A Week With No Sunlight On Earth: Hoax So Viral, NASA Had To Intervene To Quell It
Citizens of Earth had been routinely warned for the past few days that our planet was to be plunged into darkness for six whole days starting today. Thankfully, the sun rose and obliterated those rumors. However NASA, who usually refrains from commenting on hoaxes, had to address the unusually virulent hoax.
Despite NASA’s intervention, rumors have continued to suggest that the Earth would be plunged into six days of darkness, starting today. They began after a feature appeared on the satirical news site Huzlers. The article read:
“NASA has confirmed that the Earth will experience six days of almost complete darkness and [it] will happen from the dates Tuesday the 16 – Monday the 22 in December. The world will remain, during these days, without sunlight due to a solar storm, which will cause dust and space debris to become plentiful and thus, block 90 per cent sunlight.”
NASA has a strict policy of not commenting on any internet hoaxes and let them fade away on their own. However, this hoax refused to die and in fact became so viral, that NASA was compelled take the unusual step of addressing them directly with a Facebook post.
NASA commented that the assertion that the Earth will suffer a six-day blackout is “absolutely false.” The official update from NASA’s Earth Observatory read.
“Since we have been receiving quite a bit of Facebook mail about this, I will answer you all here. Contrary to what you may have read or heard, NASA has in no way issued any statement regarding three (or six) days of darkness in December due to a solar storm. All these rumors are absolutely false.”
If that’s unlike NASA, the agency even managed to infuse some humor while dispelling the hoax. The agency advised readers to enjoy the remaining days of 2014, “all of which will include both a night- and a day-time period.”
The December solstice has often inspired multiple fantastical pseudo-scientific apocalyptic theories in the past as well, reported EarthSky. In fact NASA was obligated to quell the fears back in 2012 when the infamous rogue planet Niburu was spotted in the night sky.
The hoax gained such unusually high credence since in 2012 the Earth was foretold to shift from the current third dimension to zero dimension, then shift to the fourth dimension. As is always the case with these theories, the entire universe was to undergo a fundamental change and Earth dwellers were to witness ‘a brand new world.’
[Image Credit | NASA]
