Why We Didn't Float Away: A Look at the Planetary Alignment Hoax

You probably heard about it. After all, satirical content site Daily Buzz Live earned itself a whopping two million Facebook shares and 11,000 tweets with this latest trending fake news. An article claimed that on the first Sunday of the new year, a bizarre planetary alignment phenomenon would make us weightless for a short time. Here's what inspired it, and why such a thing is utterly impossible.

The article, which debuted Dec. 15, claimed that early risers on Jan. 4 would have a brief window of time to experience weightlessness. It even included a fake screen cap of a "tweet" from NASA, complete with the foreboding-but-trendy hashtag "#beready."

"Don't get too excited. If you think you'll be able to float around your house, you're wrong. But, if you jump in the air at 9:47 AM PST, on January 4, 2015, it should take you about 3 seconds to land back on your feet instead of the usual 0.2 seconds," the article read. "So, mark this date on your calendar and share it with your friends! Zero gravity day is just around the corner!"

The article claimed that according to NASA and famous astronomer Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore, Pluto was due to pass directly behind Jupiter, in relation to Earth on Jan. 4. The heavenly bodies' combined gravity would then temporarily counter Earth's gravitational pull, and objects actively fighting against it (i.e. jumping) could experience brief freedom.

That may sound slightly scientific, but be assured that Jupiter and Pluto are very very far apart at the moment. Avid astrologers and astronomers will be able to tell you that Jupiter is sitting in the midst of Leo the Lion (from an Earth-side perspective) at the moment, while Pluto is half-a-zodiac away, shrouded by Capricorn. And while Jupiter may be massive, it's is still too far away to ever influence Earth with its gravity. The closest thing the gas giant affects is asteroids and comets coming from the Kuiper Belt - the origin of the Rosetta spacecraft's quarry 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

As for this information coming from Moore, this could have very much been in homage to another playful trickster. (Scroll to read on...)

An amateur astronomer and host of the BBC radio program "The Sky At Night" for nearly five decades, Moore claimed that a similar event would occur on April 1, 1976.  He called it the "Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect," which had a very official ring to it.

Hundreds of gullible listeners of "The Sky at Night" even called in to tell Moore that they timed their jump perfectly, and indeed felt gravity slip away.

However, according to the Museum of Hoaxes, this "wasn't just a random joke."

"Moore intended it as a spoof of a pseudoscientific astronomical theory that had recently been promoted in a book by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann called The Jupiter Effect," the museum explained.

The book had already been written off as gibberish by the journal Science, but Moore likely felt it his duty as a liaison for the common man to press the point... after having some fun of course.

It may then be no small coincidence that the Daily Buzz Live published this modernized repeat of the hoax only six days after the anniversary of Moore's death.

The monocle toting host and astronomy enthusiast, who died in 2012, is likely rolling with laughter somewhere in the heavens: "Two million people bought it! Oh, Good Lord!"

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