Meteors, Clouds, Mars, and Snopes

First off, I've got to say that living in NW Ohio kind of sucks. I mean, whenever there's something cool going on in the sky, you can almost bet that we're clouded over.

The Perseid Meteor Shower is currently underway (it peaked overnight, if I'm not mistaken), and we've got overcast skies. Again! (last year, same thing, and if I'm not mistaken, the year before that too).


Secondly, I hope that by now everyone has done their homework to determine if the email being sent around it true or not. What email? This one:

The Red Planet Mars is about to be spectacular! On August 27, Earth will catch up with Mars. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287....Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye...etc... NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN.... Blah, Blah....

http://www.snopes.com/science/mars.asp

It's an idea virus. Throw enough true-sounding facts into an email, send it off to your favorite email-forwarding-friend-or-relative, and suddenly the whole world starts to believe it as fact. And without checking for themselves, people forward the same email to others who they thing would be interested....

Thankfully, there is snopes.com--I use them for fact checking almost everything that comes to me via email.

They even maintain a list of the top 25 Urban Legend emails that are currently circulating: http://www.snopes.com/info/top25uls.asp