Heard The Rumor Earth Will Lose Gravity For 7 Seconds On August 12, 2026? Here’s Why It’s Rubbish

I would like to tell you that I have now got this rant out of my system, but I can’t. The whole idea is making the idea that Stanley Kubrick staged the Moon landing look serious in comparison. So let’s get into it.

As reported by Snopes, a TikToker and Instagram user (whose account is now unavailable) claims that "On August 12, 2026, the world will lose gravity for 7 seconds. NASA knows. They're preparing but won't tell us why." The video has had almost 62,000 likes and has been shared 268,000 times on Instagram alone.

How does this person know all this? A leaked NASA document: Project Anchor, reportedly leaked in November 2024 and with an $89 billion budget. The expected "falling" casualties are in the 40-60 million, which is actually massively low considering the number of people that are outdoors at any given moment all over the world.

August 12, 2026, was a very nice choice when it comes to making an end-of-the-world conspiracy theory, as it is the date of this year's total solar eclipse that will be seen from the Arctic to Spain. People love to link eclipses to dooms, as if many different civilizations have not been able to predict them for thousands of years. But a good date for a rumor, as it has great SEO potential; we checked!

Then we have the 7 seconds, and it is very funny how they have broken down what occurs in that time. People (animals, anything not locked down) start floating in the first 2 seconds, then will continue to rise during the 3-4 second interval, reaching 15 to 20 meters (49 to 65 feet) in the air. Now, the first law of dynamics shows that a body at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

Under gravity, you have an equal and opposite reaction, pushing off the floor.  With gravity magically gone, that reaction will push you off, but it will be small. Unless you jump at the right time, you are not getting 20 meters up in the air… but wait, there’s more.

The finale is that at 7.3 seconds, inexplicably, gravity returns and everything comes crashing down.

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

So, what will cause this momentary blip in gravity? "The intersection of two gravitational waves from black holes, predicted in 2019 with a probability of 94.7%. NASA has known about this for five years." It is impressive how many things one can get wrong in a single sentence. Let's break it down.

Gravitational waves are extremely weak, so weak that we had to build detectors that perform the most accurate measurement in the history of humanity to detect them. On top of that, the gravitational wave signals represent only the final seconds of the collisions, not something that we can see in advance. Given that gravitational waves move at the speed of light, if NASA can now predict them, they must have some pretty physics-defying technology. On top of all that, NASA does not study gravitational waves: it's the LIGO- Virgo-KAGRA collaboration that observes them. 

So how could the Earth lose its gravity? Well, basically, you need the planet to lose mass and fast. Somehow get rid of the core, mantle, crust... oops, you do not have a planet anymore! If you have an object with mass, that object will produce a gravitational field. There's no way to stop it without getting rid of the mass. 

There are enough real threats in the world, from the climate crisis to global health concerns, combined with governments ignoring the need for vital and immediate action, and in some cases, exacerbating them. You don't have to make stuff up like the planet’s gravity is turning itself off to scare people for clicks.