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Mercury has a moon? The Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect will give you a floating feeling? The Space Station has an alien visitor? Virgin Galactic has bought Pluto and has plans for getting it reinstated as a planet? Nope. These are examples of April Fool hoaxes and jokes.

Astronomy April Fools

Hello Mona and all,

I really laughed out loud at your article Mona, really funny! There wasn't a best as they were all good but...

"I don't know what it is or what it wants, but it keeps repeating 'Sloof Lirpa' over and over. Alert the press."

...gave me an idea.

I think I will go around tomorrow saying Sloof Lirpa and see if I get any comeback.

Thanks for the smiles ...

I read somewhere that April Fool hoaxes and jokes are dying out. I'm not sure that's true, but if so, maybe they just get lost in the general weirdness that goes around on the Web. I once tried a magazine quiz that was to see how well you could pick out April Fools from actual stories. I didn't do very well.

Indeed one of the hoaxes in my article has been doing the rounds on the Web for some months, masquerading as a news story. Does anybody know which one?

The famous April Fool joke played in 1976 by the late Patrick Moore resurfaced on the Internet some months ago as a [supposedly] serious story. Phil Plait says that he debunked it earlier in the year and it's already back again! I think it's been back more than once. The version I've seen can't even manage to do its foolery for April 1. The story begins, "It has been revealed by the British astronomer Patrick Moore that, on the morning of April 4th 2014, an extraordinary astronomical event will occur."

I like the "it has been revealed by" business. Good grief! The man's been dead since the end of 2012. When did this revelation come? That's apart from the fact that it was not only a joke, but one that made fun of the "Jupiter effect" which was popular in the media in the late 70s, though not with Moore. He wanted to make the point that the gravity of distant planets doesn't have strange effects on the Earth. Gravitational strength drops off rapidly with distance.

Coming so close to April 1st, I thought that the story of the Norwegian skydiver and the space rock was a slightly belated April Fool. Here is the multiple frame image of the falling meteoroid. It's from footage taken by the skydiver's helmet camera.

But several astronomers viewing the video think it unlikely that the footage was faked, and agree that that what they see of the falling object is consistent with the expected behavior of a falling meteoroid in "dark flight". Dark flight is the term used to describe a falling space rock when there's no light given off.

Hi Mona,

Is there any other info on this event? Why? Where from? Danger?

I would be interested - and also agree that we are so ready NOT to be caught in an April Fool's trick, that cynicism kicks in even though often, as they say, truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Cheers

Lestie, the dive happened in the summer of 2012 and the diver didn't notice anything until he was looking at the helmet cam footage, and wondering about this odd bit. He and his companions and various friends and others had hoped to find the meteorite as proof. I guess so he wouldn't look silly. But it wasn't found.

A meteor specialist said it looked like a meteoroid. An astrophysicist also thought it was convincing. It came close enough that the man would have been killed ("cut in half") if it had actually hit him, instead of passing close to him. Here is a video from the Norwegian broadcasting corporation NRK which includes comments from the geologist.

Injuries from falling space rocks are actually so rare that there's only one known case of a direct hit. That was in 1954 and the woman got a massive bruise. The Russian injuries from last year were indirect because the rock exploded, causing some eye and skin damage, but mostly injuries from flying glass.

(I think I'd have tried to keep the story quiet until well after April 1!)

He was 'insanely lucky,' I liked that comment from the video - the only words to describe it. As they say about life in many circles 'timing is everything!'

Amazing. Thanks Mona.

Bye for now