People who do want to get an up-close and personal view of the red planet, and Matt Damon, could turn to theaters in October to see the upcoming Ridley Scott film “The Martian”. The unknown sender of that message was trying to get people excited about an unusually close approach of Mars to Earth in late August 2003.
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What they all have in common is a firm, false belief that if you look up in the nightsky on August 27th of any given year, you will see a very big, Moon-sized Mars, hovering next to a more normally Moon-sized Moon.
Mars and the Moon will not look the same size to you, ever.
We urge our readers to dismiss reports claiming that Mars will look like the second moon in the sky as just a Hoax. In 2003, Mars and Earth actually did have quite a close visit, astronomically speaking of course. More recently, Facebook and Twitter have become the preferred medium for perpetuating the myth. In this year’s edition, a doctored photo showing two moon-size objects over some temple-like structure is providing an illustration for the hoax.
Mars One is in need of billionaire funding as it aims to create a colony on the red planet by 2027.
This hoax arose from a picture taken in 1976 by NASA’s Viking 1 orbital spacecraft of a rocky outcrop in the Cydonia region of Mars.
The MIT students stand by their point that the living conditions that Mars One aims to provide on the red planet – food production, cabin pressure, habitat construction – are infeasible, given its current budget and time-frame, and would probably kill the first few astronauts sent out for the mission.
Still, Mars seems especially beloved by the general public – it’s hard to imagine a Neptune hoax circulating for so long, so widely.
Both planets have been the subjects of large, flashy research missions, including the Mars rovers and the recent New Horizons flyby of Pluto.
“Mars is the easy one, I think”, he said. Evidence of past life on Mars would have major implications for how earthlings think of themselves and their place in the solar system.
On top of all that, Mars has been featured in movies and books for so long that it hardly feels 140 million miles away. “I want the first city on Mars to be called Gatesville or Slim City”, a reference to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu.
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Since it’s shifting nearer to Earth doesn’t imply that it will influence us with radiation, as Mars radiation is one cause why going to Mars is as harmful as strolling right into a nuclear reactor unaided with appropriate clothes.
