Your friends are likely posting videos and pictures showing how they can make brooms stand up all by themselves. A viral tweet suggests that NASA said February 10 was the only day the "standing broom" trick would work, because of the earth's gravitational pull (although we couldn't find anything from NASA to support the tweet.) Brian Ries/CNN
SALT LAKE CITY — We’re still more than 250 days away from Halloween, but even without little witches on the streets, your social media timeline may be a clean sweep of something called the broom challenge.
Why?
According to the scores of posts on social media on Monday, NASA announced that only on February 10, 2020, due to the special tilt of the earth or its gravitational pull, the common house broom could stand up on its own.
Our very own Paul Nelson and Simone Seikaly got in on the fun.
If you missed your chance at this once a year occurrence, don’t worry. It can actually be done any day of the year.
That’s because there’s nothing special about the gravity on February 10. And NASA never made any claims about the earth’s gravity being special on Monday.
The tech and science website Wired went into the science on the Broom Challenge back in 2012 that boils the whole thing down to balance.
“It’s just balance,” Meteorologist Betsy Kling says “People think it’s special because at what other point in your life would you stop and try to balance a broom?”
