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

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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