NASA has shot down a viral conspiracy theory claiming the Earth would lose its gravity for seven seconds during Tuesday’s total solar eclipse, an event some posts warned would trigger worldwide chaos and tens of millions of deaths.
The rumor, which first surfaced in a December 2025 Instagram post and spread rapidly across TikTok, YouTube and other platforms, alleged that a secret NASA program called “Project Anchor” had been preparing for the anomaly since a supposed leaked document appeared in November 2024. Posts claimed the agency had set aside $89 billion for the effort and that gravity would vanish at exactly 14:33 UTC on Aug. 12, 2026, caused by intersecting gravitational waves from black holes.
According to the circulating claims, people and objects would float upward within seconds before crashing back down when gravity returned, resulting in 40 to 60 million fatalities. Some versions added that NASA was building underground bunkers for selected officials and “genetically diverse” citizens while keeping the public in the dark.
Fact-checkers traced the earliest version of the story to an Instagram account known for posting sensational, often fabricated content. No evidence of any NASA project, document or budget matching the “Project Anchor” description has ever surfaced.
In a statement provided to Snopes, a NASA spokesperson said: “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… to lose mass. A total solar eclipse has no unusual impact on Earth’s gravity.”
NASA senior science communicator Karen Fox noted that similar rumors tend to reappear around major sky events.
Scientists point out that gravity cannot simply switch off. Gravitational waves, while real, create only tiny distortions in spacetime and have no ability to cancel Earth’s gravitational pull. The actual solar eclipse on Aug. 12 followed its predicted path across parts of the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland and northern Spain, with partial views visible across much of the Northern Hemisphere. The Perseid meteor shower also peaked the same night.
Despite multiple debunkings earlier this year, the claim gained fresh traction as the eclipse date approached. On the day itself, NASA and media outlets again confirmed that gravity remained completely normal.
