Two Suns hoax!

Why are there so many gullible people around? I do believe that this is the product of the education system that people do not know how to distinguish between what's true and what's false.

This dreaded email message finally landed in my inbox. It's all about a star with the name of Aderoid (sounds more like Haemoroid to me) that's started putting in an appearance in our sky on 10 June. The email message claims that this star "will look as large as the sun from naked eye. This will culminate on 21 June when the star comes within 34.65M miles of the earth." And then it calls on people to watch the sky on that day at 12:30pm because it will look like the earth has two suns!!

What absolute balderdash. What utter nonsense! If there's anyone who's going to believe this absurdity, then Bob's my uncle!

This is just a hoax along the same line as the tiresome email messages circulating the globe around August every year that Mars will be just as bright at the moon.

It's all nonsense and I'll tell you why. First, there is no such star in the Universe. This can be easily confirmed from the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database (NStED). Second, considering the vastness of space, an astronomical object as large as a star would not suddenly appear in the sky at any particular hour of a given day and then, poof, be gone as quickly as it had appeared. It would creep up on us over an extended period of time.

Third, we should consider the relative distances between the planets in our own Solar system. Our Earth is about 93 million miles from our Sun; Mercury, the closest planet to our Sun is 36 million miles from the Sun's surface. If a star comparable to our Sun were to travel within "34.65 million miles" of the Earth, our planet would quickly become like Mercury: an arid, lifeless, deep-fried hunk of rock. I can assure you that we wouldn't be around to marvel at the sight.

So don't believe this silly hoax. It will just makes an ass out of you.