If gravity switched off for ten seconds

A thought experiment I couldn’t let go of: if gravity switched completely off for, say, ten seconds and then came back, what happens?

Orbitally, almost nothing. With gravity gone, Earth flies off on a straight-line tangent at its orbital speed, about 30 km/s. Ten seconds of that is roughly 300 km. Against an orbital radius of 150 million km, a 300 km sideways nudge is a rounding error. Gravity switches back on and Earth settles into a near-identical orbit. The planet keeps its place in the solar system.¹1 The same logic protects the Moon, the other planets, the whole arrangement. Ten seconds is nothing next to orbital distances.

The surface is a different story entirely. Gravity is the only thing pinning everything down, so for those ten seconds anything not physically attached (you, the oceans, the atmosphere, every loose object) keeps whatever motion it had and drifts free, then comes crashing back when gravity returns. The atmosphere alone, taking ten seconds to wander off and then bodyslamming the planet on its way back, would be catastrophic on its own.

That gap is the entire point. The big picture is serenely fine and the local picture is total carnage, and both are true at the same moment. The planet’s fine. You’re a projectile. Congratulations. Scale is what decides which story you’re telling.