Timtations

Commentary, April 12, 2002 — More Deserved Lumps for Edward, Philip Sadler, Director of the Science Education Department at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, MA, has informed the public that two events will occur that I'm sure will bring all the nutcakes out into the streets screeching and preaching yet another End of the World.
On the evening of May 5th, the bright planets Mars, Saturn and Venus will group together to form a perfect equilateral triangle in the western sky. This eye-catching configuration will be visible almost everywhere on Earth, and in the Middle East, says Sadler, this pyramid-shaped arrangement will hang directly "above" Bethlehem — if you choose the right hour, of course.
Then, on May 10th, Mars and Venus will appear to pass so close to one another that, to the naked eye, they will become one. Both these configurations will only be illusions seen from our Earthly point of view, of course, since the planets will merely be aligned in that sense, but no closer to one another than they've been before.
Oddly enough, says Mr. Sadler, this same grouping of planets may have caught the attention of the Biblical Magi more than 2,000 years ago, because on April 1, in the year 2 B.C.E., those same three planets came together to form an equilateral triangle over the city of Bethlehem — as well as over every other town and village across the world.