La Jornada: Don’t panic!; The Earth’s gravitational force is not turned off or interrupted

The supposed loss of gravity of seven seconds that the Earth will suffer on August 12 has caused alarming concern on social networks, going viral, and it is no wonder because floating or even going out into outer space is a matter that deserves all our attention, because as those who know say: “If it is hard to go up a lot, the harder the fall.”

Don’t panic! Since last January, NASA has flatly denied this information, stating: “The gravitational force of our planet is constant and depends on its total mass, so it is physically impossible for it to be turned off or interrupted.”

The myth about the loss of seven seconds of gravity came from a fake video on TikTok and Instagram where it was claimed in NASA’s secret Project Anchor file that “gravitational waves would be generated by the collision of black holes and as a result they would nullify the Earth’s gravity.” It is worth mentioning that on August 12, a total solar eclipse visible in much of the northern hemisphere will occur, a normal phenomenon that does not alter gravity.

Catastrophic news of the end of the world has accompanied humanity and although it is always false, how entertaining it is. As happened in 2012 with the false belief based on the end of times as predicted by the Mayan calendar, which generated global panic and conspiracy theories without any real basis.

The world continued to spin and the false belief helped Hollywood make a movie, because “you have to be morbid, but with taste.”

Another episode of the end of the world occurred in 2000, called the 2000 Effect or Y2K: it was believed that a computer error would occur in computers around the world. It turns out that the machines used the last two digits to mark the year and a rumor began that when they reached double zero the computers would return to 1900 and not 2000, causing a world disaster.

Until The Simpsons They dedicated a chapter to Y2K.

We must not forget the famous radio broadcast, based on the book war of the worlds, which filmmaker Orson Welles made on Halloween night in 1938. Using a newsreel format, Welles adapted the novel by H.G. Wells and gave it an astonishing verisimilitude. Using supposedly urgent press releases, he interrupted a live music radio program on the CBS network about an alien invasion, causing mass hysteria among millions of radio listeners in New York and New Jersey.

One of the persistent beliefs in various periods of history is Nostradamus’s prediction about the end of times, but what the French astrologer did not say was the date of when the event would occur. Of course: he assured that there will be a cataclysm when a black pope arrives. According to the prediction, after the arrival at the Vatican of an elderly or foreign pope, the next supreme pontiff would be a black pope, who would mark the end of times; It should be noted that the famous conjurer was not referring to the color of his skin, but to the historical nickname of the leader of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), who wear clothing of that color.

Before the question is resolved about whether a cataclysm will occur that extinguishes life on the planet, we must resort to a popular dialectical sentence: “You cannot believe it nor you can doubt it!”