Facebook Wars

Every year people across the globe buy in to the myth that Mars will appear as large as the moon in the night sky. And every year I have arguments with people that such an event will never occur. I once gave somebody solid proof of the impossibility of the event (a link from NASA’s website), and she refused to believe what I told her. She shrugged it off saying something along the line of “who knows? it may happen, I’m still going to look up on that night.” This year is no different, but rather than seeing posts about it, I’m witnessing the frenzy on Facebook.

One girl created an event stating that the celestial event will occur on August 27th, which happens to be two days before her birthday. She was just a bit shy from suggesting that Mars crept closer to Earth just for her birthday. At the moment there are hundreds of “confirmed attendance” RSVP’s, and many replied with apologies along the lines of “I’m going to be in the US on that day,” one girl apologized saying that she was going to be in Montreal that night. Because as we all know the night sky in Montreal is drastically different than that of Toronto’s. On the other hand, and to be fair, I have seen many comments by people saying that this event is a hoax, although their attempts at telling the truth are being looked at as “party pooper” behaviour.

I’m not bothered by the fact that these people are idiots. Idiots are a fact of life, you have to learn to deal with them. What bothers me is the lack of critical thinking. Even if a person hears about this event, they should be able to reason that such a thing will not happen. First of all for Mars to appear large on that single day would mean that Mars has to accelerate towards Earth, leaving its orbit behind (after all, it’s the girls birthday), make an appearance next to the moon, and then quickly jet back into orbit. But since that sounds physically impossible I think another explanation might have to do. What if god held a giant magnifier somewhere between Toronto and Mars, wouldn’t ha make Mars appear larger? Or maybe god has a lot of time on his hand, and he decided to make another Mars (a birthday gift), and place it in orbit around Earth for a day. Other possibilities also include: hanging a giant poster of Mars in the sky, and projecting a picture of Mars against the sky. We can also never forget the possibility that Moon might be going to a Halloween party, and decided to dress up like Mars on that particular night. I can probably think of a few other possibilities for the event might occur, but I’ll leave that for your imagination.

So, in retaliation to the Facebook event, and to “poop the party,” so to speak, I started a Facebook group named “I think anybody who believes Mars will be as big the moon is an idiot.” I sent the invitation to many people on my friends list, including friend’s who planned on attending the “event.” The response for the group has been overwhelming; at the time of writing I have 13 members and 8 wall posts. One person in the group is a converted believer, as she bravely admitted. Another, thanked me for creating the group. To those people I say, thank YOU. It feels damn great to be an educator and to set people on the right path.