March 29, 2022 – Theme Week Day 2

We’re continuing our theme week on 5 of the Biggest Pranks in History! Today’s prank is another from the humorous folks over at the BBC, but this time it was a broadcast on BBC Radio 2. On April Fools Day 1976, astronomer Patrick Moore stated to radio listeners that at exactly 9:47 that morning, Jupiter and Pluto would align and have an effect observable everywhere on earth. He called the phenomenon the “Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect”, and said that as Pluto passed behind Jupiter, gravity on Earth would be noticeably decreased. If listeners jumped in the air at that precise moment, Moore said, they’d be able to feel a floating sensation.
It’s worth noting that Patrick Moore was a leading figure of British astronomers and had a long career in broadcasting. He hosted the BBC television show The Sky at Night from 1957 until his death, and he wrote more than 70 books on astronomy. So, he was a very highly respected and well known astronomer in the UK at the time.
At 9:47 on April 1, 1976, Moore announced “Jump now!” and minutes later, the BBC switchboards lit up with hundreds of calls from people saying they had felt the decrease in gravity. One woman even said she and her friends had floated up from their chairs and gently orbited around the room!
Moore’s prank had a point. He was trying to show that the location of Jupiter, Pluto, and all the other planets really have no impact to those of us on Earth. This wasn’t an accepted fact at the time. In the 70s, astronomers correctly predicted that all the planets in the solar system would briefly align in 1982 – an event that only happens every 179 years. A book called The Jupiter Effect was written by 2 scientists about the event, and they predicted absolute carnage here on Earth, including massive earthquakes across the globe and the complete destruction of Los Angeles. So with his stunt, Moore was trying to refute the claims made in the book, showing how ridiculous they were.
The story was revealed as an April Fools Day hoax relatively quickly. The Guardian  later reported that Moore was the ideal person to pull off the prank because of his weighty delivery and enthusiasm that added to his credibility. Learn more here.