Did nasal claim there will be a gravity blackout
Executive summary
The available reporting shows no credible evidence that NASA announced or supports any planned “gravity blackout” in 2026; the viral “Project Anchor” story claiming Earth will lose gravity for seven seconds is a debunked social‑media rumor and not an official NASA claim [1] [2]. The phrasing “nasal” is ambiguous in the query and the provided sources contain no reporting of any entity called “nasal” making such a claim, so the responsible conclusion from the record is that no authoritative source—particularly NASA—has said a gravity blackout will occur [3] [2].
1. What the viral claim says and where it appeared
The story circulating online asserted that a leaked document called “Project Anchor” revealed NASA knows Earth will “lose gravity” for seven seconds on Aug. 12, 2026, and that the agency has quietly budgeted for an $89 billion program to prepare for mass casualties and infrastructure collapse [2] [1]. That narrative spread widely on TikTok, 4chan, X, Reddit and other platforms as copied text blocks and video overlays claiming a secret November 2024 leak and detailed doomsday consequences, which is the form of the rumor captured in multiple explainers [2] [4].
2. What NASA actually said (and did not say)
Independent fact checks and mainstream explainers report that NASA has not confirmed any Project Anchor or any plan involving an imminent loss of gravity, and that no official documentation supporting such an event has been produced by the agency [1] [2]. Scientific explanations cited by those outlets stress that Earth’s gravity is determined by mass, so it cannot simply “turn off” without a corresponding, physically implausible loss of mass of the planet or major constituents of the Earth system—an outcome for which there is no evidence in the reporting [1] [2].
3. What experts and fact‑checkers say about plausibility
Science writers and fact‑checkers presented in the sample uniformly dismiss the scenario as impossible under current physics, calling the “gravity blackout” a thought experiment or speculation rather than a realistic hazard; they note that a genuinely global, temporary disappearance of gravity would require changes to mass or fundamental forces that are not supported by observation or by any NASA statement cited in reporting [3] [2]. Snopes summarizes that the Earth will not lose gravity on the cited date and traces the viral rumor to social media reposts rather than an authentic leaked agency directive [2].
4. The ambiguous word “nasal” and evidentiary limits
The query’s use of the word “nasal” appears likely to be a typo for “NASA”; the provided sources do not report any actor named “nasal” making a gravity‑loss claim, and there is no coverage in the sample linking medical or other “nasal” topics to the Project Anchor story [5] [1]. Because the sources do not address an entity literally called “nasal,” it cannot be stated from this record that “nasal” made the claim—rather, the documented rumor attributes the claim to NASA and that NASA has not made such an assertion [1] [2].
5. Why the rumor spread and what to watch for
The reporting shows the claim’s lifecycle follows a common social‑media pattern: a vivid, alarming assertion copied across platforms, specific but unverifiable details (leaked document title, date, dollar figure) and large downstream estimates of casualties that amplify fear and shareability; fact‑checkers and science explainers counter it with physics and the absence of an official source [2] [3]. Readers should treat reposted “leaked document” claims as unverified until primary documents or authoritative agency statements appear, and note that debunkers here rely on both NASA’s lack of confirmation and the physical implausibility of the scenario [2] [1].