If the planets are sending a message at all from the cosmos, it’s that earthlings should stop worrying and just relish the show. The conjunction of Earth’s heavenly neighbors—Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter—is a regular phenomenon attributed to their normal orbit around the sun, not a cosmic conspiracy that signals the end of the world as doomsayers fear, according to Dario dela Cruz, officer in charge of the Space Sciences and Astronomy Section of the Pagasa weather bureau. To 81-year-old Fr. Victor Badillo, a Filipino Jesuit astronomer who has spent 30 years studying the firmament at the Manila Observatory, the cosmic phenomenon is just one among the many amazing sky shows to enjoy. “There are so many wonderful things [in the sky] for us to enjoy than to worry about,” Badillo said by phone from the Jesuit Residence Infirmary at the Ateneo de Manila University. Instead of treating this event as a harbinger of doom, it must be considered “something beautiful to behold,” just like the meteor storm in 1999 that marked the night sky with dazzling lights, he said. Confined at the infirmary for seven years now, Badillo keeps himself busy blogging on his favorite topics ranging from astronomy and physics to theology. “What [doomsayers] are saying is not true. You will just see the planets close to each other this month. They are visible to the naked eye before sunrise, best at 4:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on the eastern side,” Dela Cruz told the Inquirer. “People should just enjoy it. Just wake up early to see it,” he said.
1 comment:
It cannot have effect in reality, that is what I consider.
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