NASA Debunks 7-Second Gravity Shutdown Hoax Tied to Fake $89 Billion Project Anchor
Updated
Updated · Yahoo! Voices · Aug 14
NASA Debunks 7-Second Gravity Shutdown Hoax Tied to Fake $89 Billion Project Anchor
3 articles · Updated · Yahoo! Voices · Aug 14
Summary
NASA said Earth did not and cannot lose gravity for seven seconds at 14:33 UTC on Aug. 12, rejecting viral posts that claimed people would float 20 meters and 40 million would die.
No "Project Anchor" document or NASA program exists, according to NASA and Snopes, which found no public record of the supposed $89 billion emergency plan behind the rumor.
Joel Meyers of SMU said black hole gravitational waves cannot "switch off" a planet's surface gravity; NASA noted Earth's gravity depends on its mass, which is not suddenly disappearing.
Aug. 12 did feature real sky events—a total solar eclipse over parts of Greenland, Iceland, Russia, Spain and Portugal, and the Perseid meteor shower—with no unusual gravitational effects.
Karen Fox, NASA's senior science communicator, said the conspiracy resurfaces every year, typically piggybacking on real astronomical events to spread fabricated catastrophe claims across social platforms.