Delos Johnson via Flickr

Delos Johnson posted this photo from Alabama: "We just went for a short walk and then ... poof ... gone ... um ... what's that smell? ... yikes! ... brimstone."

The end times are no laughing matter, but when someone declares a particular day to be the start of the end, that can open the door for levity as well as lamentation. The most popular way to have a little fun with the Rapture — also known as Rapture bombing — has been to set out clothes to make it look as if the wearers were transported up to heaven.

There are literally scores of such pictures streaming onto Flickr, Yfrog, Instagram, Twitpic and other picture-sharing sites. Many of them have been flagged on Twitter with the hashtags #rapturebomb or #raptureprank. Here are a few of the favorites:

David Kinsey via Facebook

David Kinsey made this his new Facebook profile picture, with this caption:‎'"Interesting article in Ti....' It's Rapture Day! Hahahaha Pose your clothes, without you in 'em, and at the end of the day, give 'em away! A new, annual, halloween-ish holiday, 3rd Saturday in May, to benefit charity."

Delos Johnson via Flickr

Another one from Delos Johnson: "Close call! Almost had to cut the grass today. Feeling pretty rapturous about getting out of it!"

Rob Sheridan via Instagram

Here's a his-and-hers picture posted by Rob Sheridan: "Happy Rapture Day!"

Thanks to Delos Johnson, Rob Sheridan and David Kinsey for sharing. And special thanks to California photographer Brian Helm, a Cosmic Log correspondent who went the extra mile by shooting a five-minute video about the day of the fake Rapture:

One of the other popular concepts for Rapture bombing was to set loose a load of helium-filled blow-up dolls, to make it look as if souls were rising up into the sky. The interesting thing is, that idea was already caught on tape five years ago, as a lead-in for an episode of the "Six Feet Under" series about a quirky funeral-home family. Here it is:

Again, religious beliefs are nothing to laugh at, and there will be very serious repercussions in the days ahead, particularly for folks who spent their assets with the expectation that they'd enter immortality on Saturday. I hope Rapture bombing isn't seen as a criticism of Christianity. Think of it as a stress-reliever for the people who have been inundated by all the hype over the past week.

More about the Rapture rumblings:

• All quiet on the Rapture front
• Why we're enraptured by the Rapture hype
• Rapture prophet says he'll be watching the action on TV
• Digital Life: Post-rapture video reveals stunning lack of zombies
• The Last Word: Only hours to go until the (fake) Rapture
• End of Days? Believers enter the final stretch
• End of the world? How about a party instead?
• Slate: 144 scenarios for America's apocalypse
• Pet sitting offered during Rapture
• Doomsday facts (or fictions)

Even though Saturday is already finished with in some parts of the world, I'll still be blogging about the Rapture hype until the day is totally finished. You can follow the updates by checking CosmicLog.com/Rapture. You can also connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. And for something completely different, check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

For a lot of people, the end of the world is serious business, even if they may not think that Saturday is the day. I'd like to apologize in advance to those people for the following links to levity:

• XKCD on the Rapture
• Rapture Gopher says ...
• Rapture excuse bingo card
• Rapture delivery failure notice
• Flowchart: Will you be raptured?
• Some grey bloke on the Rapture
• Rapture for gamers and twitterers
• The Onion: World to end on Saturday
• The Oatmeal: How God is managing the Rapture

I'll be blogging about the Rapture hype over the weekend, and you can follow the updates by checking CosmicLog.com/Rapture. You can also connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. And for something completely different, check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Virgin

The Virgin Group declares that its founder, Richard Branson, has bought Pluto and is reinstating it as a planet.

Which of these headlines from today are April Fools' jokes? British billionaire buys Pluto, reinstates it as planet ... Quest to find Northwest Passage stymied by imaginary mountains ... One Mercury probe rediscovers another ... Spaceship guru hangs it up, is moving to lake resort ... Arsenic life found in sea monkeys ...

Tales of discovery are tailor-made for scientific foolery, because scientific advances and exploration almost always take place outside the sphere of everyday life.

You can't instantly verify whether gorillas at the Port Lympne Zoo are being issued iPads — but who knows what weird behavior primatologists might be studying? So if The Sun has a big spread about the "Planet of the Apps," there's just enough plausibility to keep you going. (And in fact, zoo is already famous for honest-to-goodness shots of a gorilla that walks like a man, a phenomenon that's the subject of serious study.) 

