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Here are the facts behind the fabulous Facebook hoax of a giant Mars

Joseph ayoup post
Facebook screenshot

I almost fell for a Facebook hoax a few weeks ago when I saw this post:

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In the post were two photos showing Mars to be similar in size to the moon — though anyone with an eye for detail can tell the photo is a fake: The red object in the photo is just a crimson version of the moon superimposed next to the natural moon, and not some giant version of Mars.

Along with the photos is a caption stating that on August 27, 2015, at exactly 12:30 a.m., the moon and Mars will be side by side illuminating the night sky.

Even though nothing could be further from the truth, the man responsible for the post, Joseph Ayoub, says he has received a lot of feedback since the post went up a week ago. It has racked up more than half a million shares, almost 19,000 comments and almost 140,000 likes.

But as cool as the image looked, and as much as I would love to stand outside and watch a moon-size planet appear above my head, I wasn't fooled.

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That's because, like most things that are just too good to be true, this is a classic social-media hoax. So classic, in fact, that it has been around in one form or another since 2003.

When the hoax began 12 years ago, it was sparked by a real, rare event: Mars came closer to Earth than ever had in recorded history, a distance of just 35 million miles. This is what it looked like:

skitched august 2003
John Nemy & Carol Legate of Whistler, B.C. via NASA

Some took the news of the red planet's close approach way too far and said the red planet would appear as large as the moon, but that's not the case at all, NASA said in a 2005 post, noting:

"If Mars did come close enough to rival the moon, its gravity would alter Earth's orbit and raise terrible tides."

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No such tides swept the planet in 2003, and none will do so at the end of the month as the Facebook post implies. Even more insulting perhaps is the fact that Mars will not even be particularly near the Earth at the end of this month — the time and date provided in the post are a mere perpetuation from the 2003 time and date and do not coincide with any significant celestial event.

We will not see another close approach of Mars like the one in 2003 again until the year 2287.

Luckily, it seems that the popularity of this post is sparking some scientific discussions on Facebook: People have posted to the picture itself or in direct messages to Ayoub, trying to explain why he's wrong, he told Business Insider.

The bottom line is that the supersize Mars is not a real thing, nor has it ever been.

NASA Space Facebook
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