'Supermoon' theory rebuffed

'Supermoon' theory rebuffed

• Source: Global Times
• [09:09 March 15 2011]
• Comments

By Xu Tianran

A Beijing-based astronomer has refuted claims that a "supermoon" can provoke natural disasters on Earth, citing a lack of concrete evidence.

The March 11 earthquake in Japan fueled worldwide discussion of an American astrologer's claims, made days before the quake, that when the moon's orbit brings it closer to Earth than usual, strong weather, tides and geological shifts can result.

The so-called supermoon will appear on March 19. At a distance of about 356,600 kilometers, it will be the closest it has been to the Earth in 19 years.

The last supermoons appeared in 1955, 1974, 1992 and 2005, according to widespread media reports. The 2004 tsunami, which killed over 200,000 people, occurred two weeks before the January 2005 supermoon, leading astrologers and bloggers to make a correlation.

"Supermoons have a historical association with strong storms, very high tides, extreme tides and also earthquakes," US astrologer Richard Nolle, who invented the term "supermoon" in 1979, said during a March 9 interview with Australia's ABC radio. He added that he believed that the lunar perigee, or the point in the moon's orbit when it comes closest to Earth, can cause natural disasters.

Online discussions and microblog entries about the imminent supermoon among Chinese Web users reached a frenzy following the Japan earthquake.

"I don't know what to say, there are five days left. Is there going to be another big disaster?" Web user misaran wrote on his sina.com microblog.

Astronomers have dismissed the matter as pure nonsense.

"If you try really hard, you can link any given disaster on Earth to an astronomical phenomenon," said Zhu Jin, director of the Beijing Planetarium and the chief editor of the magazine Amateur Astronomer, adding that the moon nears the Earth every month as part of its natural orbit.

Zhu said that the distance of the March 19 perigee to the Earth will be shorter than others, which average a distance of 363,104 kilometers. But the difference is "too small to be taken into account."

"It is meaningless to talk about it. Every orbit is in some way slightly different from others, and there is no reasonable link between the perigee and the earthquake," Zhu said, further noting that the moon will not look any larger to the naked eye.

"There were some confused classmates who asked us about the supermoon," said Beijing Jiaotong University's astronomy association chief Wang Peng. "But after our explanation, they now know what it's about."