Gravity

This article, claiming that gravity will essentially be removed for 5 minutes, has been making its rounds on the internet. Masquerading as a NASA tweet, it claims that due to the alignment of Pluto and Jupiter with respect to the Earth, you will be left "weightless", in other words, there will be no net gravity. The article goes on to describe that all the planets will be on the same side of the sun in approximately a quarter of the solar system pie and then explains that jumping in this time window will leave you in the air for 3 seconds instead of the usual 0.2.

Of course, it's all a hoax. But you don't know anything about planets and gravity, how could you have known?

Using the basics of core physics, we can debunk this without even doing math. Gravitational pull is proportional to the mass of the object doing the pulling, and inversely proportional to distance squared, or just distance is good enough here. In other words: bigger = more gravity. Farther = less gravity. This is intuitively understood by many** people, I think. Also, gravitational pull is always towards the object in question. So we should be able to conclude at least the following:

1. Jupiter is bigger than Pluto.
2. Jupiter is larger than Pluto.
   Therefore Jupiter's gravity on us is bigger than Pluto's.
3. The Sun in bigger than all of the above.
4. The Sun is closer than Jupiter.
    Therefore the Sun's gravity is even bigger on us than Jupiter's.
5. We don't notice any difference in our weight at night (away from the Sun, when both the Earth and Sun pull us in the same direction)
    Therefore the Sun's gravity on us is much smaller than Earth's.
6. Jupiter-Sun-Earth are aligned at least once a year (assuming Jupiter's orbit isn't ~1 year), and we still don't notice any difference between day and night.
    Therefore the Sun+Jupiter's gravity is also inconsequential compared to the Earth's.

Put it all together and there's just no way Pluto can make a difference. It's like wondering if a flea might help the slaves move the granite blocks of the pyramids: technically, yes. But not really.

** - or not.


If reasoning through inequalities isn't your thing, you could also wonder "why 5 minutes"? Understanding that Earth-Jupiter-Pluto come into alignment gradually and then gradually fall out should imply that the effect will increase slowly, peak, then decrease. Considering just how far Jupiter and Pluto are, the alignment would, in practical terms, last much more than 5 minutes.

Speaking of alignment, there's no comment about who would feel weightless. If in fact the claim were true, it'd be true for those lucky people on the side of the Earth towards Jupiter and Pluto. The unlucky people on the other side would feel double gravity since instead of canceling, the Earth's would add to the aligned gravity. Ouch!

Speaking of news coverage, imagine if for 5 minutes people in one area would basically float, and in another area would double in weight (and not just people, all structures too). This would be an amazing hazard to the world, and we'd be talking about nothing but prepping for it.

On the weightless side, cars hitting a bump would go flying. Or even simpler: they wouldn't be able to accelerate much. Or stop. That entire side of the world would become a wreck. But forget cars. The lack of gravity would cause pressure to cause rapid decompression of the atmosphere and we'd probably all suffocate or at least be swept into high altitudes by the resultant updrafts. Meanwhile on the other side, buildings would collapse, people would barely be able to crawl out of them as it's happening and exhaling would become quite difficult due to the double-weight of the atmosphere. And then 5 minutes later it would all revert and the weightless side would return to normal, including all the untethered people (and items) crashing back to the surface.

In other words, there are multiple ways to conclude this sounds fishy and more investigation is needed. A search for NASA's tweet would show no results because it never existed. A basic search would lead to debunking articles. Even with incomplete information and understanding, we know enough about the world around us to do a little evaluation.