It’s that time of year again! Everyone is clambering over a so-called “supermoon,” in which a full moon coincides with the moon’s closest approach to Earth. This year, it gets even better as, during this supermoon (or superbloodharvestmoon eclipse) on Saturday, there will also be a lunar eclipse visible. This has all the quacks quacking up a storm about the sorts of destruction that such an alignment will unleash—earthquakes, eruptions, tsunamis! I mean, how could the Earth not respond to such a combination of a full moon, eclipse and perigee!

Should you be concerned about this supermoon over the weekend? Well, I think we can look to former Red Sox general manager Lou Gorman for words of wisdom. When asked about the chaos concerning a particularly surly player, his response was, “The sun will rise, the sun will set, and I’ll have lunch.”

That’s how we should all view the supermoon. There is little to no evidence that changes in the Earth’s distance to the moon has any real effect on the number or size of earthquakes. Humans have the tendency to look for patterns in noisy signals, and this concept of syzygy (started by James Berkland, another in a long line of failed earthquake predictors) has created a litany of quacks trying to say that alignments of everything from the Earth-moon, Earth-sun-moon, Earth-sun-other planets can have a direct effect on earthquakes. So far, none of these self-proclaimed prognosticators have ever published their results—hits and misses—in any reputable, peer-reviewed journal. And without that, they stand with other snake oil vendors that rise and fall across history.

Rest assured, earthquakes and eruptions will happen this weekend. However, even if a large one might occur (and one might), it falls within the nearly random distribution of earthquakes and eruptions that occur on Earth. Geologists are studying the idea that Earth tides—stretching of the rocks on Earth from gravitational tugging of the moon and sun, much like ocean tides—might play some small role in tectonic movement. There has been some recent research published in Nature Communications that suggests daily tidal stresses and small earthquakes might correlate with the generation of larger earthquakes, but this evidence is still in its infancy. Research into the Hellenic arc in Greece found a potential link between earthquakes and a combination of solar and lunar tides. In the Cascades, there is limited evidence that tidal forces might influence low frequency earthquakes that occur (and most people don’t feel). Meanwhile, some studies show there is no evidence in places like Japan of correlation of earthquakes and Earth tides while others suggest that it takes decades of tidal stresses to potentially trigger large earthquakes (like the 2011 Tohoku earthquake).