• Question: Are there any places that you can become weightless other than space?? :)

    Asked by georgiax to Arttu, Ceri, James_M on 24 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Arttu Rajantie

      Arttu Rajantie answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Yes, anything freely falling. Because gravity acts in the same way to your whole body, you feel completely weightless if you are falling freely. In fact, general relativity takes this further, and states that there is really no difference even in principle: gravity is just acceleration.

      I’d surprised if there are no rides like that in theme parks, but you can definitely achieve that with airplanes. If you fly along a ballistic path, you won’t feel any gravity inside the airplane. This is how NASA train astronauts for space. They call it the “vomit comet”.

    • Photo: Ceri Brenner

      Ceri Brenner answered on 24 Jun 2011:

      Hi,

      Yeah i think there is a special type of aircraft, where they fly up to a certain height and then turn the engines off and let the plane free fall for like a mile or something. And for that mile, the passengers get to feel the sensation of weightlessness-Brian Cox demonstrated it during his most recent BBC series, it might still be on iplayer if you want to check it out.

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