A Massive Asteroid Will Hit Earth in September 2015-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Reports have gone viral that the government is preparing for a large asteroid to hit Earth in September 2015.
The Truth:
The claim that a massive asteroid will hit the earth in September 2015 is a hoax.
The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) operates the Near-Earth Object Program to identify asteroids that come within millions of miles of earth. The JPL has taken to Twitter to dismiss claims that a massive asteroid will strike earth in September 2015:
“ The September asteroid scare is just another hoax.”
“The claims an asteroid scheduled to hit earth in September are a hoax.”
These claims appear to have started with the Rev. Efrain Rodriguez, a Pentecostal Evangelical minister from Puerto Rico. Rodriguez claimed that god told him an asteroid would strike off the coast of Puerto Rico and cause 40 million deaths. Aside from Rodriguez’s personal account, there’s no proof that an asteroid is on course to strike earth in September 2015.
These claims were echoed by a number of blog sites and went viral with a YouTube video that had more than 430,000 views. But the video appears to be nothing more than an advertisement for a book about the rapture and doesn’t include any details about the so-called asteroid bound for Earth.
Because there is no scientific proof that an asteroid will hit the Earth in September 2015, and because NASA has directly denied those claims, we’re classifying this one as fiction.