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On 23 April 2016, unreliable web site Superstation95 reported that data gleaned from NASA revealed that Earth's magnetosphere had COLLAPSED for a period of two hours: This report was false, however. Heliophysics (the study of the effects of the sun on the solar system) is a complex topic, making bombastic claims easier to cloak in a veneer of plausibility. NASA's web site features a brief explainer which notes that doomsday scenarios tend to leverage unfamiliarity with the topic in order to exaggerate normal atmospheric fluctuations: However, NASA space weather analyst Leila Mays told us that the 23 April readings weren't the result of normal fluctuations in any case, but rather a software glitch that led to erroneous simulations: The poorly-sourced claim was widely spread by Superstation95 an online outlet that is neither a superstation nor a legitimate news source but rather a repository of misinformation from Hal Turner, a white supremacist who was sentenced in 2010 to 33 months in prison for making death threats against three federal judges. (The individual listed on the site's Contact page is Turner's criminal lawyer.) Beginning in late 2015, Turner's Superstation95 began spreading alarmist hoaxes and conspiracy theories on social media. Among the most popular were claims that a large group of Muslim men fired upon campers and hikers in California, that Fukushima radiation caused mutations in marine life, that cargo ships mysteriously ground to a halt and signaled an imminent economic catastrophe, that a deadly Las Vegas strip collision involved a driver shouting Allahu Akbar, and that the San Bernardino shooting occurred because the shooter was offended pork was served at a holiday party shortly before the massacre. The site's claims span many conspiracy themes, but remain united in their consistent lack of credibility or accuracy.
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