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Glad they cleared that one up.
Viral conspiracy theories that Earth’s gravity will briefly vanish on Wednesday — purportedly causing a cataclysm the government is hiding — are entirely untrue, NASA assured humanity.
“Earth’s gravity, or total gravitational force, is determined by its mass,” NASA told Snopes, reminding the American people about the basics of their elementary school science classes.
“The only way for the Earth to lose gravity would be for the Earth system, the combined mass of its core, mantle, crust, ocean, terrestrial water, and atmosphere, to lose mass,” NASA added. “The Earth will not lose gravity on Aug. 12, 2026.”
The explanation dispelled outrageous claims of a supposed gravitational anomaly headed for Earth which have been circulating on social media since late 2025, but reached a fever pitch this week as the day of its purported arrival — Aug. 12, 2026 — neared.
Online searches for the likes of “gravity” even spiked this week, rising by 60% from last week, according to Google.
The viral theories involved claims of a leaked NASA document describing “Project Anchor,” a supposed program with an $89 billion budget dedicated to preparing the United States for the calamity caused by the gravitational event.
That event — supposedly caused by intersecting gravitational waves from black holes — would cause Earth’s gravity to vanish for seven seconds beginning at 10:33 a.m. EST Wednesday, and cause widespread chaos across the planet, according to the theories.
Anything outdoors and not rooted down to the Earth — people, animals, cars, boulders, trains, oceans, rivers, the moon and more — would become suspended up to 65 feet in the air, while buildings would begin to come apart, the wild theories claim.
Gravity would then return and everything would come crashing back down — a calamitous event leading to tens of millions of deaths and an economic collapse lasting 10 years and more, according to the debunked theories.
The conspiracies claimed NASA and the government had been preparing bunkers to hold essential personnel and a selection of the populace with genetic diversity for repopulation purposes.
Unsurprisingly, however, the supposedly top-secret project held little water when held up to scrutiny — Snopes tracked it down to a single Dec. 2025 Instagram post from an account full of AI-written crackpot stories, with TikToks and tweets grabbing hold of the outrageous yarn and spinning it from there.
But fuel was added to the conspiratorial fire as the masses began to learn of a unique convergence of cosmic events happening on Earth on Aug. 12 — a solar eclipse, an alignment of planets across the dawn sky and the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.
NASA, however, also dispelled notions that Wednesday’s unique array of celestial happenings had any bearing on the constitution of Earth’s gravity.
“A total solar eclipse has no unusual impact on Earth’s gravity,” the space agency said.
“The gravitational attraction of the Sun and Moon on the Earth, which doesn’t impact Earth’s total gravity, but does impact tidal forces, is well understood and is predictable decades in advance.”
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