“NASA confirms earth will go dark for 6 days in December 2020.”
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No, NASA didn’t confirm Earth will go dark for six days
December has been dark, figuratively and literally. More than 300,000 people have now died from COVID-19 in the United States and in the Northern Hemisphere, Dec. 21 is the shortest day of the year.
But according to a blog called Daily Buzz Live, the Earth will go completely dark this month for six whole days.
"NASA put out an alert this last week confirming that the world will experience darkness between December 16 - December 22, 2020," the blog post said. "The world will remain dark for these 6 days, completely void of sunlight, due to a solar storm which will cause dust and space debris to block 90% of the sun."
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
Featured Fact-check
As we look into this claim on Dec. 16, the sun is shining in some parts of the country. There have been no reports of utter darkness. Besides using our sense of sight, we found nothing online to corroborate the idea that the Earth will soon be shrouded in darkness, much less that NASA said so.
We reached out to NASA but did not immediately receive a reply. However, this claim has been circulating online for nearly a decade. The latest blog post refers to "NASA Director Charles Bolden," but Bolden resigned as the agency’s administrator in 2017.
A NASA spokesperson recently told Check Your Fact that it "has not issued any statement with that false claim."
This blog post gets a similar rating: Pants on Fire.
Our Sources
Daily Buzz Live, Alert: NASA confirms earth will go dark for 6 days in December 2020, visited Dec. 15, 2020
The Guardian, US Covid deaths pass 300,000 as first Americans receive coronavirus vaccine, Dec. 14, 2020
The Old Farmer’s Almanac, Winter solstice 2020: The first day of winter, Dec. 7, 2020
NASA, Former administrator Charles F. Bolden, visited Dec. 16, 2020
Snopes, 6 days of darkness in December, Aug. 12, 2020
Check Your Fact, Fact check: Did NASA announce that earth will ‘go dark for 6 days in December’? Dec. 14, 2020
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More by Ciara O'Rourke
No, NASA didn’t confirm Earth will go dark for six days
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