The world is set to experience a rare phenomenon due to planetary alignment on August 28, 2024, that will cause the people of Earth to experience “weightlessness” for a few brief seconds — that is unless you’re from the New Orleans area.
According to British astronomer Patrick Moore, about an hour before sunrise on August 28, you’ll have a chance to see Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn all in alignment in the sky over Earth. This rare, once in a “planetary parade” spectacle will mean that the combined gravitational force of the planets would exert a stronger tidal pull, temporarily counteracting the Earth’s gravity and making people virtually weightless.
Moore calls this the Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect. Moore told scientists that they could experience the phenomenon by jumping in the air at the precise moment the alignment occurred. If they do so, they will experience a strange floating sensation.
While you won’t float around your house, Moore’s research states that if you jump in the air exactly at 5:20 AM local time, on August 28, 2024, it should take you about 3 seconds to land back on your feet instead of the usual 0.2 seconds.
While the alignment will be visible for a few days after, the weightlessness will occur only at the very beginning of the event.
However, Dr. Quinn Mallory, an astrophysicist at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, cautions locals not to get their hopes up.
“Unfortunately, while everyone else in the world will have a chance to experience a brief floating sensation, no one from New Orleans is going to get that opportunity. The people here have too much Friphorus in their blood,” said Dr. Mallory.
Friphorus, which is a base element that gives fried food its distinct taste, enters the bloodstream after a person’s digestive tract absorbs the food’s nutrients. It has a moderately long half-life, meaning it sticks with you longer than most elements in your body.
“Friphorus has a unique relationship with gravity in that it enhances its effects. It naturally weighs everyone down to some degree, though the effect is often negligible for most people.
“In New Orleans, we ingest so much of it and it stays inside us for so long that it has a stronger influence on our bodies and acts as a sort of molecular ‘anchor’ giving more weight to our cells. No one here is going to get off the ground any more than usual.”
Fried foods such as the popular fried shrimp po’boys, fried catfish, and fried oysters are consumed more frequently and in bigger quantities in New Orleans than in any other location on earth, giving the local population the highest rate of Friphorus in the world.
“Unless you have a magical pair of Air Jordans that actually turn you into Michael Jordan or significantly diminishes the amount of Friphorus in your body, you’re probably going to be very disappointed on August 28th if you’re from New Orleans. The good news is you can drown your sorrows in a greasy bucket of fried Popeyes chicken, and that lasts much longer than this phenomenon.”