NASA has stepped in to put one of the internet’s stranger doomsday rumors to rest.
Viral conspiracy theories claiming Earth’s gravity would briefly disappear on Wednesday — triggering a catastrophe that the government was allegedly concealing — are false, the space agency told Snopes.
“Earth’s gravity, or total gravitational force, is determined by its mass,” NASA said, offering a straightforward reminder of a basic principle of science.
“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 clarification debunked a wave of baseless claims about an alleged gravitational anomaly approaching Earth. The rumor has circulated on social media since late 2025, but gained fresh momentum this week as Aug. 12, 2026 — the date believers claimed it would happen — drew closer.
Public curiosity appeared to surge alongside the chatter: Google data showed searches for terms such as “gravity” rose 60% this week compared with the previous week.
At the center of the viral claims was an alleged leaked NASA document referring to “Project Anchor,” described by conspiracy theorists as an $89 billion effort to prepare the United States for the supposed disaster.
According to the theory, intersecting gravitational waves from black holes would somehow cause Earth’s gravity to vanish for seven seconds starting at 10:33 a.m. EST Wednesday, unleashing worldwide chaos. NASA says that scenario is not real.
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.”
