 60,000 years before it happens again.” It seems that the creators of this email could not decide how long it will take for the next appearance. The year 2287 is 281 years from now, almost 3 centuries, now suddenly there is talk of 60 millennia. There are references to various scientific words and phrases in this email that only a NASA scientist will understand, so how could they not be able to do simple mathematical calculations while possessing the knowledge of an astrologer? NASA claims that Earth hasn’t been that close to Mars for the last 60,000 years, I guess that’s what confused them.
“The meeting will culminate on August 27 when Mars is less than 34,649,589 miles from Earth.”. Notice how they do not refer to the year. This makes it extremely easy to use the same message next year and beyond. It would be very silly if people forward this email in September, but it’s not impossible, people tend to miss little details like this because they read their email like zombies, they don’t always think about what they read. This is perhaps the biggest reason why we get so many spam and chain letters sent to our inboxes these days.
“Mars will look as big as a full moon to the naked eye.”
I guess once Mars looks as big as the full moon, we should start to get seriously concerned.