Have all the planets in our solar system ever aligned?
Question:
Answer:
There was a relatively rare planetary alignemnt in the 1980's where all the planets were within relatively narrow a 17 (?) degree arc.
NASA took advantage of this alignment to launch the pioneer and voyager space craft. it allowed each probe to use the gravity of Jupiter to "toss" each probe to the next planet in the line and therefore get the best possible speed to cover the vast distances as quickly as possible.
Several planets may line up closely (say within a 10 degree arc) several times over a period of hundreds of years.
Alignments of two or three are relatively common.
but if they all lined up perfectly (impossible), it would have zero bearing on Earth.
No gravity shocks, no riots or astrological phenomenon.
the answer is yes it happens on a regular basis. it happened just a few years ago and the doom-sayers were afraid that combined gravitaional pull of the sun its way and the planets the other way would destroy earth. the pull from the planets is not even close to the pull of the sun.
I don't know about Pluto, but the moon, sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were in alignment on Friday, 5 May 2000 at 08:08 UT.
It won't happen again until the year 2438.
But there's nothing to worry about.
Planetary alignments do not cause global disasters of any kind nor can they.
Here's some interesting info:
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/tech/space/...
pussiologist is right, there have been numerous alignments already, it's just a matter of how many planets are aligned at once. But their total gravitational pull is no where near that of the sun. Though gravity is a powerful force when huge masses are invovled it's actually the weakest of all natural forces. Add to that the fact that it decays exponentially and you'll find out that the mass of the sun is phenominal in relation to the rest of the Solar System, and it has to be this way in order to keep the planets as we know them in orbit. The only real noticable effect that occurs on earth when certain heavenly bodies line up (mostly jus tthe sun and moon) is the height of the tide. Since water moves freely it is much more sensitive to extrenal gravity from the moon and such.
Yes they have aligned, but it is a common misconception that if you looked at them straight on, they would all be aligned in all 3 dimensions.
Each planet has a different tilt to its orbit, so on paper they would look aligned, but from a 3-D view they would still be "lower" or "higher" than each other.
There is a special term for it but I can't remember it. It happens when all of the planets are in a straight line.
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