Claim:
A secret NASA document titled “Project Anchor” surfaced in November 2024, revealing that the agency believed Earth would “lose gravity” for seven seconds on August 12, 2026.
Rating:
Rating: false
In early January 2026, a rumor circulated online that the Earth would “lose gravity” for seven seconds on August 12, 2026 – leading to “40 million deaths from fallout”, among other cataclysmic results.
Social media users copied and pasted text with the claim, claiming that a secret NASA document called “Project Anchor” surfaced in November 2024, which revealed that the agency knew about and had organized special preparations for the cosmic event.
For example, on December 31, 2025, Instagram user @mr_danya_of—whose account became unavailable on either January 6 or 7, meaning his post was not live at the time of publication—shared a short video of a non-speaking man sitting in a car. The text superimposed on the footage read (archived): “On August 12, 2026, the world will lose gravity for 7 seconds. NASA knows. They’re preparing, but they won’t tell us why.”
(Bluesky user @deardean22.bsky.social)
The post’s caption – shown in full later in this article – further claimed: “In November 2024, a secret NASA document titled ‘Project Anchor’ was 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. The station estimated there would be “40 million deaths from falls”, “destruction of infrastructure”, “over 10 years of economic collapse” and “mass panic”.
Other examples of claims have appeared on 4chan, Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived), and X (archived).
In short, while NASA’s website said a total solar eclipse would occur on August 12, 2026, the rumor about “Project Anchor” and the loss of gravity was false.
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, and Yahoo found no reputable results about a “Project Anchor” that leaked online during or after November 2024. Similar searches on Facebook, particularly in 2024 and 2025, as well as X, did not turn up any posts where users discussed a “Project Anchor.”
A NASA spokesperson said via email that the rumor is not true:
Earth will not lose gravity on August 12, 2026. Earth’s gravity, or total gravitational force, is determined by its mass. The only way for Earth to lose gravity would be for the Earth system, the combined mass of its core, mantle, crust, ocean, land water, and atmosphere, to lose mass. A total solar eclipse does not have an unusual impact on Earth’s gravity. The gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon on Earth, which does not affect Earth’s total gravity but impacts tidal forces, is well understood and predictable decades in advance.
The post by @mr_danya_of Instagram was the earliest record of the rumour, according to searches. The original (archived) link and video was seen on January 6. By the next day, the user’s account was inaccessible. Instead, an error message said: “The profile is not available. The connection may be broken or the profile may have been removed.”
The user routinely shared interest-based stories told from different perspectives — many of the stories appear fictional — each with several paragraphs possibly fabricated and written with artificial intelligence tools. One sign of AI refers to the user’s use of emojis in some of the video’s text captions, a common finding in AI-generated narrative text.
Several videos that were still live at the time of writing on the Instagram user’s TikTok and YouTube profiles ( archived , archived ) said the user had worked at Google, a mortuary, a crematorium and a hospice, as well as held positions as a psychiatrist and criminologist. After posting about Earth losing gravity, the user’s next video told a fictional story about 600 people who disappeared from the town of Portlock, Alaska in 2019. That video about Alaska, as well as the “lose gravity” clip, did not appear on the user’s TikTok or YouTube accounts.
We reached out to @mr_danya_of via a private TikTok message to confirm that the user was the author of the fabricated rumor, as well as to inquire about the missing Instagram account. We will update this article if we receive additional information.
The text of the “Project Anchor” post, in full
@mr_danya_of on Instagram and other users shared the text of the gravity loss rumor as follows:
On August 12, 2026, the world will lose gravity for 7 seconds. NASA knows. They are preparing, but they won’t tell us why.
In November 2024, a secret NASA document titled “Project Anchor” surfaced 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 losses: 40-60 million.What will happen:
1-2 seconds: Everything that is not secured will rise (people, vehicles, animals).
3-4 seconds: Objects will continue to rise 15-20 meters.
5-6 seconds: Panic and chaos will ensue as people hit the ceilings.
7 seconds: Gravity returns and everything falls from a height.Expected consequences:
• 40 million deaths from falls.
• The destruction of the infrastructure.
• The economic collapse of over 10 years.
• Mass panic.The reason for the anomaly: The intersection of two gravitational waves from black holes, predicted in 2019 with a probability of 94.7%. NASA has known about this for five years.
What NASA does:
• Building underground bunkers for “essential personnel”.
• Development of security systems for buildings.Who will receive places in the bunkers:
• Government leaders, scientists, military personnel, and “selected genetically diverse citizens.”Why they’re silent: An announcement would trigger mass panic and chaos. Better to have 40 million unprepared victims than 8 billion in panic.
The leak was dismissed by the media as a “conspiracy theory”, but an independent physicist confirmed the intersection of gravitational waves. His paper was withdrawn and he has since disappeared.
What you can do:
Follow “civilian survival protocol”:
• Stay indoors with the ceiling down.
• Lie face down on the floor.
• Hold onto something secure.20 months until the event. NASA knows. Governments are preparing. They won’t tell you.
For further reading, Snopes previously reported the facts about the likelihood of an asteroid named 2024 YR4 hitting Earth on December 22, 2032.
Sources:
“Upcoming Eclipses – NASA Science”. GODMOTHER14 Oct. 2022, https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/.
Sacrifice “This post doubles nicely as an explanation of why the current generation LLM trends at… | Hacker News.” News about hackers24 June 2025, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44366298.
Liles, Jordan. “Why NASA Keeps Changing the Likelihood of an Asteroid Hitting Earth in 2032.” Snopes21 Feb. 2025, https://www.snopes.com//news/2025/02/21/nasa-asteroid-hitting-earth-2032/.
Thakur, Divya. “Why ChatGPT uses emoji (and what it says about us).” Decisions6 June 2025, https://www.becisions.com/post/why-chatgpt-uses-emojis-and-what-that-says-about-us.
“What is gravity?” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of TechnologyGRACE-FO, Sept. 30 2013, https://gracefo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/5/what-is-gravity.