Without further ado, here's a roundup of today's scientific foolery and non-foolery:

TODAY'S FOOLERY:

Richard Branson buys Pluto, reinstates it as a planet: After setting up what's likely to be the first private-sector space tourism venture, this is a natural for the British billionaire. Here's what Virgin says in its announcement: "As a firm supporter of small businesses, Sir Richard is hoping to hoping to set an example for struggling entrepreneurs facing setbacks by having Pluto reinstated as an official planet, after its declassification by the International Astronomical Union in 1996 [actually, it was 2006]. Already at the forefront of space travel with Virgin Galactic, Sir Richard is having a special deep space vehicle built that will help bulk up Pluto to its required planetary mass." Virgin says the mission is due for launch on April 1, 2012.

JHUAPL

The Messenger mission team distributed this April 1 photo of the ancient Mariner 10 probe at Mercury.

Encounter with the ancient Mariner: The team behind NASA's Messenger mission to Mercury released this photo of NASA's Mariner 10 probe, which flew past the planet in 1974 and 1975 but then faded into oblivion ... or did it? Navigation team members speculated that solar neutrinos or outgassing may have caused changes in the ancient Mariner's trajectory. One engineer described the sight as follows: "A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!"

Unicorn at Tower of London? It's raven mad: Britain's Metro reports on mysterious remains discovered by archaeologists.

First-ever poker tournament in space: CardsChat says it's working with Virgin Galactic to get "poker gladiators" onto the International Space Station for a $10 million duel. Next up: Lunar Poker Tour 2012. (True story: Virgin was working on an online game with a space ride as the ultimate payoff, but that project fizzled out.)

Herschel to be refilled with helium: The team behind the Europe's Herschel Space Observatory suggest that the probe could be brought in for docking at the International Space Station for a mission-extending coolant fill-up.

Animal Planet announces TV deal with Bronx Zoo cobra: The latest celebrity gets its own reality-TV show, according to USA Today.

Physicists arrested after supercollider break-in: They really did take a peek at the abandoned Superconducting Super-Collider site in Texas, but Physics Buzz kicks it up a notch with an April 1 arrest report.

ThinkGeek.com

ThinkGeek features Arsenic-Based Sea Monkeys as one of its April 1 featured items.

Arsenic-based Sea Monkeys for sale: This offering from ThinkGeek capitalizes on findings claiming that microbes from a California lake could be switched from using phosphorus to using arsenic. ThinkGeek has a whole lineup of April 1 products, including "Star Wars" lightsaber popsicles and De-3D glasses. (Those might help when you're checking out the XK3D online comic.)

In a surprise find, it's Hugs, not Higgs: CERN reports that a 16-year-old student has found the elusive but charming Hugs boson.

NON-FOOLERY:

Imaginary mountains thwart expedition: Britain's Royal Society has put a series of historical manuscripts online as part of its "Turning the Pages" project — including Edward Sabine's account of an 1818 voyage in search of a Northwest Passage through the waters of the Canadian Arctic. The expedition's commander, John Ross, ordered the ships to turn back because the way was blocked by what he called "Croker's Mountains" — a mountain range that turns out not to have existed. Why did Ross think they were there? Who knows?

Spaceship guru retires, will leave Mojave: The Los Angeles Times reports that Scaled Composites' Burt Rutan, designer of the first private-sector craft to go into outer space (SpaceShipOne) as well as Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceship (SpaceShipTwo), is retiring after today and will move from Mojave, Calif., to the resort area of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The story makes it sound as if Rutan, who has been dealing with health problems, will have to pass up the opportunity to fly into space.

Belly button biodiversity under study: New Scientist highlights the Belly Button Biodiversity project, which sounds like an April Fools' joke but apparently is not.

COOL EXTRAS ... NO FOOLING:

• Technolog: All the April Fools' news on the Internets
• In-Game: April Fools' Day roundup, video game edition
• Slate: April Fools' Day Defense Kit
• Discovery News: Five historic hoaxes
• LiveScience: Five fake scientific breakthroughs
• YouTube: History's most famous April Fools' joke
• 2010: Monster bug? It's no joke
• 2009: Foolery goes high-tech
• 2008: The origin of fools
• 2004: Scientific foolery 
• 2003: Fooling the enemy

Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about my book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto." And if you're listening, Sir Richard ... sign me up for that Pluto-plumping mission.

Julien Behal / AP file

A customer drinks a pint of Guinness, in the Gravity bar at the Guinness storehouse, Dublin, in this file photo.

