Will the sun rise for 36 hours on October 17, 2008?

A very strange astronomical rumor is circulating:

Coming October 17, 2008 the sun will rise continuously for 36 hrs (1.5 days). During this time the US countries will be dark for 1.5 days.
It will convert 3 days into 2 big days. It will happen once in 2400 yrs. We're very lucky to see this. Forward it to all your friends.

This rumor appears to have come from India, so it means to say that the sun will rise for 36 hours over India, and the Americas will be dark for the same amount of time. Not that this makes the rumor any less nonsensical. The only way for this rumor to come true would be if the earth stopped rotating. Let's all hope that doesn't happen.

David Emery has already debunked this. He found that, "During a one-month period from mid-August to mid-September 2008, over 15,000 postings containing the phrase 'the sun will rise continuously for 36 hours' appeared on the Internet." He also theorizes that "the perpetrator(s) of the hoax put a great deal of effort into disseminating it."

Email Hoaxes Science

Posted on Mon Sep 29, 2008



Comments

This wasn't because of the sun

But it was a bright as daylight on midnight the 26th august 1883 in much of the world

The reason for this though was Krakatoa exploding.
Posted by Sharruma  on  Mon Sep 29, 2008  at  05:58 PM
The Tunguska in 1908 caused "nightglow" in Europe in which the sky was lit up for several weeks causing many crops to die.
Posted by tim  on  Mon Sep 29, 2008  at  10:36 PM
The rumor makes two claims:
1) The *sun* will not set for 36 hours. (not light from an explosion, not a third celestial body providing the light like the super nova in the 1200's that allowed for night reading in china, etc.)
2) That this has not happened for 2400 yrs.

Neither of the counter examples in the comments match these criteria of the rumor. 1) Both occurred more recently than 2400 years ago and 2) in both cases there was light at night, but not light caused by the sun.

If I had to guess the origin of this given it the hard sell that is mentioned in the article, I'm thinking its probably some new-age group trying to get a rep, much like the planet xers back in 2005.
Posted by myddrin  on  Tue Sep 30, 2008  at  08:47 AM
Considering the U.S.'s reputation in that part of the world right now, I don't think it is a stretch that its some type of: We are good - you (U.S.) are evil; statement.
Posted by Daniel  on  Tue Sep 30, 2008  at  11:10 AM
Since the Sun is always rising somewhere on the surface of the Earth, it has been doing so continuously for at least the last 36 trillion hours.

BTW, stopping the Earth's rotation isn't the only way this could happen. You could also change the axis of rotation so that the Sun would circle just above the horizon (as it does in a polar summer).
Posted by David B.  on  Wed Oct 01, 2008  at  04:49 AM
Something happened similar to this in October, 1582. By the time the sun set on October 15 of that year, the sun had been shining 11 days straight (or the night has lasted for 11 days straight depending on where you were.) That's because the change of calendars skipped from Oct. 4 to Oct. 15 (in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Poland).
Posted by mikey  on  Thu Oct 02, 2008  at  10:53 AM
Here's the real truth:

Due to the centrifical force of water flowing in flushed toilets the Earth will wobble on it's axis thus creating a 36 hour sunrise. Because there are far more (flush) toilets in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere an imbalance is created in equalibrial inertial motion and the force of torque. This is caused primarilly because the toilets in the northern hemisphere flush with a water flow that moves in a clockwise motion and the southern hemisphere opposite that, if there were the same number of flush toilets flushing at the same time in both hemispheres then the opposing forces would balance each other out and there would be no event of any kind or at most a negligable barely measurable blip. Be glad that the 36 hour sunrise is the only consequence of these physics in play as there is the very real possibility of the planet ripping itself apart from the core if the engineers who created dishwashing machines didn't have the foresight to build all dishwasher machine sprayer wheels to spin in a natural and neutral clockwise motion. If the physics of the toilets and the dishwashers were combined in such an unfortunate blunder of engineering then our planet would persish and leave behind only a small wormhole that would spin irradically.
Posted by PaulCincinnati  on  Sun Oct 05, 2008  at  01:18 PM
Paul, you have forgotten to take peanut butter into account.

