Six days of darkness: Nasa intervenes, but no sign of blackout

In spite of Nasa's reassurances, rumours have continued to suggest that the Earth would be plunged into six days of darkness, starting today, due to an increase in "space debris" following a massive solar storm have continued to circulate.

They began after a feature appeared on the satirical news site Huzlers.com. According to the site, Nasa had confirmed that "the Earth will experience six days of almost complete darkness and [it] will happen from the dates Tuesday the 16 – Monday the 22 in December".

The article continued: "The world will remain, during these days, without sunlight due to a solar storm, which will cause dust and space debris to become plentiful and thus, block 90 per cent sunlight".

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Nevertheless, the sun rose at 8.01am in London this morning, as expected.

The rumours became so virulent on social media that Nasa's Earth Observatory took the unusual step of addressing them directly with a Facebook post.

The US space agency deviated from its usual policy of refusing to comment on hoaxes to clarify that the assertion that the Earth will suffer a six-day blackout is "absolutely false".

Nasa's update read: "Since we have been receiving quite a bit of Facebook mail about this, I will answer you all here. Contrary to what you may have read or heard, Nasa has in no way issued any statement regarding three (or six) days of darkness in December due to a solar storm. All these rumours are absolutely false."

MH370 conspiracy theories: the best - and strangest Nasa added that it had decided to post the clarification due to the quantity of enquiries it had received. The agency advised readers to enjoy the remaining days of 2014, "all of which will include both a night- and a day-time period".

EarthSky.com notes that this is not the first time the December solstice has inspired a pseudo-scientific apocalyptic fantasy. Nasa was also forced to take action in 2012 as predictions of the Mayan apocalypse on the winter solstice and sightings of the infamous rogue planet Niburu caused concern in some quarters.

Snopes.com, a site dedicated to debunking popular myths, notes that the darkness rumour harked back to speculation from 2012 that "the Earth will shift from the current third dimension to zero dimension, then shift to the fourth dimension. During this transition, the entire Universe will face a big change, and we will see an entire brand new world".