9 Lies You Were Told About Science In School

9. "There€™s No Gravity In Space"

This seems like a fair shout, seeing as the people in space are floating about the place like party balloons. Thier weightlessness, however, is not due to the lack of gravity, gravity is everywhere. It keeps the Moon in orbit around the Earth, the Earth (and everything else in the solar system) in orbit around the sun and so on, so the astronauts aboard the ISS are still very much under its influence. The reason they bob about the place like that is because they're actually falling, not floating. Anything in orbit around the Earth, including the ISS, is basically constantly falling towards the Earth (because of all that gravity) and missing. This is because it is moving across the Earth at the same rate that it is falling towards it, so it just keeps falling around the edge. All that floating around is basically the same thing as that lovely light feeling when you go down in an elevator, but to a much greater extreme.
 
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