• Question: You can cry in space but your tears don't fall? Why is this

    Asked by Elena Sahra to Monique on 13 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Monique Henson

      Monique Henson answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      Yep! When we cry on Earth, gravity pulls our tears down towards the Earth. The space station is in free fall around the Earth, which causes the effective gravity on the space station to be effectively zero. Since there’s no effective gravity, tears don’t fall.

      I say effective gravity, because gravity still acts on the space station and everything in it. Because the space station is falling, the force making it fall is equal to the gravitational pull on it, which means the total force is zero. There’s a good explanation of this here.

      Also, have you watched the videos of people wringing out a flannel in space? If you haven’t you should! It’s surprisingly cool. You can find it here

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