A story regarding a planetary alignment on Jan. 4, 2015, which will make people float, received a lot of popularity on social media websites recently. However, the story is a hoax. Sorry, people will not experience zero gravity on Jan. 4, 2015 -- not even for a second.
Strange events occur in space. An upcoming planetary alignment of the Earth, Jupiter and Pluto is happening on Jan. 4 and Daily Buzz Live reported that this alignment will make people float for a brief time.
On Dec. 15, Daily Buzz Live reported that Patrick Moore, a British astronomer, has revealed that precisely at 9:47 PST AM on Jan. 4, Pluto will pass directly behind Jupiter, in relation to Earth. The rare alignment of the planets will mean that the combined gravitation force of Jupiter and Pluto will create a strong pull on Earth, which will give the feeling of weightlessness to people on the planet. The website revealed that Moore calls the planetary alignment as "the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect."
The website also indicated that scientists were aware of the rare occurrence and now it was happening in early January. The hoax also said that people will be able to experience the effect of the planetary alignment and feel a floating sensation if they jumped exactly when the planets align.
"Now they are guaranteeing the occurrence as the gravitational effect of the other planets on the Earth's crust is maximum even at their closest approach," the report read.
The story spread in social websites like wildfire and it was shared on Facebook for over 1.4 million times. To make it look real, the story is shared on Facebook along with an altered NASA tweet that confirms the news.
However, Al.com suggests that NASA has confirmed that it was not sent by NASA and is in fact a hoax. Experts suggest that the concept of Zero G Day on Earth is not possible and that Jupiter, Pluto and Earth are also not aligning on Jan. 4. Moreover, this is not the first time that such a hoax has emerged. The same hoax appeared on other websites with similar wordings in 2013 and it predicted Zero G Day for Jan. 4, 2014.
Likewise, Snopes.com tagged the Zero G story as false and lists it among the classic April Fool's Day pranks.
