How is that an alignment though? It’s not like MacGuyver or Lara Croft is going to have to stop some baddies from assembling ancient artefacts in a particular room to unleash arcane terrors into the world just because the planets are sort-of visible together in the sky.
The cool alignment is when they’re in alignment all pointed straight at the earth, so you can’t really see them all spaced out like this one.
It’s a known fiction plot because while the planets do come somewhat close to lining up somewhat often (depending on how loose you want to define somewhat close, and if they also have to be all on one side of the sun), they never actually do. The planets have never actually all lined up perfectly and aren’t likely to do so any time in the next 13 trillion years. A moot point since our sun will be burned out a thousand times over by then and the whole system will have fallen apart.
How is that an alignment though? It’s not like MacGuyver or Lara Croft is going to have to stop some baddies from assembling ancient artefacts in a particular room to unleash arcane terrors into the world just because the planets are sort-of visible together in the sky.
It’s an alignment because if you look up at it they’re in a line. That’s what alignment means, Lara Croft and ancient artifacts are optional.
But only in the same sense that they always are! You just can’t see it because of your mortal limitations.
The cool alignment is when they’re in alignment all pointed straight at the earth, so you can’t really see them all spaced out like this one.
It’s a known fiction plot because while the planets do come somewhat close to lining up somewhat often (depending on how loose you want to define somewhat close, and if they also have to be all on one side of the sun), they never actually do. The planets have never actually all lined up perfectly and aren’t likely to do so any time in the next 13 trillion years. A moot point since our sun will be burned out a thousand times over by then and the whole system will have fallen apart.
I think that actually was a plot in a MacGyver TV movie I vaguely remember from the 90s.