See "The Effects of Peanut Butter or the Rotation of the Earth" by August, Balliro, Barnaba, Battis, Battis, Battis, Baum, Becket, Bell, Berg, Bialowski, Biester, Blair, Blatman, Bloom, Boesky, Bondelevitch, Boratgis, Boundary, Brennan, Broderick, Burke, Butkus, Carter, Cartwright, Cayer, Chung, Churchill, Ciccone, Cleaver, Coltin, Cordeiro, Crabtree, Cunningham, Curley, Davis, Delamere, Bodo, deMan, Derfall, Diver, Doctoroff, Dorson, Drooks, Dukinfield, Durante, Dyson, Eaton, Eisenhauer, Fielden, Finch, Flynn, Follett, Forshay, Frazier, Fulton, Gambale, Garcia, Garland, Gilligan, Goldfarb, Goldfarb, Goodwin, Govorushko, Greene, Griffith, Gulbenkian, Gumm, Guthrie, Gygi, Hagopian, Hannay, Hardy, Hardy, Hartpence, Haskell, Hawkins, Hegg, Hellman, Hertz, Hicks, Holmes, Holmes, Holmes, Hoo, Hoover, Horton, Howard, Howard, Hsu, Hubbs, Huttlinger, Hwang, Kasden, Jablonski, Jackson, Johnson, Jones, Jones, Joseph, Kanawa, Karpook, Kaye, Keeler, Kester, Keynes, Korbut, Krock, Lauridson, Leone, Lesser, Levesque, Lichtblau, Linden, Lippa, Lovejoy, Lynch, Maccarone, Madigan, Mahoney, Maloney, Maigret, Mancini, Marx, Mason, Matoh, Mays, Mays, McCarthy, McCarthy, McKechnie, Milverton, Mishkin, Moran, Morgan, Mosher, Mullins, Natale, Newton, Nixon, Norquist, Ng, O'Malley, Orloff, Patterson, Pesky, Pienar, Pinette, Ravino, Reber, Roger, Rogers, Rosenbloom, Ruth, Rutherford, Ryder, Scheinman, Semple, Shoemaker, Slavsky, Smith, Silver, Simpson, Spaulding, Starkey, Steele, Struchkov, Sullivan, Sussman, Tamsky, Terezawa, Thatcher, Theissen, Tucker, Turner, Twersky, Stade, Stade, Vanation, Veeke, Verrill, Vlahos, Vukcic, Waggoner, Wallace, Waller, Ward, Watson, Weddle, Weinberg, Welk, White, Williams, Williams, Williams, Williams, Wynn, Yeh and Youngman.
Posted by David B.  on  Mon Oct 06, 2008  at  03:24 AM
you know.. in my theory. the sun won't rise 36 hours. cause, if that happen the earth will stop rotating. am i right??
Posted by john moises  on  Mon Oct 06, 2008  at  04:00 AM
I don't believe this crap. I received a message like that and it even said that it was reported by CNN. I was like, WHAT?!? Either the Earth would stop rotating, or some people on the "lighted" side of the world would do anything for recognition - to the point of making a stinking hoax.
Posted by Winston C. Dumas  on  Tue Oct 07, 2008  at  07:38 AM
AMBOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by jr  on  Fri Oct 10, 2008  at  06:29 PM
This will actually happen tomorrow night.
Because of the melamine on milk scare being perpetrated everywhere, China's leader will force all its people, under the pain of butt kicking, to jump three times at exactly 12 midnight tomorrow. The force that will be created will affect the earth's rotation thus reducing the rotational force by 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of a octodecillion of a second.
I hope there is no device that could measure that, otherwise I will have a hard time explaining how I arrived with that figure.
Posted by Ron  on  Sun Oct 12, 2008  at  12:05 AM
Are you joking me? I mean, how could that me possible... it's not like God would stop the world from rotating. And I think He wouldn't do that! Well, let's see...
Posted by mel from Phil.  on  Sun Oct 12, 2008  at  07:16 AM
Never ever drink Chinese breast milk because it contains melamine because if that happens you will see the sun rising for 36 hrs... hehehe
Posted by chinese  on  Sun Oct 12, 2008  at  07:45 AM
This load of bull#### was started by some ignorant Indian ***wipe.
Posted by Ram_ki_ganda_main_danda  on  Sun Oct 12, 2008  at  09:22 PM
This is a hoax. You are making yourselves gods. You are making more of yourself fun. I mean this is illogical.