On St. Patrick's Day, many a pensive imbiber will shake their empty can of Guinness stout and hear the rattle of the widget that gave their beer a foamy head. That idle pleasure could come to an end. Now, a patch of cellulose fibers is all that's needed to get the magical foam, according to new research.

The makers of Guinness started adding the widget to cans of Guinness Draught in the 1980s. The plastic device sits in the top of the can and when the can is opened, the widget spews nitrogen and beer. This helps give the canned stout the same foamy head and creamy mouth feel as a pint poured in a pub.

Researchers at the University of Limerick previously showed that when champagne and other carbonated drinks are poured in a glass, bubbles form as the liquid hits fibers of cellulose — essentially dirt — on the surface of the glass.

"The cellulose fibers will either have been shed from the cloth used to wipe the glass dry or will have fallen out of the air," William Lee, a lecturer in mathematics and statistics, who led the research, writes in a Q&A about the findings.

Applied to stout
The team, however, thought this mechanism didn't apply to stout because when a canned stout without a widget is poured in a glass, bubbles didn't form. This was thought to be due to the fact that nitrogen is added to stouts to reduce the acidity brought on by carbon dioxide.  

But to double check, they put an intern on the case who found that bubbles do form, albeit much more slowly. To see the bubbles, watch the video below.

The team notes that stouts have a mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Nitrogen gives the small bubbles that make the nice creamy head, but the bubbles grow much more slowly. To make the bubble formation in stouts faster, but without the use of a widget, the researchers propose lining the top of cans with a 2.9 centimeter square of fibrous material positioned so that the stout flows past it as it is poured out of the can, according to Lee.

In a pub, Guinness is dispensed at high pressures through a plate with tiny holes in it, Lee explains. The resulting turbulence creates the tiny bubbles that are created by a widget in a can. The widget, Guinness says, gives canned beer the taste and texture of a pub-poured pint at home.

"Maybe this new idea will give them a replacement for the widget," Mark Denny, author of "Froth: The Science of Beer," told me today. "Time marches on and this may or may not be a less expensive alternative."

Is Guinness best in Ireland?
All this thinking about the science of beer and Guinness in particular leads to another, perhaps more subjective, question that has occupied drinkers of the creamy stout for decades: is a pub-poured pint of Guinness the same all around the world?

Yes, according to the brand's Website. "We always use pure, fresh water from natural local sources for the Guinness stout brewed outside Ireland. That said, in blind tests (with a bunch of highly cynical journalists) none of our sample could tell the difference between Irish-brewed Guinness and the locally produced variety."

That sample must not have included Daniel Kotz, Liam Glynn, Christian Mallen, or Jochen Cals, a group of researchers from different countries who traveled around the world to collect data on the enjoyment of Guinness. They found it is indeed best in Ireland.

As they traveled and sampled Guinness at various pubs, they rated their enjoyment on a "Visual Analog Scale" from 0 (enjoyed it not at all) to 100 (enjoyed it very much). A total of 103 tastings were recorded (42 in Ireland, 61 elsewhere) in 71 pubs spread over 33 cities and 14 countries. The enjoyment of Guinness in Ireland scored higher, 74 on the scale, than outside the country, 57 on the scale.

"This difference remained statistically significant after adjusting for researcher, pub ambience, Guinness appearance, and the sensory measures mouth feel, flavor, and aftertaste," the teams writes in the March 1 issue of the Journal of Food Science.

"This study is the first to provide scientific evidence that Guinness does not travel well and that the enjoyment of Guinness (for our group of nonexpert tasters) was higher when in Ireland. Results, however, are subject to further verification because of limitations in the study design," they add.

Denny, who has a PhD in theoretical physics from Edinburgh University and is a fan of Guinness, agrees that "Guinness in Ireland tastes better than Guinness anywhere else … but I wouldn't say it is due to the fact that it doesn't travel well necessarily because, for example, Guinness brews its beer in other parts of the world."

Rather, he suspects the beer is tweaked to suit local tastes. The Guinness poured in Ireland is "thicker, got more body to it, (and) that beautiful head on top is so thick it is almost like meringue," he said.

More stories on the science of alcoholic drinks:

• How to pour that drink, scientifically
• Building a better bar bot
• Happy (hic) birthday, canned beer!
• Ancient Nubians drank beer laced with antibiotics
• Space beer headed for zero-gravity bar

John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).