Ah, the power of trending or is it an extreme example of gullibility?

Satirical news site, Daily Buzz Live first posted "news" about a bizarre planetary alignment it said will cause zero gravity on Earth for a short time on January 4. The report spread like wildfire in social media sites and generated over two million Facebook shares and 11,000 retweets, making this fabrication an instant trending phenomenon.

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The zero G event didn't happen, of course, but a lot of folks who believed the hoax woke-up on January 4 a lot wiser.

The Daily Buzz Live hoax published December 15 claimed those that woke-up early January 4 will experience a moment of weightlessness. The article even included a fake screen cap of a tweet from NASA with hashtag, #beready.

The story said if one were to jump at precisely 9:47 A.M. PST on January 4, there will be a three second delay before one lands on the ground compared to the usual 0.2 seconds. It urged people to mark their calendars for "Zero Gravity Day".

The story was apparently also backed-up by experts from NASA and by famous astronomer Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore. These "expert" sources claimed Pluto will be directly aligned with Jupiter and Earth on January 4.

This alignment was to have caused the planets' combined gravitational forces to temporarily disable and overwhelm Earth's own gravity. When this occurred, people on Earth will experience a momentary weightlessness if they jump.

The reality, however, is the distance between Jupiter and Pluto is so vast both planets won't affect Earth's gravity even if Jupiter is that massive. The only and the closest objects Jupiter's gravitational pull can reel in are asteroids and comets from the Kuiper Belt, which is where Rosetta's comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko came from.

This isn't the first time an elaborate, scientific hoax was served to the gullible public.

Caldwell-Moore's BBC Radio program called "The Sky at Night" was on air for nearly five decades when Moore announced a similar "Jovian-Plutonian" gravitational event would occur on April 1, 1976.

Many callers even announced at the show they jumped at the exact time during that day and claimed to have felt gravity slipping away.

TagsWhy Zero Gravity Day on January 4 Didn't Happen, zero gravity day, zero g day hoax, weightless january 4 planetary alignment zero gravity day