We’re Not Kidding…

One of the best-ever japes for April Fools Day must be the Jovian– Plutonian gravitational effect. In 1976, astronomer Sir Patrick Moore told listeners of BBC Radio 2 that a unique alignment of two planets would result in an upward gravitational pull making people lighter at precisely 9:47am that day. He invited his audience to jump in the air and experience “a strange floating sensation”. Dozens of listeners phoned in to say the experiment had worked, among them a woman who reported that she and her 11 friends were “wafted from their chairs and orbited gently around the room”.