What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Is Gravity Ending?

There is a rumor going around online—on Reddit, Facebook, TikTok, and (I assume) Friendster—that gravity will stop working for seven seconds on August 12. Here is part of the warning posted online:

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.

This is a shockingly irresponsible prediction filled with misinformation. In a theoretical world where gravity was optional, the death toll would ultimately be much greater, but it would come from earthquakes and tidal waves, not fall damage.

What would happen if gravity stopped working for seven seconds?

We'll have to wait until August for observational data about the Great Gravity Switch-Off, but I wanted to be prepared, so I asked Joel Meyers, a theoretical cosmologist and professor at Southern Methodist University, what we can expect on August 12. He said that most of us would survive the initial period of weightlessness without injury, and there's no reason to tie yourself to the sofa. "It depends on where you are in terms of latitude, but for somebody in, say, New York City, in seven seconds with no gravity, you'd expect to sort of slowly drift upward by about two feet off the surface of the Earth."

So, shockingly, conspiracy theorists on the internet are wrong: you wouldn't "rise to 15-20 meters;" you wouldn't even hit your head on the ceiling. You'd just float—unless you leapt into the air at the right moment. "An average person who could jump about a foot and a half would actually end up jumping about 64 feet in the air without gravity," Meyers said.

Gravity fears assuaged

Before I spoke to a patient theoretical cosmologist, I was concerned that the lack of gravity inside my body might cause my atoms to detach from one another and I'd dissolve into dust, which I am generally not in favor of. "Gravity itself doesn't play a role in holding us together," Meyers said. "The structure of our bodies are not gravitational, but electromagnetic."

Another personal gravity fear involves breathing. Since gravity holds the atmosphere to earth, wouldn't all the air be instantly ejected into space instead of staying in my lungs where it belongs? Nope. Decompression would happen, but it would take time. "The upper layers of the atmosphere would start to float out into space, being pushed away by the layers of atmosphere below them," Meyers said, "But a few seconds wouldn't be long enough for us to lose all of the atmosphere around the Earth."

When the gravity turns back on, though, it would create a air pressure wave that would disrupt weather patterns in ways we couldn't possibly predict. Worse than that would be the effect of sudden gravity loss on the planet itself. "This is where things get a little more catastrophic," Meyers said. "In the absence of gravity, there's nothing to fight against that pressure that exists in the core of the Earth or the mantle or the crust. The Earth wouldn't instantaneously explode—it takes time for the mass to move in response to the pressure and to the forces—but there would certainly be a lot of tectonic activity."

But it gets worse. After seven seconds, the Earth would clump back together, which "would create an impulse that would spread throughout the world in terms of global earthquakes in ways that are really difficult to predict in detail," Meyers said.

The best vehicles to be in when the gravity goes off

If you're going anywhere on August 12, make sure you're not traveling by car. The lack of gravity means your wheels would leave the road, so your ability to steer or brake would be gone. "You would effectively just be continuing in a straight line at whatever speed you were traveling just before gravity turned off," Meyers said, so expect traffic delays on the 405 as every car crashes into every other car, tree, and barrier. Airplanes and submarines would be safe, though, which brings me to my personal plan for August 12.

How I'll survive gravity-free day

Since I am not on NASA's list of chosen people, I am going to ride this thing out inside the metal womb of a deep sea submersible. The submersible is a closed system designed to withstand changes in external pressure, negating any atmospheric effect. The turmoil of the ocean rising then falling would likely cause massive tidal waves, but not where I am, under the sea.

While the rest of you suckers are dealing with the aftereffects of unimaginable global earthquakes and magma flows, I'll be chilling in my submarine, playing Angry Birds. When the time is right, I'll return triumphantly to the surface to rule over the ruined planet. "I think that's a very solid plan; [it] really does cover a lot of the bases," Meyers said.

The bottom line: Is gravity going to turn off on August 12?

I felt dumb doing it, but I asked Meyers point-blank what the chances are that the internet is right about gravity ending on August 12. He said, "it is very far outside the realm of possibility."

There is no secret NASA document titled "Project Anchor," and there's no way to turn off gravity. "Gravity is an inherent property of space-time," Meyers explained, closing the book on one the year's dumbest conspiracy theories.