Check the facts first

You really need to do a better job of factchecking when printing articles concerning issues of science and nature. Your Aug. 24 "Watch the skies" note is based on a well-known hoax that has been circulating the Internet for a few years now.

Anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of the solar system can notice that the planet Mars, which is slightly less than twice the diameter of Earth's moon, could not possibly ever appear as large as the full moon to a naked eye observer on Earth, given the fact that Mars at its closest is 34,650,000 miles away. Earth's moon is only around 240,000 miles away from the Earth.

One with an honest understanding of science can't help but notice other common misunderstandings printed recently by the Moorpark Acorn and other newspapers, such as the false notion that atheistic evolution is a proven fact, when the reality is that the most essential element of evolution, that inanimate matter somehow became complex living single-cell creatures by chance, has not yet been proven through laboratory testing.

By oversimplifying the issues, or worse, by printing letters or articles written by unreliable sources, the Moorpark Acorn misinforms its readers. P. Skouras Moorpark