Even NASA cannot predict such thing as that. They may compute and have advance scientific guess but no one can put a specific date if a phenomenon will occur. So shut the f*ck up!
Posted by Logic Speaks  on  Mon Oct 13, 2008  at  07:37 AM
this hoax is like an indirect way of promoting "we (whoever made this) will enjoy the light for 36 hours, while you (US and other western country) will suffer the darkness"

get the point? i read this originated from India, if that's true then maybe it's just one way of promoting their country as if saying we'll get rewarded of light for 36 hours coz we've been good, while other countries will be reprimanded with total darkness.

people now are getting very smart trying to hide their agendas behind these formulated hoaxes. whatever their real agenda is, i don't think this should be bothering anyone. we shouldn't entertain craps like this. try to find out if what you're reading is true and don't believe everything you see in the net.
Posted by Claire Tenorio  on  Mon Oct 13, 2008  at  10:48 AM
i agree with "Logic Speaks"...only God knows...
Posted by ney69  on  Mon Oct 13, 2008  at  03:40 PM
Psh,so much arguments,why don't you guys just wait until October 17 and see what happens.If it's normal,then the hoax is false,and if it's true.Then just believe it = =~
Posted by Oblivious  on  Mon Oct 13, 2008  at  06:22 PM
hoy.. w'da heLL...
r u toking abOut??

i hOpe the sun wOnt risE on the hOuses of thOse bitchEs who mAde thiS...

wahAha... gO to the sun... ur such a Loser...

wAtever yaya...
Posted by paulo  on  Mon Oct 13, 2008  at  09:19 PM
It is impossible.Do we have a proof for the previous one. If it happens it will be a real thrill for the students and some elders.
Posted by CHITRA  on  Tue Oct 14, 2008  at  11:33 PM
if this event had to happen... it just shows.. dat God is just fed up with our bullshit..

if ever its true... its nothing compared to de psyched imagination.. of our human race..
Posted by unknown :P  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  05:05 AM
let us not justify everything we see to God..

I think..

to stop the earth's rotation is impossible..

it would take a higher amount of force or energy of earth..

like what.. momentum?

the equation one-half the mass times velocity squared ---> 1/2 (m v^2)

the half of the quantity
the mass of the earth times the velocity,

and note that the velocity is the rotation of earth and the revolution with respect to the sun..

now its imaginably a very big number..
a very impossible! cuz such number could wipe us out of the surface of the earth.. and it could be like another celestial body collides with earth.

IMPOSSIBLE..

And another thing..

what's possible is
the axis of rotation of earth can change..
but I think i would like be 1 in a billiont of a degree..

~last words~there is no such thing as nonesense..
if there is, your not using your senses at all..
Posted by wisdom  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  06:52 AM
i think this is similar with the rumor that circulated last july.. where it was said that an intesity 8 earthquake would kill thousands of people here in philippines... it even said that right after the olympics, china would have intensity 10 quake which would also kill thousands of people...

well... all of those never happened...

i think this is also a hoax!
Posted by shookaloo  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  07:55 AM
😏
The difference between logic and supernatural phenomenon is totally opposite or contradicting. I believe that some things happen and that nobody could ever explain why and how it happened and, therefore, they'll call it miracles. In spite of major advances in science and technology, the world still suffers from disasters that is beyond our control. If this issue is true then so be it, but to those who made this so called hoax (if this is really a hoax) just for fun is just an instrument of Satan whose distract and cause panic amongst the entire human race.
Posted by malecook  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  11:24 AM
People don't seem to understand that the terms "Sunrise and Sunset" are just meant to describe where we are (or where on earth we are)at a given time when Planet-Earth rotated on its axis around the "Earth-Sun". If people gives credit to this hoax, then they help perpetrate stupid ideas like this one. Of course the "Chinese Jump" and the "Flushing Toilets" are good laughs. Heee . . . heee . . . . heeee!
Posted by jjregino  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  04:50 PM
No one can approve until the time will be coming tomorrow. So, Just wait what will happen on October 17th, 2008. It is simple, right?
Posted by Jaka Leksana  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  10:26 PM
Good thing i was able to hit on this page... haha..
Posted by Lady  on  Wed Oct 15, 2008  at  11:07 PM
it would be cool for this to happen cause at least once in our life we have something very special to tell our kids about this.... but, we shouldn't wish for this to happen...36 hours of daylight(if the sun is the one giving this light), plants and trees are going to die, and people may suffer too..... plus, in the western parts knowing that crimes are everywhere and mostly done at night cause it's dark, who knows if this happens criminals might do their dirty works... hahaha.... and another thing if this happens Nightclubs with prostitutes will suffer hahaha, they won't have any costumer because the costumers will clearly see the faces of the ugly prostitutes that are covered with make-ups that make them beautiful at night... hahahaha ...ROFL
Posted by Glychemist(ShallowHeart)  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  01:00 AM
its a thrill especially.....for us students we'll be having to have a nice experience..hhahaha...but thats frightening because how if we'll not be having a night thats forever day O.M.G.....
Posted by lemor  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  03:13 AM
There is also another rumor scattering:

The Philippines especially in central Philippines and Northern Mindanao will be experiencing 40 days darkness straight.. This will NOT happen in other countries but in Philippines alone. All other countries will be experiencing normal days. This will happen right after you read this. Ten minutes from now.. All you have to do is to prepare your flashlights and batteries fully charged!
Posted by ANOTHER RUMOR:  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  09:29 AM
only god knows (:
Posted by deee  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  11:56 AM
TOTAL NONESENSE!!!

WHAT KIND OF IDIOT SAID THIS, THIS, RADICAL, OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD RUMOR????

the only thing that'll happen is that the moon will be at perigee...

maybe this was based on some events that happened a few hundred years ago but those were caused by natural disasters(e.g. volcanic eruption).

it could happen if something natural caused it...

its not like the Earth could stop rotating or something....

if i were you, you should read more about history and prove to me that something like this happened before.

GEEZ... SOME PEOPLE JUST CANT DO SOMETHING USEFUL THESE DAYS...

'sigh'
Posted by julyeTTe  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  07:19 PM
mga bobo!!
tongangers!!!
tukmol!!

kelan ba aaraw ng magdamag?in ur dreams!
Posted by kd  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  10:16 PM
...yes... this is true, but don't worry...
Sangoku is coming to town and he's going to save the day...!!!
Posted by Zerch  on  Thu Oct 16, 2008  at  11:35 PM
cant believe i wasted 15 min of my life reading this shit.....anyway who cares if sun stays put......
that wud be sm change........
Posted by itshari4ever  on  Fri Oct 17, 2008  at  12:10 AM
I will believe anybody here who can at least give me an explanation without any grammatical error.
Posted by Me  on  Fri Oct 17, 2008  at  01:14 AM
"HoRSe S**t"...sorry mate,i was just sneezing at this hoax...
Posted by piet  on  Fri Oct 17, 2008  at  04:19 AM
This is soo fake... .

It's Oct. 17 and it didn't rise!!!!

what a hoax
Posted by Nadine  on  Fri Oct 17, 2008  at  05:59 AM
hmm. i think i did stopped it from happening, by not flushing our toilet. =)
Posted by Pain  on  Fri Oct 17, 2008  at  06:37 PM
wala man lagi.............
buut buot sad mo da.....
then.......... next na sad..........
kay ang dec 12 2012.................
end na sa world..................
Posted by toniphine  on  Sat Oct 25, 2008  at  03:23 AM
It will happen Today.
all the rumors will go to there Roof with torches and prove themselves right :D
Posted by GrandFather  on  Sat Oct 17, 2009  at  02:40 AM
Such hoaxes are to be treated lightly and should not be given any importance at all
Posted by DR Rita Kuriakose  on  Wed Jul 14, 2010  at  07:18 AM
this is possible only if people(s) ( considering all individuals/organisms in milky way galaxy to be a singular people) come together and apply a tangential force opposite to that of the the rotation of earth

O.R.

the earth spins fast enuf to escape the least time of sensing or differentiating light and dark and thus either we see only light or only dark depending on our first vision 😛
Posted by Sameer Rastogi  on  Mon Jul 26, 2010  at  10:31 AM
what the HELL is it............I wasted my time 4 this bull shit........bt guys y u drag INDIA n INDIANS into it........how can u just simpely say it came 4m INDIA.........well what ever.......if it happens I'll b happy 2 see somethin so rare n unusual (though i know it wont happen).....bt surely cant tolarate a 1.5 day school.......god save oll the childrens
Posted by sue  on  Tue Aug 10, 2010  at  08:38 AM
bull shit
Posted by suresh gopi  on  Sun Oct 10, 2010  at  11:41 PM
if it happen, it will break newtons laws of motions,
i am sure it will never happen. earth(nobody) can't change its speed by itself.
Posted by anu g prem  on  Mon Oct 11, 2010  at  09:31 PM
On October 17th,the distance between the sun and the Earth and the gravitational attraction of sun over Earth Plays a Majour Role.May Be Resulting in 36hrs of sunrise.
Posted by Ravi  on  Wed Oct 13, 2010  at  11:11 AM
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.