"Mars Spectacular" E-Mail Hoax Spins On

Hillary Mayell
for National Geographic News

August 26, 2005

Planning to haul out the deck chairs, blankets, and binoculars Saturday night for Mars's closest approach to Earth in history? Save yourself the trouble.

"The Red Planet is about to be spectacular!" a widely circulated e-mail chain letter claims. "This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history."

And just in case you didn't get the message, it ends, "NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN!"

Mars did make an incredibly close pass on August 27 ... 2003. On that date Mars came within 35 million miles of Earth—the nearest the two planets have been in perhaps 60,000 years

Titled "Mars Spectacular," the current e-mail hoax exemplifies the power of the Internet and some of the problems plaguing it.

Internet Chain Letters Never Die

The Mars e-mail alert racing across the Internet urges readers to "pass this on to your friends." Inevitably it makes its way to news outlets around the world (including National Geographic News) with enthusiastic messages—"you have to cover this!"—attached.

It's hard to know why someone would promulgate such an easily checkable story—one quick trip to a search engine brings the "Mars Spectacular" down to Earth.

Is the perpetrator gleefully waiting to see how many news organizations or Web blogs will fall for it and run the story—particularly during these notoriously slow-news dog days of summer?

If so, plotters take note: Debunkers are also sending e-mails, including an alert from Sky & Telescope magazine titled "Don't Get Snookered by Mars Malarkey."

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office for Cyber Security says chain e-mails are initiated for a number of reasons. It could be as simple as curiosity: How far will the letter will go? Others are sent in an attempt to bilk money from people to damage reputations.

Eternal E-Mails

Alternatively, it could just be that chain e-mails never die.

"E-mail technology has made chain letters so easy and so powerful that they just explode out of control, and this is an example," said Alan M. MacRobert, a senior editor for Sky & Telescope.

A well-intentioned person forwarding a tearjerking chain letter—"Little Girl Dying of Cancer"—to everyone in his or her address book can quickly lead to several million messages if their friends respond similarly.

And if a message is undated, there's simply no such thing as a natural death, MacRobert said.

"Somebody sends it to their mother, who sends it to their great-aunt, who sends it to all of the great-aunts' bridge-club friends, and so on. And each of these takes a day or so," he said. "It could go forever, either till it gets extinguished by the reporting we're doing—fat chance—or people's interest dies."

Perhaps even more worrysome, the U.S. government's Hoaxbusters Web site cites rumors that spammers are harvesting e-mail addresses from chain letters and may even be starting them for that purpose. A popular chain letter could contain hundreds of e-mail addresses, the lifeblood of spammers.

"Spammers do farm addresses from chain letter headers," said Thomas Luparello, the vice president of systems operations for Ketchum, Idaho-based Wood River Technologies, an Internet service provider.

"I don't have a specific example of a spammer actually generating the chain letter, but they certainly have an incentive, since it would provide them with an easy way to acquire more email addresses," Luparello said.

MacRobert sees an upside to the Mars chain letter, calling it an immunization.

"If you get burned by sending this to your friends and family, and then they see on TV that it's all malarkey and only idiots pass chain letters, you're going to feel like a fool and be less likely to pass on the next one," he said.

Reality Check

Still, if you're an avid or even marginally interested sky-watcher, don't despair.

Mars will get especially near and bright at the end of October and early November, coming within 43 million miles (69 million kilometers) of the Earth.

"This will be the closest it will come until 2018," Sky & Telescope's MacRobert said. The average distance between the two planets is 48 million miles (77 million kilometers).

As for another claim in the "Mars Spectacular" chain letter—that the red planet will look as big as a full moon—it's true ... if you use a telescope that can magnify Mars to the power of 100.

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