NASA has shot down viral Earth gravity rumors that claimed the planet would briefly lose its pull on Wednesday, triggering a global disaster that officials were supposedly hiding. The space agency said the theory has no basis in reality and that Earth’s gravity will not vanish on Aug. 12, 2026.
“Earth’s gravity, or total gravitational force, is determined by its mass,” NASA told Snopes, a simple point the agency used to explain why the online claims fail basic science. NASA added that the only way Earth could lose gravity would be if the Earth system — including its core, mantle, crust, oceans, terrestrial water and atmosphere — lost mass. It did not. The agency was direct on the date at the center of the rumor: “The Earth will not lose gravity on Aug. 12, 2026.”
The false story spread through social media after circulating in late 2025, then picked up speed as the date approached. Interest surged as well, with Google searches for “gravity” rising 60% from the previous week. The online theories described a supposed gravitational anomaly caused by intersecting gravitational waves from black holes, saying gravity would disappear for seven seconds beginning at 10:33 a.m. EST Wednesday.
Those claims painted a dramatic scene. According to the rumor, anything outside and not firmly anchored to the ground — from people and animals to cars, trains, boulders, oceans, rivers and even the moon — would rise as high as 65 feet into the air. Buildings would start to break apart, and when gravity returned, everything would come crashing down in a catastrophe said to kill tens of millions of people and cripple the economy for a decade or longer.
