Less gravity for 5 minutes???

[yeyo 1]

http://news-hound.net/january-4th-2014-planetary-alignment-decreases-gravity-float-for-5-minutes/

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If you think you will be able to float around your house then you will be mistaken. BUT if you jump in the air at 9:47AM local time on January 4th 2014, it should take you about 3 seconds to land back on your feet instead of the usual 0.2 seconds.

So how long from 13,500?

Is it even real?

HISPA #93
DS #419.5

[MajorDad 0]

a little early for April Fools...

Major Dad
CSPA D-579

[Trev_S 0]

A mosquito on your skin has a greater gravitational pull on you than Jupiter does... You could have a hundred Jupiter's lined up on the other side of the sun and it would not have this effect. The sun would simply wobble a little more than usual (with the 100 jupiter scenario, the pluto behind jupiter scenario would not be measurable).

Oh well, plenty of Americans will fall for it ;)

[EnricoPalazzo 1]

I'll give it a try!
But is it 9.47 UTC or EST?
I don't want to drift from my slot just because that damn planet is sideways!
Then again...
Trackdive anyone?

[Joellercoaster 6]

Also, Patrick Moore is dead.

Perhaps he revealed this by ouija board.

--
"I'll tell you how all skydivers are judged, . They are judged by the laws of physics." - kkeenan

"You jump out, pull the string and either live or die. What's there to be good at?

[darkwing 4]

I'm a physicist. This is nonsense. I'll send the calculations to anyone who wants them.

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[labrys 0]

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BUT if you jump in the air at 9:47AM local time on January 4th 2014, it should take you about 3 seconds to land back on your feet

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Is it even real?

Wasn't the part about having to 'jump into the air' to experience this enough of a hint?

Owned by Remi #?

[Andy9o8 0]

darkwing

I'm a physicist. This is nonsense. I'll send the calculations to anyone who wants them.

It's OK. We believe you.

[jakee 1,254]

yeyo

Is it even real?

Go stand in a corner and think about what you've done wrong.

Joellercoaster

Also, Patrick Moore is dead.

Also also, Pluto isn't a planet.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Remster 24]

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Also also, Pluto isn't a planet.

Don't rub it in.... http://i.imgur.com/AgRXKFl.jpg

Remster

[labrys 0]

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It's OK. We believe you.

I'm so used to Facebook that I spaz when there's no way to Like

Owned by Remi #?

[erdnarob 1]

I am into Physics. I will try to help.

Once in a while, there are alarmists who claimed that weird things are going to happen like planet aligment or, last year, the end of our civilisation in December 2012 according Maya's calender or whatever....

First, since all planets have their own period of revolution around the Sun, a perfect aligment is not going to happen soon. Combine the revolution period durations of the 8 planets and one can see that an alignment of them all has very little chance to be seen in the next thousands years.

Second, gravitation decreases proportionally to the square of the distance which means that planets are so far away that their gravitational pull on the Earth is minute.
The Sun gravitation (Earth and Sun system) is strong due to the enormous mass of the Sun. That makes the Earth (and planets) orbiting around the Sun. The Sun itself is responsible for more than 99% of the entire mass of the solar system which means that planets influence is about nothing. However, nearby planets influence each other by slightly modifying their trajectory.
The only enligment which has a measurable effect on the Earth is when the Sun and the Moon are in line with the Earth (twice a month at the new Moon and the full Moon), that makes tides being bigger (high sea).

Learn from others mistakes, you will never live long enough to make them all.

[evan85 0]

This one's been around a while... like over 35 years

From Wikipedia:
"The Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect, a hoax phenomenon stated to cause a noticeable short-term reduction in gravity on Earth, was an invention for April Fools' Day by the English astronomer Patrick Moore broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on 1 April 1976."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jovian%E2%80%93Plutonian_gravitational_effect

[shropshire 0]

[doh]

Actually the best you can hope for is to jump when they next add a Leap [pun intended] Second to the UTC ...

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[jakee 1,254]

evan85

This one's been around a while... like over 35 years

From Wikipedia:
"The Jovian–Plutonian gravitational effect, a hoax phenomenon stated to cause a noticeable short-term reduction in gravity on Earth, was an invention for April Fools' Day by the English astronomer Patrick Moore broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on 1 April 1976."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jovian%E2%80%93Plutonian_gravitational_effect

And of course the joke is that Pluto is both utterly minute and phenomenally far away.

If it could have a noticeable effect then every planet or asteroid would be throwing us all over the place each time it passed.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[format 0]

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...would be throwing us all over the place

Some beverages happen to disturb gravitational force on human body

What goes around, comes later.

[erdnarob 1]

Sometime Pluto is nearer from us than Neptune due to its orbit partially inside the Neptune one. OTOH Pluto has been declassified as a planet. It is now a "minor" planet like Sedna.

Learn from others mistakes, you will never live long enough to make them all.