UnNews:Government study: gravity exists
This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation. |
1 May 2011
BETHESDA, Maryland -- Yesterday, after over a decade of intensive research that cost taxpayers well over $72 million, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) published a report claiming that gravity does, in fact, exist everywhere on the planet. In a press conference to mark the occasion of such an important and controversial finding, Letitia Long, director of the NGA, stated that "it is with guarded optimism that the United States government now believes that every square mile of the surface of the earth, accessible to mankind, is under the influence of the force of gravity."
The study, bound in a 1,472 page booklet that can be bought for as little as $15.99 on Amazon.com, describes the methodology used by the NGA and the super-strict protocol used by the organization to collect its data. This data is then shown, in both columns and graphs, for the next 1,029 pages. The study then launches into the highly-influential 3 paragraph conclusion that summarizes the findings and deduces that "the force of gravity has been shown to have been in affect at the place and time of the readings" and that, therefore, "it can be assumed that gravity has a constant influence on all sectors of the earth's surface."
This statement comes as the final product of almost 12 years of research, occupying the full attention of 105 researchers working for the NGA. After its top cartographers laid a gridwork over a massive and extensively detailed map of the world to divide the entire earth into equal areas of 1 square mile, the NGA created pathways for its researchers to travel that would carry them through every section of the grid. The researchers, strictly abiding by their routes and carrying complex mechanisms that measured an area's gravitational force, then traveled the world, taking note of the gravitational force along their paths and recording any discrepancy they found. No square mile of the earth's surface was left unrecorded; the 27 most nautically inclined members of the research team performed readings in every square mile of ocean. Experienced mountaineers were sent to conduct readings in the Himalayas, Alps, and Rockies. Others rounded the north and south poles to make measurements. During the whole study, no discrepancy or anomaly was ever found that wasn't easily explained through human or mechanical error.
"No governmentally-funded scientific study has ever been so rigorously executed," a proud President Obama boasted, "This is a landmark achievement for not only the United States, but the scientific community in general."
However, researchers behind the study say that, while they are satisfied with the final culmination of their work, it wasn't as thorough as it could've been.
"Our assigned pathways were only meant to account for every square mile," one researcher lamented, "That means that, at points during the experiment, there were as much as 5,280 feet between gravitational readings, any one of which could have contained a gravitational anomaly."
Skeptics have latched on to this problem with the otherwise authoritative study, ignoring the intimidating wall of evidence in support of the conclusion and pointing out that it wasn't absolutely conclusive.
"Not only did they only measure every square mile," one die-hard critic observes, "they only made measurements for a specific period of time; just because there wasn't a discrepancy at that spot at that second doesn't mean there wasn't one before and would never be one after. The odds of this study actually turning up a gravitational inconsistency was slim, to say the least, and it's findings should not be taken seriously."
Rumor has it that the government is considering another, more detailed, follow-up study.