The satirical news website Huzler has been spreading a rumor over the Internet that solar storms will cause the Earth to become cloaked in total darkness sometime in December. They took the rumor one step further and said that NASA had confirmed the report.

Huzler set up an official-looking website emblazoned with the headline "NASA Confirms Earth Will Experience 6 Days of Total Darkness in December 2014!" According to the story, solar storms will cause "dust and space debris to become plentiful and thus block 90% sunlight".

However, there's an issue with this, solar storms don't work that way. While they are real phenomena, they don't work like terrestrial storms and stir up a lot of dust or dirt.

Solar storms are caused by fluctuations in the sun's magnetic field. They generally cause very minor disturbances in the Earth's magnetosphere. A powerful solar storm can knock out electrical equipment, but a typical solar storm won't do worse than knock a homing pigeon slightly off course.

It's important to realize that solar storms certainly don't blot out the sun.

The hoax used such credible-sounding sources such as NASA chief Charles Bolden, who was seen in a video advising people about emergency preparedness. That video was actually about Bolden advising people about real natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes.

While the article may have tricked someone into believing it to be true, the fact that the artcle had some pretty sloppy math should have given it away.

It spells out the expected dates of the disaster: December 16 to December 22, and then immediately adds, "The world will remain, during these three days, without sunlight." Evidently, the website fudged the numbers a little bit, which doesn't matter much, considering it's all one big hoax.