Alignment of planets arrives with a yawn

LOS ANGELES - An alignment of the sun, moon and the five brightest planets arrived Friday without the disasters predicted by some doomsayers.

The tightest alignment of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the sun and the moon - as seen from Earth - since 1962 took place at 1:08 a.m., said Jane Platt, a spokeswoman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The whole grouping couldn't be seen in the sky, however, because the other planets were on the other side of the sun and its glare washed them out.

''The planets would be a bunch of little fireflies in the midst of a searchlight,'' Platt said.

Planetary alignments occur when three or more celestial objects move into positions so that a straight line could be drawn through their centers. But the definition is a bit loose: Planets that appear close together in the sky are considered aligned.

Various planetary alignments occur about every 20 years and no special astronomical observations were planned, Platt said.

''For astronomers, it's just another day,'' she said.

Not to doomsayers, though, who predicted everything from a stock market crash to monster tidal waves.

Richard Noone's book, ''5/5/2000: Ice, The Ultimate Disaster,'' suggested that gravitational pull from the alignment, coupled with increased solar activity, would trigger a chain of events causing massive earthquakes and tidal waves.

Noone, who lives in the seismically safe and tidal wave-protected mountains near Blue Ridge, Ga., said Friday that he would be ''extremely happy'' if his predictions are wrong.

The moon was moving out of alignment Friday. But the planetary grouping will remain until about May 18. Noone said Earth was in ''the danger zone'' until then.

''I think these disasters will happen,'' he said. ''I feel that the probability is fairly high.''

John Mosley, an astronomer at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, scoffed at the idea.

The gravity of the sun and moon have a far greater effect on the Earth than the pull of planets, he said. Even at their closest possible approach, an alignment of the planets would add only three-thousandths of an inch to a 6-foot tide.

''That's the thickness of a wet sheet of tissue.''

Although disaster scenarios were played up by the tabloid press and on TV, they seemed to lack the punch of previous end-of-the-world scenarios.

''The only disaster this week is that silly computer virus and we can't blame that on the planets,'' Platt said, referring to the ''love bug'' virus that infected scores of computers.

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On the Net: Griffith Observatory: http://www.griffithobs.org

Noone's Web site: http://www.552000thebook.com/