Five minutes of zero-gravity on January 4th?

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
“On January 4th, make sure you’re tied down to something heavy.”
That’s probably how we would have started this story–if it were true.
One of the tall tales making the social media rounds the past few weeks explains that, on January 4, gravity will be decreased for five minutes as Pluto passes directly behind Jupiter in relation to Earth at exactly 9:47am Pacific Time.
The report goes on to cite UK astronomer Patrick Moore as the source of this information, which he calls the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect. The unusual planetary alignment means that the combined gravitational forces of the two planets will strengthen tidal pool, thus counteracting Earth’s own gravity and making people feel as if they are in a microgravity environment.
Thanks to this supposed Zero Gravity Day, if people jumped into the air at the precise moment that the alignment occurred, they would experience an unusual floating sensation. While it said that people would not be able to float around like astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), they would remain airborne for about three seconds instead of the usual 0.2 second.
Fortunately, the folks at Snopes.com have our back and have uncovered the truth about these reports. So did Moore make these claims? Yes, actually, he did – as part of a classic April Fools’ Day joke from 1976. Moore, who passed away in 2012, made the claim during a radio show and shortly thereafter was greeted by callers who said they had tried it and that it actually worked!
While the original Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect hoax took place on April 1, the gag has resurfaced on several occasions, including January 4, 2014 (the date of the Earth’s closest approach to the sun that year). Once that date came and went with no actual weightlessness, the joke was repackaged again for April 4, 2014, and most recently for January 4, 2015.
As Snopes said, “Different day; same joke.”
Also worth noting is that Daily Buzz Live’s contact page includes a disclaimer stating that while most of its stories are “inspired by real news events,” that “a few stories are works of complete fiction” which are “for entertainment purposes only. The articles and stories may or may not use real names, always a semi real and/or mostly, or substantially, fictitious ways.”
“Therefore, just a few articles contained on this website Daily Buzz Live are works of fiction. Any truth or actual facts contained in those stories or posts are purely incidental or coincidental and not intended to be, or be construed as, facts,” the disclaimer continues. “Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental or is intended purely as a spoof of such person and is not intended to communicate any true or factual information about that person.”
The Zero Gravity day fable comes on the heels of another space-related hoax, in which NASA allegedly claimed that the Earth would experience six days of darkness from December 16 to December 22. Obviously, given the current date, that proved to be untrue, and according to Snopes, the story can trace its origins back to 2012, when a small percentage of people were convinced that the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21 would spell the end of the world.
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