Forget asteroid strikes, alien invasions and the apocalypse. One of the strangest predictions doing the rounds online claims something much more basic will happen to Earth on August 12: gravity will disappear.
According to the viral theory, the world will supposedly lose gravity for seven seconds in August, sending people, cars and other objects floating into the air before gravity suddenly returns and sends everything crashing back down.
According to some of the more dramatic versions of the viral theory, the consequences would be catastrophic, with claims circulating online that between 40 and 60 million people could die during the seven-second loss of gravity.
There is, however, no scientific basis for that figure, or for the claim that gravity will disappear in the first place. It is part of the online conspiracy theory, not a NASA prediction or scientific forecast.
So, you can put down the duct tape, cancel your emergency bunker plans and stop worrying about your sofa floating through the ceiling.
But the bizarre claim does raise a genuinely fascinating question: if Earth's gravity really did switch off for seven seconds, would millions of people actually die? The answer isn't quite as straightforward as you might think.
First things first: gravity isn't disappearing
The rumour has grown around a very real astronomical event.
On August 12, 2026, a total solar eclipse will cross parts of Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, the Atlantic and Spain, with a partial eclipse visible across much of Europe, including the UK.
The real event appears to have become mixed up online with claims about gravitational effects and a supposed $89 billion NASA project.
One version of the conspiracy theory claimed NASA had a secret programme called "Project Anchor" and was preparing for a seven-second gravitational anomaly.
NASA says that Project Anchor is a misconstrued 1990s engineering concept rather than a secret gravity-loss preparation fund, and has rejected the idea that Earth will lose gravity because of the eclipse.
The agency's explanation is simple: Earth's gravitational attraction comes from its mass, and a solar eclipse does not make that mass disappear.
The Sun and Moon do exert gravitational forces on Earth, and their interaction contributes to familiar effects such as tides, but an eclipse does not suddenly alter Earth's gravity in any dramatic way.
NASA is also genuinely studying the August eclipse and its effects on Earth's atmosphere and environment, giving the conspiracy theory another kernel of truth to build upon.
But none of this means Earth's gravitational field is about to disappear.
The eclipse is simply the Moon passing between Earth and the Sun. The Sun does not stop existing, the Moon does not suddenly become heavier and Earth does not lose its mass.
Therefore, there is no reason for its gravity to switch off.
So, no, we're not facing seven seconds of weightlessness. But let's imagine that we did...
Would we all float into space?
This is where the internet version gets a little carried away.
If Earth's gravitational pull somehow switched off for seven seconds while the planet itself remained intact, you would become effectively weightless.
Your feet would no longer be pressed against the floor, a cup would no longer stay planted on a table, water would stop behaving normally, and anything unsecured could begin moving freely.
And yes, you could float but you would not suddenly shoot hundreds of metres into the sky.
That's because gravity disappearing isn't the same thing as gravity suddenly pushing everything upwards.
If you jumped into the air and gravity disappeared, for example, you wouldn't suddenly accelerate upwards. You would simply continue moving in whatever direction you were already travelling.
Someone standing perfectly still would initially have very little upward velocity at all.
The really interesting problem comes from the fact that the Earth is curved and spinning.
How high would you actually get?
Much less dramatically than some of the viral posts suggest.
Earth is rotating rapidly, but everything on its surface is rotating along with it.
If gravity disappeared, you and the ground would initially share the same sideways motion, so you would not suddenly be fired upwards like a rocket.
The complication is that the ground beneath you is curved: without gravity pulling you back towards the surface, your body would follow a straighter path while the rotating Earth continued beneath you.
That could create a small separation between you and the surface, but at the equator, under a simplified version of this imaginary scenario, the difference after seven seconds would be on the order of less than a metre, rather than the huge heights suggested by some versions of the conspiracy theory.
And that is assuming the only thing that has changed is the gravitational attraction between Earth and objects at its surface.
In other words, you probably wouldn't be spending seven seconds sailing towards the International Space Station.
Would you die when gravity returned?
Not necessarily. This is another part of the viral story that gets exaggerated.
Imagine you're standing in your kitchen when gravity suddenly disappears. For a few seconds, you would become weightless; if you were not holding onto anything, you might drift slightly while loose belongings floated around, water formed blobs and anything resting on a surface began to move.
Then, when gravity returned, you and anything else that had moved away from the surface would begin falling.
If you had only moved a small distance, that fall would not necessarily be catastrophic; it might feel more like an unexpectedly unpleasant jump than being dropped from an aircraft.
The danger would depend heavily on where you were, what you were holding and what was moving around you.
Someone on a high platform, for example, could have a much more serious problem than someone sitting safely inside a house.
The added risk is that you would not be the only thing falling.
Everything around you would be weightless too
Imagine a supermarket: for seven seconds, loose tins, bottles, shopping bags and other unsecured objects could become weightless, and when gravity suddenly returned, everything would come down.
The same would apply to objects in factories, construction sites, warehouses, vehicles and homes.
Anything that had drifted could fall or collide with something else.
This could create injuries and considerable chaos in some environments But it still wouldn't mean every building suddenly collapses.
Would buildings and the ground fly into space?
This is where the scenario gets particularly interesting.
You might assume gravity is the only thing holding your house together. It is not.
The atoms and molecules making up a building are held together primarily by electromagnetic forces and chemical bonds. Gravity contributes to the weight and structural loads within the building, but it isn't what stops the bricks themselves from instantly flying apart.
The same applies to the human body, so if you simply imagine Earth's gravity disappearing for seven seconds, your house would not automatically explode into thousands of pieces.
The Earth itself wouldn't instantly disintegrate either.
The planet is held together by gravity on enormous scales, but seven seconds is an incredibly short time. There wouldn't suddenly be enough time for the entire planet to burst apart like a dropped sandcastle.
That said, there is no physically realistic scenario in which Earth's gravity simply switches off. Gravity is not a machine with an on/off button, and the viral theory assumes something known physics does not provide a mechanism for doing.
Would humans survive seven seconds without gravity?
The lack of gravity itself would not kill you in seven seconds.
Humans routinely experience brief periods of weightlessness during parabolic flights, and astronauts spend much longer periods living in microgravity.
Your body would not suddenly stop functioning because gravity had disappeared: you would still breathe, your heart would still beat and your brain would still work.
You wouldn't suffocate simply because you weren't being pulled towards the ground.
The bigger issue would be everything happening around you: loose objects, falls, moving machinery, vehicles, water, people colliding with things and the chaos of suddenly returning to normal gravity.
The really dangerous part would be the return
Imagine you're in a lift when gravity disappears. You might initially become weightless, and a bag full of heavy objects could move in ways you would not expect.
Now imagine hundreds of thousands of other people experiencing the same thing simultaneously.
Then, seven seconds later, gravity returns: everything suddenly has weight again, anything that has drifted is pulled down, people who have moved away from surfaces fall, objects and water fall, and anything already unstable could topple.
The transition back to normal conditions could therefore be considerably more dangerous than the brief period of weightlessness itself.
The verdict: should you be worried?
No: there is no scientific evidence that Earth will lose gravity for seven seconds this August. The eclipse is real; the gravity loss is not.
And if you're wondering whether you should spend August 12 tying yourself to the sofa, there is no need: you can safely go about your day.
Although if gravity really did disappear for seven seconds, holding onto the sofa probably wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.
Just don't expect it to save you from a planet-sized physics problem.
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