Special Full Moon sale - one day only!

Come in on March 19th for big savings on special jewelry!

Are you in the market for a cool new piece of moonstone jewelry? Read on, have we got a sale for you! 

Special one-day sale for newsletter subscribers!

Extreme Supermoon!

This image, taken by instruments onboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter, highlights the moon's topography, with the highest elevations up above 20,000 feet in red and the lowest areas down below 20,000 feet in blue.  PHOTO CREDIT: Nasa/Goddard.

On March 19, the moon will swing around Earth more closely than it has in the past 18 years, lighting up the night sky from just 221,567 miles (356,577 kilometers) away. On top of that, it will be full. And one astrologer believes it could inflict massive damage on the planet.

Richard Nolle, a noted astrologer who runs the website astropro.com, has famously termed the upcoming full moon at lunar perigee (the closest approach during its orbit) an "extreme supermoon."

When the moon goes super-extreme, Nolle says, chaos will ensue: Huge storms, earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disasters can be expected to wreak havoc on Earth.  But do we really need to start stocking survival shelters in preparation for the supermoon?

The question is not actually so crazy. In fact scientists have studied related scenarios for decades. Even under normal conditions, the moon is close enough to Earth to make its weighty presence felt: It causes the ebb and flow of the ocean tides.

The moon's gravity can even cause small but measureable ebbs and flows in the continents, called "land tides" or "solid Earth tides," too. The tides are greatest during full and new moons, when the sun and moon are aligned either on the same or opposite sides of the Earth.

What about during a lunar perigee? Can we expect more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions on March 19, when the full moon will be so close?

Probably not.  The moon's gravitational pull at lunar perigee, scientists say, is not different enough from its pull at other times to significantly change the height of the tides and thus the likelihood of natural disasters.

Most natural disasters have nothing to do with the moon at all. The Earth has a lot of pent up energy, and it releases it anytime the buildup gets too great.

(This story quoted from Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site of SPACE.com.)

(NOTE: This item is printed as a curiosity for our readers; Alchemy Arts does not imply any connection between this so-called 'supermoon' and the tragic earthquake and tsunami which hit Japan on Friday, March 11.)