I can’t remember the last time there was this much hype about the happenings in a single month, and given I work in the media industry, that’s saying something. It’s been a long, long time since folks have been buzzing about so many events all happening at close to the same time, and I don’t think it’s just because of the Great American Eclipse taking place on April 8. There have been a whole lot of people speculating that something huge is about to go down this month. It’s an electricity in the air and we’re all just holding our breath waiting for something to happen, especially with all of the chaos erupting all over the world and our culture seemingly going completely insane.
So what, exactly, is supposed to happen during April?
Well, first up we have the “Devil Comet” which is going to become visible to the naked eye in the northern hemisphere:
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks – also known as the “devil comet” and the “Mother of Dragons” comet – is currently visible in the night skies of the northern hemisphere, providing a unique spectacle for both amateur stargazers and professional astronomers.
This Halley-type comet, which orbits the Sun every 71 years and has a nucleus about 30 kilometers in diameter, is known for its impressive outbursts of gas and dust during its voyages through the inner solar system.
The last time this comet was able to be seen with the naked eye was 71 years ago and it will still be visible for everyone in the northern hemisphere for several weeks to come.
The second big event happens on April 4th when we will witness an alignment of 4 planets just 4 days ahead of the Great American Eclipse:
The next planetary alignment takes place on April 4, 2024. It will feature four planets – Venus, Neptune, Saturn, and Mars. The planets will align in the morning sky. Venus, Saturn, and Mars will be visible to the naked eye, but you’ll need a telescope or high-powered binoculars to see Neptune.
Third on the list comes on April 8, when the seven other planets that are part of our solar system, along with both the sun and the moon, will form a straight line when you look up at the sky toward the east from the city of Jerusalem in Israel. This event only happens once every 32 million years. Incredible.
Something else is happening on April 8 and this one is a bit scary. CERN will be turning on the Large Hadron Collider again:
The world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator is set smash protons together on April 8 to search for invisible particles secretly powering our universe.
Theories have suggested there are 17 different particle groups and the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, confirmed the existence of one using its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012.
Now, the team has restarted the LHC with hopes of unraveling more mysteries of the universe – specifically dark matter.
It’s strange that CERN picked that particular date given the extraordinary cosmic phenomena that is taking place on that same day. The plan, we’re told, is to shoot particles “down a 17-mile-long tunnel at nearly the speed of light to recreate conditions a second after the Big Bang”.
Sounds dangerous and like something we shouldn’t be messing around with, but hey, I’m no physicist so what do I know?
Next up is the most anticipated event of the month, the Great American Eclipse of 2024, which is being hailed by USA Today as “the astronomical event of the decade:”
We’re less than two weeks away from the astronomical event of the decade: A total eclipse of the sun, which will grace the nation’s skies from Texas to Maine on the afternoon of Monday, April 8.
Millions of people are expected to travel to see the spectacle, which will also attract scientists from across the country to study its unique effects on the Earth and its atmosphere.
While the eclipse is making its way over America on April 8th, NASA is planning to fire off three rockets “into the moon’s shadow:”
NASA has announced it will fire three scientific sounding rockets into the moon’s shadow on Monday, April 8 during a partial solar eclipse across North America.
In what will be a total solar eclipse for a 115 miles-wide path through parts of Mexico, 15 U.S. states and Canada and a partial solar eclipse for the entire Americas, the event will see a sudden drop in sunlight.
Spookily, NASA chose to name the mission after a serpent deity that was popular back in ancient Egypt:
The space agency’s project, Atmospheric Perturbations Around The Eclipse Path, will investigate how that drop in sunlight and temperature affects Earth’s upper atmosphere. APEP is named after the serpent deity from ancient Egyptian mythology, nemesis of the sun deity Ra, according to NASA.
Another event happening on April 8th — seems like a date of extreme significance, right? — is the completion of the “X” over the New Madrid fault zone by the Great American Eclipse of 2024 that was started with the Great American Eclipse in 2017.
Hope you’re ready for April’s cicadapocalypse that’s now on the way. Billions of 13-year cicadas and billions of 17-year cicadas will be emerging together for the first time since Thomas Jefferson was in the White House:
“Billions, even trillions, of cicadas are going to emerge at the same time across 17 states,” Chris Simon, a professor in UConn’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, told Live Science.
Brood XIII and XIX have been living underground for 17 and 13 years respectively.
They will soon emerge at the same time for the first time in 221 years.
It’s believed the two groups of cicadas will overlap in the state of Illinois:
What’s more, this year’s cicada groups, known as Brood XIII and Brood XIX, happened to make their homes adjacent to one another, with a narrow overlap in central Illinois.
April is going to be something special. Whether or not it’s special in a good way or a bad way, we’ll just have to wait and see.
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