Saturday, March 12, 2011

The Earthquake and the SuperMoon!!


Its so disheartening to see thousands of people dieing , suffering and waiting helplessly with no real fault of their own. Except they just happened to be at the place Nature played its havoc on.

I feel so sad looking at all those reports and images.And its even more painful to realise that no matter how strongly we feel for them, we can't revert the mis-happenings. We can just hope things would get better as soon as possible with global organisations coming forward to help Japan in this tough time.

I came to know about the happening only at early evening when I overheard some of my colleagues at office talking about it (Ya , I am bad at reading newspapers).It was only after I got back home that I was able to watch the news.And that's when I heard some reporter talking about the Super Moon(term coined by astrologer Richard Nolle)...

The fact that Moon is going to be closest to our Earth and will be in full phase at the same time on March 19,has triggered an argument between astronomers and the astrologers that whether this closeness to Moon has any role in the calamity.


AccuWeather quotes an astronomy blogger,
"There were Super Moons in 1955, 1974, 1992 and 2005. These years had their share of extreme weather and other natural events. Is the Super Moon and these natural occurrences a coincidence? Some would say yes; some would say no. I'm not here to pick sides and say I'm a believer or non-believer in subjects like this..."

There have been documents all sorts of coinciding extreme weather events that have occurred around past Super moons.
Hurricane Katrina made land on the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005, which was 10 days after the Super Moon for that month. The 1938 New England hurricane happened on Sept. 21, three weeks after a Super Moon. Australia's Hunter River experienced mass flooding and property destruction in February 1955, two whole months before and after bookending Super Moons.The last extreme super moon occurred on January 10, 2005, right around the time of the 9.0 Indonesia earthquake.

Although there are strong facts supporting the concept,there are people who strongly believe them to be nothing more than coincidences and that natural disasters have nothing to with the moon at all.
One of the reason given by the astronomers is that the natural calamities taking place on earth are because of pent up energy below the surface  due to Earth's rotation, the energy radiated by the Sun and many more factors. And the Moon' contribution, if any, is very small compared to these massive factors.(Read more at Bad astronomy)

So the question still remains...whether there is any involvement of Super Moon in the Japan earthquake or whether the proximity of Moon has any legitimate scientific link to Natural Hazards??
After reading so many thoughts in a short while even my head is buzzing. What really is the truth?

This calamity has actually sent out a panic message across the globe.Although nothing really can be done about it.We, humans have the tendency to link events to each other in a strange way even when there is not much of a connection.Skeptics refer to this as "Correlation does not imply causation". In other words, just because two things happen near the same time or place doesn’t mean one actually caused the other. Out of such things are superstitions born.

I have been a strong believer of scientific logic.That's why I think its just a time to keep our calm and strength together and take the necessary precautions to be able to survive in case of any calamity and help whenever the need arises.

"We are not making things better by panicking over something not real."

What say??

2 comments:

  1. Ya. And now that there have been three nuclear explosions, there is danger of radioactive contamination as well!!

    ReplyDelete