Gravity Doesn’t Have an “Off” Switch (and, sadly, neither do conspiracy theorists)

I don’t spend a ton of time on social media. I have actual work to do and, quite frankly, my tolerance for the digital equivalent of “prospecting for gold in a septic tank” is at an all-time low. Most of my social media interaction consists of posting links to my own writing and then wandering back to real life. If you’ve messaged me on social media and I haven’t responded, it’s not because I’m being rude. It’s because I’m likely busy dealing with reality.

But every now and then, something breaks containment, misinformation so infectious that it leaks out of the Instagram containment zone and lands on my desk.

When the same claim pops up in multiple places and from multiple people, all pointing back to the same source, curiosity kicks in. That happened this week when two different people asked me, independently, whether I’ve “seen this gravity thing”.

So I went looking.

On January 16, a user named cthagod posted a reel claiming that on August 12, Earth will simply “lose gravity” for seven seconds. Apparently, millions will die and the laws of physics will take a union mandated smoke break. The video has racked up millions of views. It is delivered confidently. It is dramatic. And it is complete nonsense.

Let’s be extremely clear: gravity is not a subscription service. It’ll be there, even if you miss a payment. There is no “switch”. And the idea that it could “turn off” for seven seconds isn’t just a conspiracy theory. It’s a physical impossibility that ignores everything we’ve learned since Newton got beaned by an apple.

Let’s talk about why.

The Scale of the Scam

Can Earth lose gravity?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: Absolutely not and the question itself misunderstands what gravity even is.

When I was a junior in high school, I challenged a science teacher with what I thought was a clever question. He had said that everything has gravity, even the classroom wall. I asked him why, if the wall had gravity, I couldn’t walk on it.

He explained that while the wall and I were technically attracted to each other, our mass was, to put it delicately, trivial. Compared to the 5.972 x 10²⁴ kilograms of rock and iron beneath our feet, the wall isn’t even a rounding error. It’s a ghost.

Gravity isn’t a “pulling” force like a tractor beam from a low-budget sci-fi flick. That lesson matters here.

Gravity is not a switch.
It is not a field generator.
It is not something that can “turn off” temporarily like Wi-Fi during a thunderstorm.

Gravity is what mass does. That’s important.

What Gravity Actually Is (And Why Instagram Can’t Break It)

According to Einstein’s General Relativity, gravity is not a pulling force in the traditional vacuum cleaner sense. It is the result of mass and energy curving spacetime.

Imagine a bowling ball on a trampoline. The fabric dips. If you toss a marble nearby, it rolls toward the ball, not because the ball is “grabbing” it, but because the “path” it follows is now curved.

Now sit on the trampoline yourself. The bowling ball and marble will roll toward you, because you’re the larger distortion.

That’s gravity.

In this model, mass tells spacetime how to curve and curved spacetime tells mass how to move.

For Earth to “lose gravity”, the Earth would have to cease to exist as mass. Unless the planet is planning on converting itself into pure light for a few seconds and then back again (a feat that would involve enough energy to vaporize the solar system and beyond), that curve in spacetime isn’t going anywhere.

Earth doesn’t generate gravity. Earth is gravity, in the sense that its mass defines the curvature around it.

The Sun is a much larger distortion. Earth moves around it at roughly 67,000 miles per hour, not because it’s being pulled like a yo-yo, but because it’s following the straightest possible path through curved spacetime.

But What If Something Disrupts It? – The Physics of the “Off” Switch

This is where conspiracy theories usually gesture vaguely toward “cosmic alignments”, “energy waves” or unnamed celestial events that somehow override physics.

If gravity did somehow vanish for seven seconds, free-floating would be the least of your concerns.

1. The Atmosphere: The only reason we have air to breathe is because gravity holds it down. Without it, the atmosphere would begin expanding into the vacuum of space at supersonic speeds. Think of an overinflated balloon popping.
2. The Planet: The Earth is spinning at roughly 1,000 miles per hour at the equator. Gravity is the only thing keeping the crust from flying apart like a wet doughnut on a drill. Seven seconds of zero-G wouldn’t just make you float. It would likely cause the planet to structurally fail. Everyone gets crushed by Greenland joining the United States at 1,000 miles per hour.

The cthagod post is a classic example of Engagement Farming, scaring the scientifically illiterate for clicks. The algorithm rewards confidence, not correctness. Gravity is a symptom of mass. As long as the Earth has mass, it has gravity.

Even the most extreme gravitational phenomena we know, black holes, don’t “turn gravity off”. They do the opposite. At zero volume and infinite mass, they curve spacetime so violently that not even light escapes.

If Earth somehow lost gravity for seven seconds and then regained it, physics would have to be rewritten from the ground up and the people claiming this would already have Nobel Prizes instead of Instagram reels.

What About Gravitational Waves?

Gravitational waves are real. We’ve detected them. They are ripples in spacetime caused by massive accelerating objects like merging black holes.

What they are not:

• Gravity-canceling pulses
• Anti-gravity shockwaves
• Temporary “off switches” for planetary mass

By the time a gravitational wave reaches Earth, its effect is so tiny that it changes distances by fractions of the width of a proton. Instruments like LIGO detect them only by measuring distortions smaller than an atomic nucleus.

If gravitational waves could turn gravity off, Earth would have been flung apart billions of years ago.

The Missing Particle and the Irrelevant Mystery

Physicists are still searching for a quantum description of gravity and a hypothetical force-carrying particle called the graviton. That mystery excites scientists.

But the graviton will not support conspiracy theories.

The fact that we don’t yet have a complete quantum theory of gravity does not mean gravity occasionally takes weekends off. We don’t understand everything about gravity, but we understand more than enough to say with confidence that Earth is not going to misplace it for seven seconds in August.

Not knowing the molecular structure of steel doesn’t mean bridges randomly stop working.

So What Happens on August 12?

Nothing.

The planet will continue doing what it has done for 4.5 billion years:

• Spacetime will remain curved
• Objects will remain attached to the ground
• Influencers will continue confusing confidence with correctness

No one will float.
No one will fall into the sky.
No one will die from a physics event that can not occur.

Fighting Science with Ignorance

Stories such as this one are clickbait. They draw attention by presenting something so absurd that you want to look, like that car accident on the interchange, where the entire side of the vehicle was sheared off.

Gravity is not fragile.
It is not optional.
It is not influenced by vibes, alignments or poorly edited videos.

It is the consequence of mass existing in a universe with geometry.

If someone tells you gravity is turning off, what they are really saying is that they don’t know what gravity is and they’re hoping you don’t, either.

In the end, this is viral panic. We live in an era where a man with a smartphone can convince millions that the fundamental constants of the universe are as flaky as a D.C. lobbyist’s promise.

Gravity is constant. It is relentless. It is the reason you aren’t currently drifting toward the moon while suffocating in a vacuum. This claim comes with plenty of zero-gravity thinking, mostly because it didn’t have much mass to start with.

Spoiler alert: the universe does not take instructions from Instagram.

And gravity, stubbornly and reliably, will still be here tomorrow and on August 12.