Angkasa denies claims Earth to go dark for 15 days

The National Space Agency (Angkasa) today denied claims that the Earth will be in darkness for 15 days beginning Nov 15, as circulated on social media and WhatsApp.

Angkasa in a statement said the distance between Jupiter and Venus would not allow any such process as was portrayed to occur, and there was no reason for the Earth to go dark at that time.

"A check on the website of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) found that the phenomenon where Jupiter appears to be very close to Venus in the sky, also known as the 'Conjunction', is normal.

"The Conjunction phenomenon had occurred on June 30, and will take place again on Oct 26. When this phenomenon occurred on June 30, Venus was at a distance of 77 million kilometres (KM) from Earth, while Jupiter was 909 million KM from Earth," it said.

A fake article purported to be from NASA claiming that the Earth would be in darkness from Nov 15 to 30 as Jupiter and Venus would be visibly very close to or almost parallel, only separated by one-degree angle in the sky, had gone viral on social media.

The article also alleged that NASA's chief administrator Charles Bolden had submitted a 1,000-page document to the White House about the event which only takes place once in a million years, also known as the 'November Black Out'.