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Web Hoax Museum

Planet-Dissolving Dust Cloud Headed Toward Earth
Status: Fake; an example of the Weekly World News Effect.
I've received a couple of emails about this article on Yahoo! News detailing a cosmic "chaos cloud" that will obliterate the earth in 2014:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Scared-stiff astronomers have detected a mysterious mass they've dubbed a "chaos cloud" that dissolves everything in its path, including comets, asteroids, planets and entire stars -- and it's headed directly toward Earth! Discovered April 6 by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the swirling, 10 million-mile- wide cosmic dust cloud has been likened to an "acid nebula" and is hurtling toward us at close to the speed of light -- making its estimated time of arrival 9:15 a.m. EDT on June 1, 2014.

If it's not immediately obvious by its subject matter that the story is a joke, then it's source (the Weekly World News) should be a giveaway. It joins the time-traveling insider trader and the bogus japanese-to-english phrase book as examples of WWN stories mistaken as news, thanks to Yahoo!'s policy of not listing them as satire in their news feed.
Posted By: Alex | Date: Tue Sep 20, 2005 | Comments (14)
Category: Journalism