Science Snopes Fact Check: Posts citing NASA claim Earth will lose gravity for 7 seconds on Aug. 12, 2026. Here’s the truth

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Claim:

A secret NASA document named “Project Anchor” leaked in November 2024, revealing the agency believed the Earth would “lose gravity” for seven seconds on Aug. 12, 2026.

Rating:

In early January 2026, a rumor circulated online that Earth would “lose gravity” for seven seconds on Aug. 12, 2026 — leading to “40 million deaths from falls,” among other cataclysmic outcomes.

Social media users copied and pasted text featuring the claim, alleging that a secret NASA document named “Project Anchor” leaked in November 2024, which revealed the agency had known of and organized special preparations for the cosmic event.

For example, on Dec. 31, 2025, Instagram user @mr_danya_of — whose account became unavailable either Jan. 6 or 7, meaning its post was not live at the time of publication — shared a brief video of a man, who did not speak, sitting in a car. Overlaid text on the footage read (archived): “On August 12, 2026, the world will lose gravity for 7 seconds. NASA knows. They’re preparing but won’t tell us why.”

(Bluesky user @deardean22.bsky.social‬)

The post’s caption — presented in full later in this article — further claimed: “In November 2024, a secret NASA document titled ‘Project Anchor’ leaked online. The project’s budget is $89 billion, and its goal is to survive a 7-second gravitational anomaly expected on August 12, 2026, at 14:33 UTC.” The post estimated there would be “40 million deaths from falls,” “infrastructure destruction,” “economic collapse lasting over 10 years” and “mass panic.”

Other examples of the claim appeared on 4chan, Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived).

In short, while NASA’s website said a total solar eclipse would occur on Aug. 12, 2026, the rumor about “Project Anchor” and gravity loss was false.

Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no reputable results about a “Project Anchor” leaking online during or after November 2024. Similar searches of Facebook specifically during 2024 and 2025, as well as on X, uncovered no posts where users discussed a “Project Anchor.”

A NASA spokesperson said via email that the rumor was not true:

The Earth will not lose gravity on Aug. 12, 2026. Earth’s gravity, or total gravitational force, is determined by its mass. 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. A total solar eclipse has no unusual impact on Earth’s gravity. 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.

The @mr_danya_of Instagram user’s post was the oldest record of the rumor, according to the searches. The original link and video (archived) were viewable on Jan. 6. By the following day, the user’s account was inaccessible. Instead, an error message read: “Profile isn’t available. The link may be broken, or the profile may have been removed.”

The user commonly shared interest-based stories told from varying perspectives — much of the tales appearing fictional — each with multiple paragraphs possibly fabricated and written with artificial-intelligence tools. One sign of AI pertained to the user’s use of emojis in some of the videos’ text captions, a common finding in AI-generated storytelling text.

Several videos that were still live, as of this writing, on the Instagram user’s TikTok and YouTube profiles (archived, archived) said the user worked at Google, a morgue, a crematorium and a hospice, as well as served in positions as a psychiatrist and criminologist. After posting about the Earth losing gravity, the user’s next video told a fictional story about 600 people disappearing from the town of Portlock, Alaska, in 2019. That video about Alaska, as well as the “lose gravity” clip, did not appear on the user’s TikTok or YouTube accounts.

We contacted @mr_danya_of via a private TikTok message to confirm the user authored the fabricated rumor, as well as to ask about the missing Instagram account. We will update this article if we receive further information.

‘Project Anchor’ post text, in full

Instagram’s @mr_danya_of and other users shared the text for the gravity-loss rumor as follows:

On August 12, 2026, the world will lose gravity for 7 seconds. NASA knows. They’re preparing but won’t tell us why.

In November 2024, a secret NASA document titled “Project Anchor” leaked online. The project’s budget is $89 billion, and its goal is to survive a 7-second gravitational anomaly expected on August 12, 2026, at 14:33 UTC.

Key facts:
• Duration: 7.3 seconds.
• Expected casualties: 40-60 million.

What will happen:
1-2 seconds: Everything not secured will rise (people, vehicles, animals).
3-4 seconds: Objects will continue to rise to 15-20 meters.
5-6 seconds: Panic and chaos will ensue as people hit ceilings.
7 seconds: Gravity returns, and everything falls from height.

Expected consequences:
• 40 million deaths from falls.
• Infrastructure destruction.
• Economic collapse lasting over 10 years.
• Mass panic.

Reason for the anomaly: 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.

What NASA is doing:
• Building underground bunkers for “essential personnel.”
• Developing securing systems for buildings.

Who will get spots in the bunkers:
• Government leaders, scientists, military personnel, and “selected citizens with genetic diversity.”

Why they’re silent: An announcement would trigger mass panic and chaos. Better to have 40 million unprepared victims than 8 billion in a state of panic.

The leak has been ignored by the media as “conspiracy theory,” but an independent physicist confirmed the intersection of gravitational waves. His paper was retracted, and he has since disappeared.

What you can do:

Follow the “civilian survival protocol”:
• Stay indoors with a low ceiling.
• Lie on the floor face down.
• Hold onto something secured.

20 months until the event. NASA knows. Governments are preparing. They won’t tell you.

For further reading, Snopes previously reported the facts about the probability of an asteroid named 2024 YR4 striking Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.

Sources:

“Future Eclipses – NASA Science.” NASA, 14 Oct. 2022, https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/.

Jerf. “This Post Nicely Doubles as an Explanation of Why Current-Gen LLM’s Tendencies t… | Hacker News.” Hacker News, 24 June 2025, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44366298.

Liles, Jordan. “Why NASA Keeps Changing the Probability of an Asteroid Impacting Earth in 2032.” Snopes, 21 Feb. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//news/2025/02/21/nasa-asteroid-hitting-earth-2032/.

Thakur, Divya. “Why ChatGPT Uses Emojis (and What That Says About Us).” Becisions, 6 June 2025, https://www.becisions.com/post/why-chatgpt-uses-emojis-and-what-that-says-about-us.

“What Is Gravity?” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, GRACE-FO, 30 Sept. 2013, https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/5/what-is-gravity.