Zero Gravity Day on January 4, 2014: Is It Possible?

British astronomer Patrick Moore predicted that an extraordinary astronomical event will occur on the morning of January 4, 2014, news-hound.net noted.

According to him, all the planets will align, combining gravitational force that will exert a strong pull, which would lead to a counteraction to the Earth's gravity. This means that people will weigh less for the time being, a theory that Moore called the Jovian-Plutionian Gravitational Effect.

Moore says that jumping in the air at the moment that the alignment will occur will cause one to experience a "strange floating sensation."

Although astronomers have long been aware of the alignment of the planets on that date, it is only recently that they took to account the expected effect on the Earth's gravity.

This important cosmic event does not mean that people will be floating around all day, however. Instead, it means that if one jumps in the air the precise time that the alignment occurs (which would be at 9:47 a.m.), it will take the person about 3 seconds before landing back on his feet, not 0.2 seconds as it usually does.

But wait, that isn't the whole story.

According to other sources, zero gravity is but a hoax.

According to Daily Postal, the story is an old joke that was played by Moore on April Fools 1976.

Here's the backstory:

John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann published a book in 1974, called "The Jupiter Effect." In the book, they talked about the occurrence of the alignment of planets, which happens only once every 179 years. The last occurrence was in 1803, therefore the next time would be in 1982, 8 years after the publication of their book. In it, the authors discussed how the forces of gravity will cause massive earthquakes that could be damaging to the Earth, but they focused on Los Angeles than any other city in the U.S.

In 1976, Moore went on radio and as a spoof to a book published by Gribbin and Plagemann, he told listeners that the movement of two planets (Jupiter and Pluto) will make people lighter, and encouraged everyone to jump at precisely 9:47 a.m. People did, and he received phone calls saying that the Zero Gravity theory worked. Of course, there was no such thing.

Successful in his spoof, Moore then wrote letters of disapproval to places that promoted "The Jupiter Effect." The prediction then faded into nothingness when no major earthquake happened in 1982. Even when Gribbin and Plagemann tried to explain in a sequel, the book didn't sell and Gribbin eventually turned his back on "The Jupiter Effect" theory.