LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Don't put away that Y2K survival kit just yet.
Next month, the sun and six of the planets, including Earth, will line up like cosmic billiard balls -- an alignment that has doomsayers predicting the end of the world. Again.Some astrologers believe the alignment could shift the Earth's poles, trigger earthquakes and ruin the stock market.
Tonight, in a celestial preview, three planets and the crescent moon will appear close together in the sky as they march toward the grand alignment.
Astronomers say there is no need to worry. They, too, are bracing for the May 5-16 alignment. They will be busy debunking end-of-the-world predictions, just as they did in 1982 and 1962. Such alignments occur about once every 20 years.
"If people are determined to be anxious about something, I think it would be a lot better if they were anxious about their driving on the freeways," said E.C. Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
Tonight, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will appear bunched up in the sky of the western United States. Remember, there's no risk of a collision: The moon is 239,000 miles away from Earth; Mars 216 million miles away; Jupiter 543 million miles away, and Saturn 927 million miles away.
The May alignment will involve the sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. It won't be visible because of the sun's glare.
"It's very pretty," said Dennis Mammana, astronomer at San Diego's Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. "I think that's the limit to the significance of this thing."
Every planetary alignment brings a new round of doomsday predictions.
A book called "The Jupiter Effect" received wide attention with its false prediction that California would be rocked by a major earthquake indirectly caused by the 1982 alignment.
Another book, ominously titled "5/5/2000: Ice, The Ultimate Disaster," predicts the alignment and increased solar activity will unleash a complex chain of events causing the Earth's crust to slide and poles to shift.
"Quite frankly, it would be a geological Armageddon," author Richard Noone said. "You'd have volcanism going on globally. Earthquakes beyond the scale anything Richter ever dreamed of. Tsunamis hundreds of feet high, sweeping hundreds of miles inland."
The 390-page book uses "pole shifting" to explain everything from the disappearance of the civilization that built the pyramids to why woolly mammoths appear to have been flash-frozen in Siberia. Noone has moved his family to safety in Georgia.
Astronomers say there's nothing to worry about because the extra pull and stretching from the aligned planets is a small fraction of the moon's tidal and gravitational strength.
Astrologers also say the planetary alignment signals a change from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius.
On the Net: Griffith Observatory: www.griffithobs.org
Reuben H. Fleet Science Center: www.rhfleet.org
Richard Noone's home page: www.rnoones.com