THE SKY THIS MAY: 'DREADED' PLANETARY ALIGNMENT NOT A BIG DEAL

If you are reading this, one of two things must be true: 1) you survived the planetary alignments which began on the fourth, or 2) you are an alien anthropologist and have stumbled upon this file on my laptop.

Being an optimist, I will assume we all survived the dreaded planetary alignment.

I promised to tell you about the science of planetary alignments this month and so here it goes. Once every few decades or so the planets appear to line up in a line in our solar system. That's it! End of science! If the science is so unimportant, then why do people and the news media make it such a hype? Part of it has to do with the deep mysterious feelings we still harbor inside us after all these years. In early times, we did not have any "laws" of physics. There was little science except that if you smash your hand with a rock it will hurt.

In this mysterious world with no physical laws, we groped to find cause and effect relationships so we could make reasonable decisions based on logic. It was obvious that the celestial objects effected our lives.

When the big bright thing was up, it was daylight and warmer, when it went down, it was dark and colder. Who could argue with such a cause and effect relationship? We then extrapolated this to mean everything in the celestial realm had a cause and effect on us, we just had to discover what it was.

From a scientific point of view, the only influence the planets have on us is their gravitational force. This is of course why the Moon obits the Earth and the Earth orbits the Sun and so on. The Moon and the Sun also produce gravitational tidal forces on the Earth which we witness as the tides so why don't these objects do the same thing to us? The answer has to do with the amount of mass and its distance from us.

Even though the Moon is much less massive than the Sun, it has a greater tidal force on us because it is much closer. It fact, distance is usually more important in determining the gravitational forces and tides than mass is. I did some interesting calculations.

Regarding the force of gravity, a person weighing 180 pounds would have to stand about .04 inch from you to equal the gravitational force of the Sun, half an inch for the Moon, five inches for Jupiter, and 6 inches for Venus.

Regarding tidal forces. The same person would have to stand 120 feet from you to equal the tidal force of the Moon, 150 feet for the Sun, and 1000 feet for Venus and over a mile away for Jupiter.

So, in regards to the only forces known to science, the doctor who delivered you had much more of a gravitational influence on you than all the other solar system objects combined. Next time, pick the smallest, skinniest doctor you can find.

Returning to the present where we do have laws of physics. The summer constellations are slowly making their way up in the East. Towards the end of the month, the planets Jupiter and Saturn become morning objects with a rare conjunction seen every 20 years, and Venus will begin its evening shift. Be patient, it won't be long before summer.

Dr. Michael Cobb is chairman of the physics department at Southeast Missouri State University. He may be reached at 651-2172.