Call it an urban legend, call it an internet hoax, call it a conspiracy theory, call it whatever you want.

But the story goes that a confluence of gravitational waves will strike the Earth and cause it to lose all gravity for seven seconds.

How do those who claim this think they know? And if it was real, could they

actually know in advance? And as for the rest of us, how do we know that it's absolutely not,

no way, going to happen, and is for sure, just another gravity hoax. And in our extended content for premium members, a pair of

gravity hoaxes that I actually perpetrated myself many years ago. All of that and more is coming

up right now on Skeptoid.

Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that. I'm doing something else now. I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed. On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems, and I try to solve them. Some massive and life altering, and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind. No matter the problem, no matter the size,

I'm here for you. That's Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia. Find it wherever you listen

to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.

You're listening to Skeptoid.

I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

Project Anchor, Anatomy of a Hoax.

Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history,

and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not.

At the end of 2024, social media users announced the discovery of a secret NASA program called Project Anchor, pertaining to a seven-second

loss of gravity on the Earth to occur in August 26. Some 40 to 60 million were said to be

expected to die in the event. The cause was given as, quote, the intersection of two gravitational waves from black holes.

This claim was shared widely for some weeks.

Likely, most of the shares were intended with tongue-in-cheek,

but there are always people who believe any such thing,

especially anything that casts NASA as some shadowy evil entity.

...