{"id":236959,"date":"2026-01-16T21:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T21:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/236959\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T21:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T21:27:07","slug":"will-the-world-lose-gravity-for-7-seconds-in-2026-lmao-be-serious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/236959\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the World Lose Gravity for 7 Seconds in 2026? LMAO Be Serious"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another day, another pea-brained conspiracy theory<\/a> that manages to bring together complementarily high levels of stupidity and insanity.<\/p>\n

You may have encountered a slew of claims on<\/a> Reddit<\/a>, TikTok<\/a>, and elsewhere in recent days purporting that \u201cthe world will lose gravity for seven seconds\u201d this August. The stupendously dumb copypasta goes on to claim that NASA<\/a> \u201cknows\u201d about this and is \u201cpreparing,\u201d linking the conspiracy theory to a purported project from the agency dubbed \u201cProject Anchor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Below, we take a closer look at the false claim, which\u2014to be absolutely, irrefutably clear\u2014is total bullshit. Put another way, it appears far too many people have failed to heed ASAP Rocky\u2019s timely call to refrain from dumbness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Where does this false \u201cthe world will lose gravity for seven seconds\u201d claim come from?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not entirely clear, but numerous posts appear to have merely copied-and-pasted the exact same (and decidedly lengthy) false claim<\/a>. The copypasta in question opens with a claim that \u201cthe world will lose gravity for seven seconds\u201d on Aug. 12 of this year. NASA, the copypasta further claims, is \u201cpreparing but won\u2019t tell us why.\u201d<\/p>\n

Up to 60 million \u201cexpected casualties\u201d are also mentioned, as are \u201cunderground bunkers\u201d for political leaders and others deemed \u201cessential.\u201d There\u2019s even more to it than that, but given how stupid it is, we\u2019ll just stop there.<\/p>\n

Of course, this particular conspiracy theory is wildly ridiculous on its face, meaning one should easily be able to dismiss it without needing to do a deep-dive. Still, if one wanted to do so, simply consult Snopes. The fact-checking site has already shared a debunking<\/a> of this claim. As you\u2019ll recall, we previously highlighted Snopes as a go-to resource for combating false claims in a recent issue of Complex Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What has NASA said about this abject bullshittery?<\/p>\n

When reached for comment by Complex on Friday (Jan. 16), a NASA spokesperson confirmed what everyone already should have known on their own while also directing readers to check out the agency\u2019s actual work studying gravity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Earth will not lose\u00a0gravity\u00a0on Aug. 12, 2026,\u201d the spokesperson told Complex. \u201cEarth’s\u00a0gravity, or total gravitational force, is determined by its mass. The only way for the Earth to lose\u00a0gravity\u00a0would be for the Earth system, the combined mass of its core, mantle, crust, ocean, terrestrial water, and atmosphere, to lose mass. A total solar eclipse has no unusual impact on Earth’s\u00a0gravity. The gravitational attraction of the Sun and Moon on the Earth, which doesn’t impact Earth’s total\u00a0gravity\u00a0but does impact tidal forces, is well understood and is predictable decades in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another day, another pea-brained conspiracy theory that manages to bring together complementarily high levels of stupidity and insanity.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-236959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}