Over the past few months, a panic-inducing rumor has spread across social media platforms, claiming that the Earth will lose its gravity for 7.3 seconds today, Wednesday, August 12, 2026, at 14:33 GMT.
It seems that the choice of August 12, 2026 as the date for this hoax did not come out of nowhere, but rather coincided with two real astronomical events: the alignment of six planets in the pre-dawn sky, along with a total solar eclipse that will be visible in parts of the northern United States, Canada, Europe, and northwest Africa. These are phenomena that have historically been associated with doomsday prophecies, but experts confirm that there is no scientific link between these natural events and gravity.
The theory claims that the loss of gravity will cause billions of people to float above the Earth before falling back down, with predictions of around 900 million deaths and an economic collapse lasting a full decade.
This supposed conspiracy theory was based on claims that NASA had secretly discovered gravitational waves resulting from the collision of two black holes millions of years ago, and that these waves were heading towards Earth as a deadly beam of energy sufficient to cancel out temporary gravitational force.
The posts circulating claimed the existence of a secret document called "Project Anchor" revealing NASA's massive $89 billion plan to expand underground shelters and install anchoring systems in vital buildings in preparation for disaster, but the alleged images of this document disappeared from Instagram and TikTok accounts after they had gone viral eight months ago.
In a decisive official response, NASA denied these claims, stressing that the loss of Earth's gravity is scientifically impossible because it would require the planet to lose its entire mass, which is out of the question. Researchers from the California Institute of Technology explained that gravitational waves emitted from black holes reach Earth very weakly after traveling distances estimated at billions of light-years, and do not act as destructive rays as the rumor suggests. This was also confirmed by conspiracy theorist A.J. Gentile, who described the story as pure fiction with no scientific basis.
The rumor originated from a post by an Instagram user known as @mr_danya_of on December 31, 2025, in which he wrote that the world would lose its gravity for those few seconds and that NASA knew about it and was preparing without informing the public. Although the user stopped posting last January and removed the claims from his account, the rumor continued to spread and attracted new believers in conspiracy theories. Some of them wondered why there was a specific date, a project name, and a detailed budget if the story was fabricated, while others mocked the idea and considered it scientifically illogical.
