Could 'supermoon' next week disrupt Earth's weather?
Moon comes at its closest approach for 19 years
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 4:29 PM on 8th March 2011
Last updated at 4:29 PM on 8th March 2011
Earth will next week be at its closest point to the moon since 1992.
The March 19 event - known as a 'lunar perigee' - will see the moon pass just 221,567miles away from our planet.
Earth will be at its closest point - some 221,567 miles away - to the moon in 19 years on March 19. Some fear the 'lunar perigee' will affect our climate pattern
But the Internet is awash with conspiracy-minded amateur scientists warning that such a 'supermoon' could disrupt Earth's climate patterns and may even cause earthquakes and volcanic activity.
Previous supermoons took place in 1955, 1974, 1992 and 2005 - all years that had extreme weather events.
The tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia happened two weeks before the January 2005 supermoon. And on Christmas Day 1974, Cyclone Tracy laid waste to Darwin, Australia.
Previous supermoons took place in 1955, 1974, 1992 and 2005 - all years that had extreme weather events
But Pete Wheeler of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy said to treat any warnings of an impending apocalypse with scepticism.
'There will be no earthquakes or volcanoes erupting, unless they are to happen anyway,' he told news.com.au.
'The Earth will experience just a lower than usual low tide and a higher than usual high tide around the time of the event, but nothing to get excited about.'
Australian astronomer David Reneke agrees, pointing out that conspiracy theorists will always be able to find a natural disaster to link to a certain time and blame it on a supermoon.
He told the website: 'If you try hard enough you can chronologically associate almost any natural disaster or event to anything in the night sky - comet, planet, sun.
'Remember in the past, planetary alignments were going to pull the sun apart. It didn't happen. Astrologers draw a very long bow most times.
'Normal king tides are about all I would expect out of this supermoon prediction.'
Coincidence? Banda Aceh, Indonesia, was devastated by the December 2004 tsunami which took place two weeks before a supermoon
Whatever does or doesn't happen, we are still learning about the moon all the time.
In January, it emerged that signals from seismic sensors left on the lunar surface by Apollo astronauts in 1971 have revealed that the moon has a liquid core similar to Earth's.
Scientists at Nasa applied contemporary seismological techniques to the data being emitted from sensors placed by their colleagues during the U.S. space program's heyday.
The research suggested the moon possesses a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles.
Where it differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles.
The data sheds light on the evolution of a lunar dynamo - a natural process by which our moon may have generated and maintained its own strong magnetic field.
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