Alignments

[talon]

If you want to get up before sunrise (or haven't gone to bed yet), Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Mars will be visible without magnifying devices. Uranus and Neptune will be visible with binoculars or a small telescope.

This is the alignment that is presumably predicted for the End Of The World, either May 21, 2012 or December 21, 2012.

According to astronomers, this alignment of planets will not be made at any point next year.

Does this mean the end of the world is upon us right this minute?

Hardly.

So, what does this mean?

Only that these planets appear to be aligned when viewed from Earth. They aren't really aligned at all, not like 1979, when Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune actually were aligned. NASA took stupendous advantage of that knowledge and built and sent out Voyagers 1 and 2, which provided us with a trove of data that has yet to be duplicated.

Were these planets actually aligned, it would have presented us with another such grand opportunity, but, alas, they aren't.

It's all illusion, just as the end of the world prediction predicated upon this alignment is just illusion.